DeepCubeA: The AI That Conquered the Rubik’s Cube in Under a Minute
DeepCubeA is a groundbreaking algorithm developed by researchers at the University of California, recently featured in Nature Machine Intelligence. It can solve a scrambled Rubik’s Cube—no neural nets, no fancy machine‑learning tricks, and no prior training—by itself in a blink.
How It Works
- Ran 1,000 tests with 1,000–10,000 random twists each, and it solved 100 % of the puzzles.
- On average, the solver used the fewest possible moves 60.3 % of the time.
- In 36.4 % of the cases, it fell just two moves shy of the absolute optimum.
Beyond the Rubik’s Cube
The algorithm didn’t stop at the classic cube. It also tackled a whole zoo of other puzzles—including tile‑sliders, Lights Out, and Sokoban—solving them with fewer moves than the Rubik’s Cube in a majority of attempts.
What This Means for the Future
According to the team, the algorithm’s generalist core hints at potential applications far outside leisure puzzles:
- Planning problems where the state space is huge but the goal is slim.
- Robotics scenarios that demand efficient pathfinding.
- Scientific simulations that need to navigate intricate solution spaces.
By solving a Rubik’s Cube from scratch—without pre‑trained data—DeepCubeA nudges us toward a new era where machines don’t just crunch numbers, they think like us. It’s a subtle shift from bullet‑proof computation to a style that feels more human, all with a dash of algorithmic wizardry.
