What AlphaGo's Victory Might Mean for AI in Healthcare

DeepMind's deep learning software AlphaGo conquered one of the world's greatest Go players, Lee Sedol, last week – a task that many thought would take another decade to accomplish. The AI approaches AlphaGo used to beat Sedol might be indicative of future trends in AI in general – particularly in the domain of healthcare. In the world of one-to-one boardgames Go is special because, despite it's apparent simplicity, the strategies required to play are considered to be intimately "human" in their reliance on intuition above calculation. While the combinations of many chess scenarios can sometimes be searched thoroughly to 3 or 4 moves head, the number of possible Go moves is borderline incalculable, so the same "brute force" computing strategies that allowed IMB's Deep Blue to defeat Gary Kasparov are not possible on a Go board. Where a human Go player can – in theory – play against herself, it's most practical for her to play against another player to practice, train, and come in contact with different game scenarios.