The win puts an exclamation point on a significant moment for artificial intelligence. Over the last twenty-five years, machines have beaten the best humans at checkers, chess, Othello, even Jeopardy! But this is the first time a machine has topped the very best at Go—a 2,500-year-old game that's exponentially more complex than chess and requires, at least among humans, an added degree of intuition.

he victory is notable in its own right. But this week's events are even more significant when you consider that the machine learning technologies underpinning Google's machine, known as AlphaGo, are already pushing their way into real-world applications. Some help drive services inside Google and other Internet giants, helping to identify faces in photos, recognize commands spoken into smartphones, and so much more. Other techniques at the heart of Google's AI are poised to remake everything from scientific research to robotics.