Computer science

Judea Pearl, a pioneering figure in artificial intelligence, argues that AI has been stuck in a decades-long rut. His prescription for progress? Teach machines to understand the question why.

Faced with a navigational challenge, neural networks spontaneously evolved units resembling the grid cells that help living animals find their way.

The latest in a new series of proofs brings theoretical computer scientists within striking distance of one of the great conjectures of their discipline.

In new computer experiments, artificial-intelligence algorithms can tell the future of chaotic systems.

The computer scientist Barbara Engelhardt develops machine-learning models and methods to scour human genomes for the elusive causes and mechanisms of disease.

The latest artificial intelligence systems start from zero knowledge of a game and grow to world-beating in a matter of hours. But researchers are struggling to apply these systems beyond the arcade.

New algorithms show how swarms of very simple robots can be made to work together as a group.

The mathematician Gil Kalai believes that quantum computers can't possibly work, even in principle.

The quest for "quantum supremacy" – unambiguous proof that a quantum computer does something faster than an ordinary computer – has paradoxically led to a boom in quasi-quantum classical algorithms.