Artificial Intelligence: All Systems Go! - Delivered. The Global Logistics Magazine.

In March 2016, AlphaGo, a computer program developed by Google's London-based DeepMind subsidiary, beat leading professional Go player Lee Se-dol in four games out of five. It was a result that surprised the Go and technology communities in equal measure, and one that has been heralded as a breakthrough in artificial intelligence. The rules of Go are simple, but the sheer number of possible moves available to the players means 2,500-year-old game is considered significantly harder than chess. IBM's Deep Blue computer beat chess champion Garry Kasparov in 1997 but, until 2015, Go programs had only managed to play as well as good amateurs. As significant as AlphaGo's level of competence is the way it was achieved. Rather than basing its decisions on explicit rules about the relative value of different moves, as chess computers do, AlphaGo "taught" itself how to play well, running millions of game simulations against versions of itself and gradually adjusting its algorithms to achieve better results.