The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. Imagine a town with two widget merchants. Customers prefer cheaper widgets, so the merchants must compete to set the lowest price.

Tyler Lacoma has spent more than 10 years testing tech and studying the latest web tool to help keep readers current. He's here for you when you need a how-to guide, explainer, review, or list of the ...

Artificial intelligence has given us algorithms capable of recognizing faces, diagnosing disease, and of course, crushing computer games. But even the smartest algorithms can sometimes behave in ...

“To me, an algorithm is any piece of automated code that accepts some number of variables and data, [then] uses those variables and data to make decisions. But that’s the boring computer science ...