A key question in artificial intelligence is how often models go beyond just regurgitating and remixing what they have learned and produce truly novel ideas or insights. A new project from Google DeepMind shows that with a few clever tweaks these models can at least surpass human expertise designing certain types of algorithms—including ones that are useful for advancing AI itself. “These are three critical elements of the modern AI ecosystem,” says Pushmeet Kohli, head of AI for science at DeepMind. The latest AI models make it trivial for novices to build simple apps and websites, and some experienced developers are using AI to automate more of their work. AlphaEvolve demonstrates the potential for AI to come up with completely novel ideas through continual experimentation and evaluation.