In psychology, this is called &quot;Reinforcement&quot;[1] and that goes back to Skinner (1938) and Thorndike (1911).<p>In AI research its called &quot;Reinforcement learning&quot;[2]. One of the earliest papers relating reinforcement learning to AI was “Theory of Neural-Analog Reinforcement Systems”[3] by Minsky, 1954<p>A cool reinforcement learning demo is the DeepMind Atari video from last year[4]<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Reinforcement" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Reinforcement</a><p>[2] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Reinforcement_learning" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Reinforcement_learning</a><p>[3] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.researchgate.net&#x2F;publication&#x2F;36374626_Theory_of_neural-analog_reinforcement_systems_and_its_application_to_the_brain-model_problem" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.researchgate.net&#x2F;publication&#x2F;36374626_Theory_of_n...</a><p>[4] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=EfGD2qveGdQ" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=EfGD2qveGdQ</a> (this is awesome)