For a fleeting moment, the humans thought they had a chance.

Four professional poker players were convinced they found a flaw in the sophisticated artificial intelligence software that was beating them in a tournament of no-limit Texas Hold em. If they bet in odd sizes, it seemed to trip up the computer. Within a day or two, though, that weakness vanished.

It became very demoralizing showing up every day and losing this hard, said Jason Les, who has played professional poker for a decade.

When the 20-day tournament was done, the artificial intelligence, called Libratus, won a princely $1,766,250.

All four professional players Dong Kim, Daniel McAulay, Jimmy Chou and Les finished in the negative (although no money will change hands).

The win demonstrates the increasing sophistication of artificial intelligence software as computer scientists work to digitally replicate the human thought process. In this case, scientists demonstrated that AI can outwit the human brain in situations where at least some of the information needed to make smart decisions is unknown.

Artificial intelligence systems have mastered and beaten humans at other strategy games, such as Go and chess, in which both players have a full view of the game board. But poker is tricky: The computer doesnt know the hands that opponents have been dealt, or what decisions other players might make as a result.

The tournament was conducted for research purposes by the computer science department at Carnegie Mellon University. Prof. Tuomas Sandholm and doctoral student Noam Brown hope Libratus can ultimately be used in a number of game theory scenarios, such as business negotiations, cybersecurity attacks or military operations.

This is not necessarily replacing humans, but its taking their negotiation and strategic reasoning ability to another level as a support tool, Sandholm said.

Sandholm and Brown said the tournaments outcome will help determine those next steps for their research and expect the AI to be a support tool.

Excerpt from:

An artificial intelligence gamble that paid off - Minneapolis Star Tribune