Teaching machines in the way that animal trainers mold the behavior of dogs or horses has been an important method for developing artificial intelligence and one that was recognized Wednesday with the top computer science award.

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

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.

Barto, 76, and Sutton, 67, began their research in the late 1970s, laying the foundation for many of the significant AI advancements.