Month: December 2020

The first major conquest of artificial intelligence was chess. The game has a dizzying number of possible combinations, but it was relatively tractable because it was structured by a set of clear rules. An algorithm could always have perfect knowledge of the state of the game and know every possible move that both it and its opponent could make. The state of the game could be evaluated just by looking at the board.

But many other games aren't that simple. If you take something like Pac-Man, then figuring out the ideal move would involve considering the shape of the maze, the location of the ghosts, the location of any additional areas to clear, the availability of power-ups, etc., and the best plan can end up in disaster if Blinky or Clyde makes an unexpected move. We've developed AIs that can tackle these games, too, but they have had to take a very different approach to the ones that conquered chess and Go.

At least until now. Today, however, Google's DeepMind division published a paper describing the structure of an AI that can tackle both chess and Atari classics.

Enlarge (credit: Aurich Lawson / Getty Images)

Let's just state the obvious: 2020 stank. It has been a terrible year on so many metrics, no matter where on this celestial orb you live. So we're going to do something slightly different this time around for our top 20 most-read stories. We're going to have two lists: the top 5 COVID-19 related stories and everything else. So if you have had more COVID coverage than you can possibly handle, please—skip ahead with our blessing. If not, here we go:

2020 in review, COVID section

5. Here’s what WHO says your mask should have to prevent COVID-19 spread

One thing we've prided ourselves on throughout our 22-year history is that we educate people. When we launched back in late 1998, that meant covering stuff like overclocking Celerons. In 2020, we did the same thing, but with COVID-19. So it's fitting that the first story on the COVID-only countdown is about how to choose a good mask.

Early on in the pandemic, there was confusing messaging on masks, and it wasn't until late spring that the World Health Organization issued guidance to mask the public. "This is new novel research, that WHO commissioned, that we didn't have a month ago," said Maria Van Kerkhove, WHO's technical lead on the COVID-19 response. In short, three-layer masks are the best, with hydrophobic material on the outside and hydrophilic materials on the inside.