Can AI Really Help Your Business? Here's Why You Might Want To Disregard The Hype

The "black box" effect occurs when algorithms learn and behave in ways that humans cannot understand. This happens primarily with deep learning models, in which the algorithm is given a goal, and it accomplishes that goal without any visible rationale on a step-by-step basis. AlphaGo is a good example of this type of learning -- the algorithm was given a goal (to win a game of the ancient Chinese game Go) and then figured out through self-play how to accomplish that goal. For most moves, though, the expert Go players thought AlphaGo was making bad decisions because they could not understand the rationale for each individual move. But in the end, through this series of apparently suboptimal moves, AlphaGo ended up winning against a world master.