Google DeepMind's AI program learns human navigation skills

Google's AI beat humans at a game that involved racing around an unfamiliar virtual environment

Notch up another win for the robots: the latest program from Google's artificial intelligence group, DeepMind, has trounced experts at a maze game after it learned to find its way around like a human.

Scientists noticed that when they trained the AI to move through a landscape, it spontaneously developed electrical activity akin to that seen in the specialised brain cells that underpin human navigational skills. So-called 'grid cells' were only identified in animals in 2005 in work that earned researchers a Nobel prize.