Skip to Content
Artificial intelligence

Now any business can access the same type of AI that powered AlphaGo

March 6, 2019

A startup called CogitAI has developed a platform that lets companies use reinforcement learning, the technique that gave AlphaGo mastery of the board game Go.

Gaining experience: AlphaGo, an AI program developed by DeepMind, taught itself to play Go by practicing. It’s practically impossible for a programmer to manually code in the best strategies for winning. Instead, reinforcement learning let the program figure out how to defeat the world’s best human players on its own. 

Drug delivery: Reinforcement learning is still an experimental technology, but it is gaining a foothold in industry. Amazon recently launched a reinforcement-learning platform, but it is aimed more at researchers and academics. CogitAI’s first commercial customers include those working in robotics for drug manufacturing. Its platform lets the robot figure out the optimal way to process drug orders.

Brain trust: CogitAI was founded by several smart AI experts, including Peter Stone, a professor at the University of Texas. Rich Sutton, one of the fathers of reinforcement learning, is an advisor.

Learn for life: Stone says CogitAI’s platform is also the first to incorporate the ability to apply what it has learned in one situation to a new one, a first step toward “lifelong learning” for AI programs. “The platform has all of the cutting-edge RL algorithms and then some of our steps toward continual learning,” he says.

For more on the world of AI, sign up here to our twice-weekly AI newsletter, The Algorithm.

Deep Dive

Artificial intelligence

Large language models can do jaw-dropping things. But nobody knows exactly why.

And that's a problem. Figuring it out is one of the biggest scientific puzzles of our time and a crucial step towards controlling more powerful future models.

OpenAI teases an amazing new generative video model called Sora

The firm is sharing Sora with a small group of safety testers but the rest of us will have to wait to learn more.

Google’s Gemini is now in everything. Here’s how you can try it out.

Gmail, Docs, and more will now come with Gemini baked in. But Europeans will have to wait before they can download the app.

Google DeepMind’s new generative model makes Super Mario–like games from scratch

Genie learns how to control games by watching hours and hours of video. It could help train next-gen robots too.

Stay connected

Illustration by Rose Wong

Get the latest updates from
MIT Technology Review

Discover special offers, top stories, upcoming events, and more.

Thank you for submitting your email!

Explore more newsletters

It looks like something went wrong.

We’re having trouble saving your preferences. Try refreshing this page and updating them one more time. If you continue to get this message, reach out to us at customer-service@technologyreview.com with a list of newsletters you’d like to receive.