Superhuman AI Dominates Human Poker Players
Strangely, cardsharp is among the professions artificial intelligence (AI) threatens with obsolesce. A “superhuman AI” is devastating human poker players.
Pluribus defeated 12 professional poker players in 10,000 hands in over 12 days of play at Six-Max-No-Limit Texas Hold ‘em, The Verge reports. Notably, Pluribus won $5 per hand with hourly winnings of $12,000.That equals a “decisive margin of victory,” researchers tell The Verge.
“It’s safe to say we’re at a superhuman level and that’s not going to change,” Pluribus co-creator Noam Brown boasts. Brown is a research scientist at Facebook AI Research. Moreover, Brown describes Pluribus’s victory is a “milestone in AI research.”
AI can Bluff Better than Humans
Pluribus “is relentlessly good at bluffing its opponents” because it “thinks” two or three moves ahead, The Verge reports. That gives Pluribus the edge it needs to bluff and beat professional poker players.
Interestingly, Pluribus is “predictably unpredictable;” which makes it hard for humans to anticipate its next moves. Frighteningly, Pluribus could be better than any human poker player.
“What we show is that an AI can bluff, and it can bluff better than any human,” Brown says of Pluribus. Therefore, poker is yet another field where AI is better than humans.
Can Artificial Intelligence Lie?
The potential uses for bluffing AI could extend far beyond poker. Bluffing, for instance, is a basic component of military strategy.
Thus drones, or killer robots, capable of bluffing or outwitting human opponents could be coming. Additionally, they could use bluffing AI in politics, marketing, advertising, the law, and customer service.
An AI like Pluribus could answer telephone questions, or serve as a super lie detector trying to catch or outwit dishonest customers. In addition, something like Pluribus could help human poker players, military strategists, legal strategists, marketers, and political strategists improve their skills.
Political candidates could debate Pluribus before facing human opponents, for example. Meanwhile, lawyers could prepare for trial by facing Pluribus in a mock trial.
Finally, the ability to think two or three steps ahead will help make self-driving cars and trucks a reality. Being to able to think several steps ahead will be needed for AI operating drones, heavy machines, aircraft, ships, and industrial machines.
What will Facebook do with Pluribus?
Consequently, Pluribus could be worth a lot of money to business. Strangely, Pluribus is a co-creation of Facebook (NASDAQ: FB) and researchers at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh.
News stories did not say what Facebook plans to do with Pluribus. I think a likely use for it is to detect frauds and fake news in social media. Perhaps, Mark Zuckerberg wants a social media feature that quickly detects fake news and locks it out.
Pluribus is the latest creation from the team that developed the first successful poker playing AI, Libertus a few years ago, CardPlayer.com reports. Professional poker players Pluribus beat include four-time World Poker Tour main event winner Darren Elias and World Series of Poker Bracelet winner Chris Ferguson.
The media did not reveal if there are any plans to enter Pluribus in the World Series of Poker. Given the superhuman AI’s track record the human players in that event should hope Pluribus never enters the competition.
Nor is there any evidence that Pluribus is playing poker on websites such as Situs Poker Online . However, all poker players need to be aware of AIs such as Pluribus because they could be playing against you next time you go online.
It looks as if artificial intelligence could be the future of poker. Only time will tell how human poker players will react when they start losing money to Pluribus and other AIs.