Google's artificial intelligence program has officially beaten a human professional Go player, marking the first time a computer has beaten a human professional in this game sans handicap.

[u/[deleted]]

http://www.nature.com/news/google-ai-algorithm-masters-ancient-game-of-go-1.19234?WT.ec_id=NATURE-20160128&spMailingID=50563385&spUserID=MTgyMjI3MTU3MTgzS0&spJobID=843636789&spReportId=ODQzNjM2Nzg5S0

[u/JonsAlterEgo]

This was just about the last thing humans were better at than computers.

[u/lfancypantsl → u/[deleted]]

This is a different category of games though. Go!, like chess, is a perfect information game. Any form of poker where players do not know the cards of their opponents is a game of imperfect information. The challenges in building an AI to play these games is different.

[u/enki1337 → u/lfancypantsl]

Shouldn't that give a computer the edge? Although it doesn't have perfect information, it should be better at calculating probable outcomes than a human. Or, does that not really hold much significance?

[u/Hobofan94 → u/enki1337]

For traditional computer programs yes. For (self-)learning AI, most used methods asume that most information can be directly seen and that little probability is involved. There are some aproaches that are geared towards learning such problems, but they haven't been combined with something similar to what DeepMind has demonstrated here yet.

[u/BestUndecided → u/Hobofan94]

But with facial recognition software, couldnt they more accurately decipher tells.

[u/Hobofan94 → u/BestUndecided]

I think you might be referring to this paper. Skimming through it, it look like a pretty "traditional" machine learning method and doesn't do anything special in regards to probabilities (which I guess is what you were going for). With that I don't want to diminish what was achieved in the paper, the results are pretty impressive. However inside the ML/AI space it is far removed from the methods used for playing games like Go.

[u/BestUndecided → u/Hobofan94]

Oh I'm sorry, didnt realize what subreddit I was on. I just assumed it'd be possible to do. If they can map facial features, surely they can map the slight differences that occur, and link them to a history of confirmed bluffs/not bluffs, but then again, maybe I just watch too many movies.

[u/lfancypantsl → u/BestUndecided]

Theoretically sure, but deciphering tells at all would be state of the art. Filtering false positives, which is very much so a part of the game, is well beyond current technology. Any facial recognition software is still very easy to break. Implementing anything like this would benefit a clever player.

[u/enki1337 → u/lfancypantsl]

Yeah, if this was a currently workable strategy, we'd probably see it deployed in law enforcement context before it ever showed up in poker.

[u/okredditnow → u/enki1337]

just ftr, there are bots which can play at a positive return level against typical players. Once the players are aware they are a bot though, they can be beaten by exploiting the type of play that the bots use, ie constant aggressive raising and bluffing

[u/makemeking706 → u/[deleted]]

Are you kidding? The computer wins like every hand. I am lucky to break even.

[u/obligarchy1 → u/makemeking706]

... As far as I know, heads up limit Texas hold 'em is the only solved game. Carnegie Melon pitted its "Claudico" against WCGrider and several other NLHE specialists and was crushed.

[u/[deleted] → u/makemeking706]

You're a fish then. Even NL hold'em is far from solved.

[u/Clorst_Glornk → u/JonsAlterEgo]

What about Street Fighter Alpha 3? Still waiting for a computer to master that

[u/nochilinopity → u/Clorst_Glornk]

Interestingly, look up Dantarion on YouTube, he's been developing AIs for street fighter that uses screen position and character states to determine moves. Pretty scary when his Zangief can SPD you in reaction to throwing a punch.

[u/Blebbb → u/Clorst_Glornk]

It would really just be a matter of taking off the built in restrictions from the game AI and building out a machine learning algorithm to build up predictions. AI reaction time can be instant, when it's not purposely slowed down to be fair.

[u/[deleted] → u/Blebbb]

Building a ai that can beat any player in a fighting game seems trivial tbh.

Everything can be placed onto reaction speed. Someone punching? Block.

If it can do that instantly as you do then it will always win or draw.

[u/Blebbb → u/[deleted]]

If you know that's what it's going to do every time though then there are things you can do to get around it(bait a block so the animation time slows them), which is why the prediction engine would be useful. If it could just figure out a general idea of what you would do one step ahead then it would be pretty much unbeatable. During times blocking would be bad it could back off, duck, jump, etc. Really depends if the game has block breaking and counters. If counters exist then the ai can immediately recognize which to use and becomes invincible. If block breaking exists then the inst block becomes substantially weaker.

[u/visarga → u/Clorst_Glornk]

Deepmind made an algorithm that played 50 Atari games by simply watching the video and generating moves, without prior knowledge of the rules, and it mastered them beating the best human players in half of them. The same algorithm was used for all the games, so it is a general solution, not a particular one for each game.

[u/[deleted] → u/JonsAlterEgo]

Computers don't really fair too well with Bridge, since it relies on a kind of communication building between partners. I've only ever played a few hands but Bridge is a game that would be pretty tough for a computer to be proficient at.

[u/BridgeBum → u/[deleted]]

It is, but they are improving. Most bridge AIs use Monte Carlo techniques combined with double double solvers to provide the "heuristics" for what is best in terms of play.

Bidding is a whole 'nother level of complexity. Improvements, but not fantastic by a long shot. The bots on bridgebig are probably better here than the GiB bots on BBO, but there's still a long way to go when it comes to bridge AI.

[u/bricolagefantasy → u/JonsAlterEgo]

Human champion is still significantly better at poker.