Top Tweets for #AlphaDev

We just discovered faster sorting algorithms! Here is a 60-second explanation of what happened: DeepMind turned the sorting problem into a puzzle, where the goal of an agent is to organize a list of instructions to find a correct and efficient algorithm. Think Tetris, but using lines of code. They used Deep Reinforcement Learning to train the agent who only wins the game if it finds an efficient algorithm. They called it "AlphaDev," and it didn't disappoint: AlphaDev found shorter and faster solutions for several sorting variants that we use trillions of times daily! This is a big deal. Conceptually, sorting is still an O(N log N) problem; Deepmind didn't change that. But practically speaking, and thanks to AlphaDev, we have code that runs faster. You should read their paper. They compared the current version of these algorithms and the new version they discovered. In some cases, they made significant improvements. Some people aren't happy with the way DeepMind is promoting this work. They argue the results aren't as breathtaking as the headlines claim. We can discuss their marketing, but this is undoubtedly a significant step with a real impact and the potential to generalize to more areas. The new algorithms that AlphaDev found seem trivial, yet no human found them before. That's the true power of Artificial Intelligence.