Artificial Intelligence in the Future of Retail

Last week Google's AlphaGo defeated legendary Go player Lee Sedol in four out of five games marking another milestone in the field of Artificial Intelligence. This is reminiscent of a 6 game match in 1997 where IBM's Deep Blue defeated Gary Kasparov. While machine beat man in both these games, there have been remarkable improvements between the computational capabilities of Deep Blue and AlphaGo. Deep Blue relied on brute computational force to evaluate positions; however AlphaGo relied on a a concept called "deep learning" that resembles human decision making. Beating humans at complex games is interesting news, these deep learning techniques also have the potential to enhance how retailers engage with their customers and improve their operational effectiveness.