Teaching machines in the way that animal trainers mold the behavior of dogs or horses has been an important method for developing artificial intelligence and one that was recognized Wednesday with the top computer science award.

Reinforcement learning pioneers Andrew Barto and Richard Sutton receive the Turing Award for revolutionizing AI innovation and shaping the future of technology.

Scholars Andrew G. Barto and Richard S. Sutton pioneered reinforcement learning long before it became a key tool in AI.

Two trailblazing computer scientists have won the 2024 Turing Award for their work in reinforcement learning, a discipline in which machines learn through a reward-based trial-and-error approach that lets them adapt within constrained or dynamic environments.

Teaching machines in the way that animal trainers mold the behavior of dogs or horses has been an important method for developing artificial intelligence (AI) and one that was recognized Wednesday with the top computer science award.