Calling the Bluff of the Machines That Beat Us at Poker
The systems: they stack against us.
Photographer: Sckrepka/Getty ImagesI didn't worry too much when computers beat humans at checkers, chess, or Go. It was, after all, only a matter of time before someone built a powerful computer with a vast database of known game situations. But now that machines are beating professionals at poker -- a game of imperfect information -- a question must be asked: Is artificial intelligence starting to threaten people in creative jobs?
In terms of game complexity -- the number of allowed positions reachable in the course of a game -- no-limit Texas Hold'em poker, isn't an AI researcher's worst nightmare. The chess game tree has 10 to the 120th degree nodes. The one for Go has 10 to the 170th degree. Two-player, no-limit Texas Hold'em is in between with 10 to the power of 160 possible decision points. There are methods of making the game-tree complexity manageable in a real-time game, often based on disregarding what led to a particular position and reducing calculation depth for future positions, and they've been successfully implemented.