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Poker Pros Win Against AI, But Experts Peg Match As Statistical Draw
hypnosec writes with some positive news for Skynet watchers, in that humans still have at least a slight lead against the AIs who might one day imprison us in energy-harvesting goo tanks, or at least beating us in Las Vegas. The two-day poker showdown involving four of the world's top (human) players and a Carnegie Mellon University AI program called Claudico saw the professionals win, after several days of heads-up no-limit Texas Hold'em. "Despite the win, the poker players' $732,713 collective lead over Claudico wasn't quite large enough to attain statistical significance, experts have said. This means that the results can't be accepted as scientifically reliable thereby indicating that the "Brains Vs. Artificial Intelligence" competition effectively ended in a statistical tie." On the other hand, the computers sure got over what looked like a rout by the humans.
Halfway through the competition, the four human pros had a cumulative lead of 626,892 chips. Though much could change in the week remaining, a lead of around 600,000 chips is considered statistically significant.
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"Despite the win, the poker players' $732,713 collective lead over Claudico wasn't quite large enough to attain statistical significance"
In this case, yes, it is. All they gave it as inputs were the rules to the game. The AI had to make its own determinations after that for what the optimal strategy was, how it would go about achieving it, and how it should respond to the individual characteristics of each of its opponents.
Alternatively, ask yourself if playing a game takes intelligence at all. We could argue that all that the pros are doing is making their best estimation of the statistical likelihood that they'll win a hand, then betting accordingly along an optimal path that they've cultivated through experience. It's really no different than what this AI was doing either, it would seem.