[jraut]

An AI which excels in imperfect information games (card games, Starcraft) would be a real breakthrough. Raw calculation power is bound to win games with a finite set of possibilities. The huge leap would be the ability to handle probabilites: taking guesses, making assumptions and coming into some kind of successful conclusions based on those.

[dingo_bat]

Go cannot be won with raw power though. It has a lot of the constraints of incomplete information problems.

[jraut]

So every move cannot be precalculated? Some of the constraints may be there. The completeness of information available would be the definition of breakthrough for me. In this case, the first state of the game is presented in total with 100% accuracy. So are all the steps from there onward. In my opinion, the challenge for a breakthrough comes when most of the actions of other players happen in dark and no feedback is presented to the AI.

In a lifelike situation the AI will not have access to the inner state of the game, but instead has to gather the information via the same (restricted) mechanisms as other players.

edit: I should probably clarify that the above is about competitive StarCraft. I should probably learn to play GO, too.