Did Carnegie Mellon Fudge Its Poker Tournament Wins?

In previous columns, I've pointed out that what passes for "breakthroughs" in Artificial Intelligence aka AI) are a repackaging of decades-old technology: pattern recognition, rule-based programming and neural nets. That's why, when confronted with the video above, I decided to "drill down" (as they say in the boardroom) into what's probably the most spectacular of the examples: the poker-playing program from Carnegie Mellon University that bested professionals in tournament play. I started with the University's original press release. It briefly explained what the program, called Libratus, had accomplished, which was factual enough. Then, however, the press released started sounding, well..., a bit like marketing hype.