AlphaTensor, builds upon AlphaZero, an agent that has shown superhuman performance on board games, like chess, Go and shogi, and this work shows the journey of AlphaZero from playing games to tackling unsolved mathematical problems for the first time.

The ancient Egyptians created an algorithm to multiply two numbers without requiring a multiplication table, and Greek mathematician Euclid described an algorithm to compute the greatest common divisor, which is still in use today.

During the Islamic Golden Age, Persian mathematician Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi designed new algorithms to solve linear and quadratic equations. In fact, al-Khwarizmi's name, translated into Latin as Algoritmi, led to the term algorithm. But, despite the familiarity with algorithms today – used throughout society from classroom algebra to cutting edge scientific research – the process of discovering new algorithms is incredibly difficult, and an example of the amazing reasoning abilities of the human mind.