Artificial intelligence will change the world, but it can't win at darts

DeepMind's artificial intelligence programme AlphaZero became the most formidable chess player in the world in December after just four hours of playing the game. DeepMind has also scored off the charts at Go and Shogi, the Asian board games, as well as video games such as Pong and Space Invaders. Machines can now diagnose cancer from tissue slides better than human epidemiologists, translate text from one language to another almost instantly, drive cars, and -- in certain circumstances -- predict social unrest. Even so-called AI pessimists accept that machines will increasingly transform our economy, our lives and our planet. And yet there is one thing that machines cannot yet do, at least not very well: play most sports.…