AlphaGo taught itself how to win, but without humans it would have run out of time

Even at Google's DeepMind, there's still stuff that humans code best, it seems - and it's all down to timing

AlphaGo, the board-game-playing AI from Google's DeepMind subsidiary, is one of the most famous examples of deep learning - machine learning using neural networks - to date. So it may be surprising to learn that some of the code that led to the machine's victory was created by good old-fashioned humans.

The software, which beat Korean Go Champion Lee Sedol 4-1 in March, taught itself to play the ancient Asian game by running millions of simulations against itself.