Artificial Intelligence and the information professional: threat or opportunity?

Artificial intelligence has risen to prominence this year. In March 2016, Google DeepMind's AlphaGo won 4-1 in the Chinese game of Go, beating the top Go player in the world over the past decade, Lee Sedol. And IBM's Watson correctly diagnosed a Japanese leukaemia patient in ten minutes after doctors had failed to diagnose her condition over several months. Navigating this information requires vastly more sophisticated tools than hitherto available. Large industry players are aware of this and Google, IBM and Microsoft are all investing heavily.