This is actually a really exciting development to me. (Note, what is exciting is the "optometrist algorithm" from the paper [1] not necessarily googles involvement as pitched in the guardian). Typically a day of shots would need to be programmed out in advance, typically scanning over one dimension (out of hundreds) at a time. It would then take at least a week to analyze the results and create an updated research plan. The result is poor utilization of each experiment in optimizing performance. The 50% reduction in losses is a big deal for Tri Alpha.
I can see this being coupled with simulations as well to understand sources of systematic errors, create better simulations which can then be used as a stronger source of truth for "offline" (computation-only) experiments.
The biggest challenge of course becomes interpreting the results. So you got better performance, what parameters really made a difference and why? But that is at least a more tractable problem than "how do we make this better in the first place?"
I can see this being coupled with simulations as well to understand sources of systematic errors, create better simulations which can then be used as a stronger source of truth for "offline" (computation-only) experiments.
The biggest challenge of course becomes interpreting the results. So you got better performance, what parameters really made a difference and why? But that is at least a more tractable problem than "how do we make this better in the first place?"
[1] http://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-06645-7