AlphaDev
DeepMind applied reinforcement learning to searching machine instructions and found faster algorithms for sorting short sequences.
Why it matters
The result entered the C++ standard library: machine-found code became part of infrastructure everyone uses.
The problem was posed as a game: the agent adds one processor instruction at a time, and the payoff is correctness and speed. The sequences found are a few percent faster than the human-written ones and look counterintuitive. The gain is small, but sorting runs billions of times a day. The contribution was accepted into LLVM in April 2023.