Can artificial intelligence (AI) create its own algorithms to speed up matrix multiplication, one of machine learning’s most fundamental tasks? Today, in a paper published in Nature, DeepMind ...

DeepMind has used its board-game playing AI AlphaZero to discover a faster way to solve a fundamental math problem in computer science, beating a record that has stood for more than 50 years.

In 1969, a German mathematician named Volker Strassen discovered the previous-best algorithm for multiplying 4×4 matrices, which reduces the number of steps necessary to perform a matrix calculation.

AlphaTensor has already identified a new algorithm with which matrix multiplications can be carried out faster than before, as the research team explains in a paper published in the magazine Nature.

An artificial-intelligence approach known as AlphaTensor found exact matrix-multiplication algorithms that are more efficient than those previously known for many matrix sizes. The technique ...