The 2016 victory by a Google-built AI at the notoriously complex game of Go was a bold demonstration of the power of modern machine learning. That triumphant AlphaGo system, created by AI research group Google DeepMind, confounded expectations that computers were years away from beating a human champion. But as significant as that achievement was, DeepMind's co-founder Demis Hassabis expects it will be dwarfed by how AI will transform society in the years to come. "I would actually be very pessimistic about the world if something like AI wasn't coming down the road," he said. "The reason I say that is that if you look at the challenges that confront society: climate change, sustainability, mass inequality -- which is getting worse -- diseases, and healthcare, we're not making progress anywhere near fast enough in any of these areas.