Computer Science

Quantum computers should soon be able to beat classical computers at certain basic tasks. But before they’re truly powerful, researchers have to overcome a number of fundamental roadblocks.

And not destroy humanity in the process.

To efficiently analyze a firehose of data, scientists first have to break big numbers into bits.

A new version of AlphaGo needed no human instruction to figure out how to clobber the best Go player in the world — itself.

The real-world version of the famous “traveling salesman problem” finally gets a good-enough solution.

A new idea is helping to explain the puzzling success of today’s artificial-intelligence algorithms — and might also explain how human brains learn.

A tiny self-organized mesh full of artificial synapses recalls its experiences and can solve simple problems. Its inventors hope it points the way to devices that match the brain’s energy-efficient computing prowess.

Computer scientists are finding ways to code curiosity into intelligent machines.

John Nash’s notion of equilibrium is ubiquitous in economic theory, but a new study shows that it is often impossible to reach efficiently.