Artificial Intelligence Wins $800,000 Against 4 Poker Masters

Although humankind is fighting for its pride, researchers hope their software establish a new benchmark for AI by beating some of the world's most talented players. Developed by Computer Science Professor Tuomas Sandholm and his Ph.D. student, Noam Brown; Libratus is smart enough to set military strategy, negotiate business deals, or plan a course of medical treatment, which all involve complex decisions based on imperfect information. Sandholm says;

"The algorithms are performing great. They're better at solving strategy ahead of time, better at driving strategy during play and better at improving strategy on the fly."

Libratus can learn from mistakes

According to Chou, they shared tips and notes every day since the competition started on the 11th June to find weaknesses. He says that whenever they found a weakness, Libratus learned from its mistakes and the weakness disappeared the following day. But this change is an expected result of an ongoing work of the Bridges, the computer of the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center, that performs new computations to sharpen the AI's strategy each night after the games end.

"Libratus uses algorithms to analyze the rules of poker and sets its own strategy, based on approximately 15 million core hours of computation at the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center. It will continuously sharpen its strategy during the Brains vs. AI competition, performing computations with the PSC’s Bridges computer each night while the pros get some shuteye."

During games, Bridges perform live computations to support Libratus, but the algorithms created are also truly useful for the medicine, business negotiation, auctions, cyber security, and moreover. Well, Libratus is already a bling-bling computer with a revenue of $794,392.

But Libratus is not the first attempt of Carnegie Mellon. In 2015, Sandholm and his team have come out with another artificial intelligence named Claudico which was designed to play no limit Texas hold 'em heads-up as well.

Well, games begin at 11 a.m. each day and end at 8 p.m. until the 30th of January. And as well as you can watch the games online from Twitch, the ones who wants to watch the competition could just drop into Rivers' Poker Room.

[Featured Image Source: Carnegie Mellon University]