The status of artificial intelligence technology got a bump last week when a computer programmed at Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Mellon University won a No Limit Texas Hold ‘em game over four of the world’s top poker pros.
Famous poker pros Jimmy Chou, Dong Kim, Jason Les and Daniel McAulay spent most of January at Rivers battling the computer, spending as much as 11 hours a day at computers playing heads-up Texas Hold ‘em. Each time a player made a move, the computer—five miles away at the university—responded via Libratus software running at the school’s Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center in the nearby suburb of Monroeville.
The Libratus software had AI beating the pros from the outset, and the computer never gave up its advantage. In an interview with the Washington Post, Dr. Tuomas Sandholm of Carnegie Mellon, who designed the Libratus program, said the program wins because it doesn’t think like a human. “AI is making moves humans would never make,” he said. “AI is a Martian playing poker.”
