When doctors meet with AlphaGo: potential application of machine learning to clinical medicine

March is a reluctant beginning of spring. After suddenly getting warmer, the weather has turned cold again. Yesterday, the friend circle of Wechat was full of a breaking news that the Google’s artificial intelligence AlphaGo beat human Go champion Lee Sedol. Or at least it was a temporary lead because there will be several rounds in following days. The news was a headline because it was related to the debate on whether artificial intelligence could defeat human brain. Many cultural celebrities posted their comments on the news. Shen Lei, a writer who is famous for his interpretation on Jin Yong’s Kung Fu novels, stated that: “The last warrior falls.” Tang Fenng also posted on his Wechat that: “All calculations and computations can be left for machines from now on. What we humans can do are: burning incense, sipping tea, Washing inkstone, playing the Chinese zither….” In other words, all works with rules can be completed by machines, and humans have to retreat to their emotional domain. Why is it the Go, instead of other chesses such as Modern Ludo and animal checker, or other intellectual activities? That is because the Go represent the most complicated intellectual activity. The chessboard of Go is made up of 361 cross points, which in turn can generate numerous chess compositions. There are around 10¹⁷⁰ possible board configurations in the average 150-move game (1)! After all, this is much challenging than medical decision making. Two decades ago, the IBM supercomputer Deep Blue defeated the world chess champion Garry Kasparov (2). However, the chess is slightly inferior than Go in its complexity. Thus the AlphaGo’s victory has more far-reaching significance.