In our paper published today in Nature, we introduce AlphaDev, an artificial intelligence (AI) system that uses reinforcement learning to discover enhanced computer science algorithms – surpassing those honed by scientists and engineers over decades.

AlphaDev uncovered new sorting algorithms that led to improvements in the LLVM libc++ sorting library that were up to 70% faster for shorter sequences and about 1.7% faster for sequences exceeding 250,000 elements.

  • simpleEnglish
    18·
    1 year ago

    This is the stuff that makes me really excited for AI. Sure, having a personal assistant is nice. Generating images and music is also very cool. Optimizing software and hardware though, this is where things get amazing.

    Modern software is pretty abysmal when you think about it. In the last 20 years we’ve focused more on making things faster rather than making more optimized things. We ended up with ultra bloated operating systems, regularly 100mb+ apps, RAM sucking programs like web browsers and background apps that make even 8 gigabytes of RAM not enough, and so on.

    I’m waiting for a point where AI can start optimizing legacy code and say “Wait, this is really dumb and wastes so much energy”. Imagine Windows running on only 100mb of ram. Imagine apps and websites being 10x more efficient than they are now. It’s not that crazy of a concept, only a matter of time.