Libratus, the poker playing AI software defeated a line-up of elite poker players in heads-up NLHE in 2017. Now, they’re putting it to use in a whole different area – the United States military.
Tuomas Sandholm, a computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon University developed a poker playing AI software named Libratus (Latin for “balanced”). He also founded the start-up company Strategy Robot which has recently signed a $10 million contract with the US government. Sandholm’s new technology is being put into military use.
This may seem strange at first. However, Sandholm was saying from the very beginning of his project that his developments could be used in other fields, not just poker. He specifically mentioned negotiations, cyber security or medical treatment planning as areas where Libratus’ skills could be applicable. Military strategy wasn’t named at the time.
A Breakthrough in AI Research
What made Libratus’ achievements in poker very significant in artificial intelligence is the fact that poker is a so-called “imperfect information game”. This means that, unlike in chess or go, some information the opponent has is hidden from the player. In this case, it’s the other player’s hole cards. Many real life situations deal with hidden information.
Libratus’ Victory
In January 2017, Libratus played 120,000 hands of heads-up No-Limit Hold’em against a team of four poker players. The computer’s opponents were Dong Kim, Jason Les, Jimmy Chou and Daniel McAuley.
Libratus finished the match-up with 1,766,250 chips in profit – a margin that was determined to be “statistically significant” by the scientist. This is notable since two years earlier, in 2015, another line-up of cardplayers – featuring Doug Polk – took on an earlier version of the poker playing AI named Claudico. Then, the human side beat the computer by 732,000 chips. However, that difference was deemed to be too narrow to be conclusive by the researchers.
Later in 2017, the Carnegie University developers’ other poker AI also beat a team of four Chinese players. The bot finished 793,000 chips up over the course of 36,000 hands.
What’s Next for the Poker AI
Libratus will be used by the U.S. Department of Defense to model and analyze military strategies.
“It’s still far from real, but it’s a better proxy for the real world. All the same, the results will likely remain just one component of strategy planning and research because the world is much more complex and messy than the scenarios even the best AI technology can master” – Greg Allen from the think tank Center for a New American Security told Wired about the project.
All these developments come in the wake of former Defense Secretary General Mattis’ remarks in 2017 about how the United States military is lagging behind private companies when it comes to adopting new technologies. Since then, the Department of Defense started multiple programs to implement AI technology into army use. The poker bot Libratus and its developers are only part of one of them.
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