Earlier quoted context omitted.
For AlphaGo, a "pixel" is a point on the board. It uses essentially the same convolutional neural networks (CNNs) that are in state-of-the-art machine vision systems. But yes, the overall architecture is rather different from the Atari system, due to the integration of that CNN with Monte Carlo Tree Search.
Sorry, you're off base a bit. The Atari system did use a Deep Neural Network / Reinforcement algorithm, but as the original poster was trying to point out, the rules of Go were very much hard coded into AlphaGo. From what this [1] says, multiple DNNs are learning how to traverse Monte Carlo trees of Go games. The reinforcement piece comes in choosing which of the Go players is playing the best games. While the higher…
Likewise NNs are uncaring what application you put them into. Give them a different input and a different goal, and they will learn to do that instead. Alphago gave it's NN's control over a monte carlo search tree, and that turned out to be enough to beat Go. They could plug the same AI into a car and it would learn to control that instead.
Note that even without the monte carlo search system, it was able to beat most amateurs, and predict the moves experts would make most of the time.