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Poker pro Daniel McAulay confers with CMU Ph.D. student Noam Brown on the first day of Brains vs. AI: Upping the Ante. At the halfway point, CMU’s AI is opening its lead over four of the world’s top players.
(Tim Kaulen – Carnegie Mellon Uni)
First the robots beat us in chess and Jeopardy, now … poker?
An artificial intelligence developed by Carnegie Mellon researches named “Libratus” is beating four of the world’s best professional poker players in a 20-day contest at Rivers Casino in Pittsburgh.
This is the second time a CMU AI has played against humans. In the first tournament in 2015, the four leading pros amassed more chips than the AI, named “Claudico.” But in the latest contest, Libratus had amassed a lead of $459,154 in chips in the 49,240 hands played by the end of the ninth day of competition.
“The first couple of days, we had high hopes,” said Jimmy Cho, one of the poker pros. “But every time we find a weakness, it learns from us and the weakness disappears the next day.”
The change from day to day is not unexpected, said CMU Computer Science Professor Tuomas Sandholm, who developed the AI with his Ph.D. student, Noam Brown. Each night after poker play ends, the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center’s Bridges computer performs computations to sharpen the AI’s strategy. During the day’s game play, Bridges computes end-game strategies for each hand.
According to CMU, Libratus is playing poker because it is an imperfect information game that requires the AI to bluff and correctly interpret misleading information to win. Ultimately programs like Libratus also could be used to negotiate business deals, set military strategy or plan a course of medical treatment — all cases that involve complicated decisions based on imperfect information.
Play begins at 11 a.m. each day and ends after 8 p.m. The public is welcome to watch the game play at the casino, or follow along on a live stream:
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