Now That Robots Can Beat The Best Poker Players In The World, Human Life Is On The Verge Of Extinction

Technology - Humans have been bested by a computer in yet another game once considered too difficult for artificial intelligence to master.

Over the past three weeks, an AI poker bot called Libratus has played thousands of games of heads-up, no-limit Texas hold’em against a cadre of top professional players at Rivers Casino in Pittsburgh. And it beat them all.

Our own Will Knight recently explained why victory for Libratus, which was built by a pair of researchers at Carnegie Mellon University, would be such a big deal:

Poker requires reasoning and intelligence that has proven difficult for machines to imitate. It is fundamentally different from checkers, chess, or Go, because an opponent’s hand remains hidden from view during play. In games of “imperfect information,” it is enormously complicated to figure out the ideal strategy given every possible approach your opponent may be taking.

In heads-up, no-limit Texas hold’em, then, it’s virtually impossible, for there is no single correct play. Instead, the AI must use game theory to calculate optimal plays given the uncertainties.

In the end, it wasn’t even close: Libratus made off with $1.8 million in chips, while all four of the pros ended up with a deficit. Artificial intelligence has never beaten top players at a game so lacking in information as no-limit Texas hold’em.

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This is the beginning of the end. Pack up your things, cash in your chips, and go home. The Robots are taking over. They figured out checkers. They figured out chess. And now, poker. The smart college folks weren’t sure it was going to happen, at least not this fast. In the other games that robots have taken over, you can see everything. In poker, you can only see your own hand. But the god damn computers don’t care. They beat 4 of the best players in the world just using smart robot math.

Some would say, who cares, it’s just poker. But come on, read a movie one time for me. The future is here whether you realize it or not. We have VR porn. We have self driving cars. The robot takeover is happening all around us and some people don’t even realize it. Humans are being phased out of existence. Zuckerberg just programmed his entire house to be run like JARVIS from Iron Man. It’s all happening. Every 3 weeks I feel something else gets discovered or invented and it’s like “we are in the future”.

Just wait. One day the robots will be walking among us. We won’t be able to tell the difference, like that robot from the episode of Black Mirror. And they’ll be at the poker tables too. And next thing we know, the robot community will have all of our money, and the robot takeover will begin. So good job, Carnegie Mellon University, for starting the downfall of society as we know it.