Mainstream media reacts to Libratus' poker win
Poker once again caught the eye of the wider press following AI's historic victory over a team of pros earlier this week.
The inevitable news that the Carnegie Mellon Artificial Intelligence bot, Libratus, emerged victorious against a team of four poker professionals, has once again thrust the game into the mainstream media's gaze.
As the first time a machine has successfully beaten a team of elite players in a heads-up no limit game, this was understandibly billed as a turning point in the game's history, although not yet the end of days as some might believe.
If you didn't yet know, the players were beaten at NLHE, a game specifically chosen for its unpredictability, by more than $1.7m worth of chips, with each of the professionals finishing with a deficit and so naturally catching the attention of the mainstream media.
As the UK online newspaper, The Independent, rightfully reasons;
“AI programs have conquered human opposition in games of chess and Go in the past, but poker is different because players don’t get to see each other’s hands and bluffing is central to the game”.
While The Guardian saw it as an issue for man kind, not just poker;
“It’s a crushing defeat for humanity, but a major milestone for artificial intelligence. The algorithms that power Libratus aren’t specific to poker, which means the system could have a variety of applications outside of recreational games, from negotiating business deals to setting military or cybersecurity strategy and planning medical treatment – anywhere where humans are required to do strategic reasoning with imperfect information”.
One of the defeated foursome, Jimmy Chou, pictured below, is quoted in the BBC and found the experience "demoralising";
"The bot gets better and better every day. It's like a tougher version of us. The first couple of days, we had high hopes, but every time we find a weakness, it learns from us and the weakness disappears the next day."
The Tech media reacts
Naturally, the tech industry titles, such as MIT Technology Review, were focusing on the future and the bot's next challenge;
“For the AI, though, this is just the start. Having proven that it’s possible to beat the professionals at their own game, there is now a very clear next challenge to chew on: multi-player no-limit Texas hold’em. But the game theory used in the current software falls down when there's more than one opponent, and it's not clear what technique to use instead".
While Wired took the time to understand the science behind the bot's phenomenal, and groundbreaking, victory;
“Libratus did not use neural networks. Mainly, it relied on a form of AI known as reinforcement learning, a method of extreme trial-and-error. In essence, it played game after game against itself”.
What do you think this means for the future of the game?
