When Machine Intelligence Meets Main Street

In the age of machine learning, what should managers know -- and what must non-tech companies do to stay ahead? This article is part of an MIT SMR initiative exploring how technology is reshaping the practice of management. For data scientists and machine-learning experts, March 2016 was a momentous month. AlphaGo, a computer program developed by Google, beat world champion Lee Sedol at the ancient Chinese board game Go by a score of 4 to 1. In contrast to chess, where players might make about 40 moves per game, games of Go may have 200 moves.1 Whereas IBM's Deep Blue was used to defeat chess grand master Garry Kasparov in 1997, computer scientists can't calculate all the moves required to win at Go. Instead, Google had to create another kind of machine algorithm that could approximate humanlike qualities, playing the game by intuition and feel.