DeepMind's 'Gato' is mediocre, so why did they build it?

DeepMind's "Gato" neural network excels at numerous tasks including controlling robotic arms that stack blocks, playing Atari 2600 games, and captioning images.

DeepMind

The world is used to seeing headlines about the latest breakthrough by deep learning forms of artificial intelligence. The latest achievement of the DeepMind division of Google, however, might be summarized as, "One AI program that does a so-so job at a lot of things." 

Gato, as DeepMind's program is called, was unveiled this week as a so-called multimodal program, one that can play video games, chat, write compositions, caption pictures, and control a robotic arm stacking blocks. It is one neural network that can work with multiple kinds of data to perform multiple kinds of tasks. 

AI in 2023: A year of breakthroughs that left no human thing unchanged These are the jobs most likely to be taken over by AI AI at the edge: 5G and the Internet of Things see fast times ahead Almost half of tech executives say their organizations aren't ready for AI or other advanced initiatives AI in 2023: A year of breakthroughs that left no human thing unchanged

These are the jobs most likely to be taken over by AI

AI at the edge: 5G and the Internet of Things see fast times ahead

Almost half of tech executives say their organizations aren't ready for AI or other advanced initiatives

Editorial standards Show Comments