Carnegie Mellon Artificial Intelligence Beats Top Poker Pros - Science and Technology Research News

Libratus, an artificial intelligence developed by Carnegie Mellon University, made history by defeating four of the world's best professional poker players in a marathon 20-day poker competition, called "Brains Vs. Once the last of 120,000 hands of Heads-up, No-Limit Texas Hold'em were played on Jan. 30, Libratus led the pros by a collective $1,766,250 in chips. The developers of Libratus -- Tuomas Sandholm, professor of computer science, and Noam Brown, a Ph.D. student in computer science -- said the sizable victory is statistically significant and not simply a matter of luck. "The best AI's ability to do strategic reasoning with imperfect information has now surpassed that of the best humans," Sandholm said. This new milestone in artificial intelligence has implications for any realm in which information is incomplete and opponents sow misinformation, said Frank Pfenning, head of the Computer Science Department in CMU's School of Computer Science. Business negotiation, military strategy, cybersecurity and medical treatment planning could all benefit from automated decision-making using a Libratus-like AI. "The computer can't win at poker if it can't bluff," Pfenning said. "Developing an AI that can do that successfully is a tremendous step forward scientifically and has numerous applications.