The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. Imagine a town with two widget merchants. Customers prefer cheaper widgets, so the merchants must compete to set the lowest price.

At the core of reinforcement learning is the concept that the optimal behavior or action is reinforced by a positive reward. Similar to toddlers learning how to walk who adjust actions based on the ...

Tyler Lacoma has spent more than 10 years testing tech and studying the latest web tool to help keep readers current. He's here for you when you need a how-to guide, explainer, review, or list of the ...

The Lamport algorithm for generating and applying one-time passwords (OTPs) is a simple solution that provides great value in the right context. Not only can the Lamport OTP scheme provide effective ...

Java programmers use data structures to store and organize data, and we use algorithms to manipulate the data in those structures. The more you understand about data structures and algorithms, and how ...

Artificial intelligence has given us algorithms capable of recognizing faces, diagnosing disease, and of course, crushing computer games. But even the smartest algorithms can sometimes behave in ...

As the world races to build artificial superintelligence, one maverick bioengineer is testing how much unprogrammed intelligence may already be lurking in our simplest algorithms to determine whether ...

All around us, algorithms are invisibly at work. They’re recommending music and surfacing news, finding cancerous tumors, and making self-driving cars a reality. But do people trust them? Not really, ...