Investing in the AI revolution

Recently, the computer science field took a monumental leap forward when Google DeepMind's artificial intelligence (AI) program, AlphaGo, bested Go champion Lee Sedol, four matches to one. While programs that can master competitive games of logic and recall, such as chess, jeopardy and poker, have already been developed, the ancient Chinese game of Go has both enticed and frustrated computer scientists due to its complexity. With move combinations outnumbering the number of atoms that exist in the known universe, brute force algorithms that have been greatly successful in game mastery were deemed to be largely inapplicable for Go. However, through advanced tree searches and deep neural networks, researchers can narrow down Go's massive array of data trees into much more manageable combinations akin to that of a human brain's neural network. While the dream of conscious AI is still years away, there are still some potential investments in this fast-growing sector.