Deep learning: What's changed?

Deep learning made the headlines when the UK's AlphaGo team beat Lee Sedol, holder of 18 international titles, in the Go board game. Go is more complex than other games, such as Chess, where machines have previously crushed famous players. The number of potential moves explodes exponentially so it wasn't possible for computers to use the same techniques used in Chess. In learning Go, the computer would have to create millions of games, competing against itself and discovering new strategies that humans may never have considered. Deep learning itself isn't that new, and researchers have been working on algorithms for many years, refining the approach and developing new algorithms.