Slashdot Mirror
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.
or
"Despite the win, the poker players' $732,713 collective lead over Claudico wasn't quite large enough to attain statistical significance"
I think this is the optimal outcome for the scientists. They can show: 1) We have done something (i.e. the poker bot is not too far from the best human players so our time has not been wasted). 2) There is more to be done (i.e. give us more money to look at this).
Also, I do think it is a quite impressive outcome.
Playing blackjack is applied statistics. Playing poker is AI.
Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
Personally, when I gamble and end up about 3/4 of a million dollars in the hole, I assume that I lost.
Great minds think alike; fools seldom differ.
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.
Welcome to most poker. 75-85% of hands you fold at a full table without putting any money in. Another big chunk you fold to a bet either pre or post flop. Most of your money in any session is won or lost in a few big hands.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
the reason people can multi-table so much is because you rarely have to do anything. mostly you are just folding until you find hands or positions you want to play from, multi tabling reduces the boredom and stops you from playing in hands you shouldn't. It is not uncommon to go 10-20 hands in a row on a table where all you are doing is folding. multi tabling is not hard.
Look, it is two thousand freaking fifteen. This is an article from some site called "Techie News" being re-reported at Slashdot. Can we please get a little ridicule of this supposed binary concept of "statistical significance" ? It would take us one or two sentences to tell us the actual numbers involved--the expected value, expected deviation, margin of error, confidence level, etc.
And then when all's said and done, if indeed the level of significance was too low (e.g. p too high), maybe we could get a Bayesian or two in here to criticize the traditional 5% value is being arbitrary and tell us all a little about the Frequentist vs. Bayesian rivalry in statistics that persists to this day? (Obligatory XKCDs: https://xkcd.com/1132/ , https://xkcd.com/882/)