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.

Having machines learn from experience was once considered a dead end. It’s now critical to artificial intelligence, and work in the field has won two men the highest honor in computer science.

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