DeepMind’s latest AI project solves programming challenges like a newb

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Google's DeepMind AI division has tackled everything from StarCraft to protein folding. So it's probably no surprise that its creators have eventually turned to what is undoubtedly a personal interest: computer programming. In Thursday's edition of Science, the company describes a system it developed that produces code in response to programming typical of those used in human programming contests.

On an average challenge, the AI system could score near the top half of participants. But it had a bit of trouble scaling, being less likely to produce a successful program on problems where more code is typically required. Still, the fact that it works at all without having been given any structural information about algorithms or programming languages is a bit of a surprise.

Rising to the challenge

Computer programming challenges are fairly simple: People are given a task to complete and produce code that should perform the requested task. In an example given in the new paper, programmers are given two strings and asked to determine whether the shorter of the two could be produced by substituting backspaces for some of the keypresses needed to type the larger one. Submitted programs are then checked to see whether they provide a general solution to the problem or fail when additional examples are tested.

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