Is Google a Step Away from Developing a Computer that Can "Program Itself"?

New Scientist reports that Google may soon have a computer with "human-like learning" abilities that will "program itself":

Your smartphone is amazing, but ask it to do something it doesn't have an app for and it just sits there. Without programmers to write apps, computers are useless.

That could soon change. DeepMind Technologies, a London-based artificial-intelligence firm acquired by Google this year, has revealed that it is designing computers that combine the way ordinary computers wor...