PokerStars has always tried to maintain its place as one of the biggest innovators in the online poker world. A move by the company recently to delve into the science regarding artificial intelligence (AI) has some questioning the intents of the company, however.
According to Michael Josem at Pokernews.com, PokerStars has been very interested in developing artificial intelligence in its own computer laboratories. These efforts seem to have become more accelerated of late as PokerStars sent out a call for hiring staff to “create a fully flexible AI agent.” What isn’t stated by PokerStars is the reasons that hiring such staff would be important to an online poker (or gaming, if it is The Stars Group making the action) and its operations.
Josem reports that there are different levels of jobs being offered by PokerStars. Through such job titles as “Poker AI Research Engineer” and “Graduate Poker AI Research,” it is obvious that the company is examining something regarding the usage of AI and poker. The actual quote used by Josem is that the staff will take on the challenge of “researching the application of AI in one of the largest gaming communities in the world.”
That the world’s largest online gaming company is considering creating its own operational AI – and that would be the only logical explanation for such actions by PokerStars – should make players on the site uncomfortable. Artificial intelligence – the ability for a computer program to think and operate on its own independent of information from human beings – is arguably either the best thing that can happen to the poker playing community or the first stage of destruction of that gathering. A look at current usages for AI demonstrate each side of the argument.
“Libratus” is one of the forms of AI that has some in the online poker community concerned. Created by Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, “Libratus” is a form of AI that was taught the basics of the game and, after the basics have been loaded in, is able to compute the best play to make. Earlier this year, “Libratus” defeated four excellent poker professionals in Heads Up No Limit Texas Hold’em. Over a span of 20 days and 120,000 hands, “Libratus” waxed the pros – Jason Les, Jimmy Chou, Daniel McAuley and Dong Kim – for more than $1.7 million in “winnings.”
That victory came only a bit more than a year after a previous AI from CMU played to a draw with humans. “Libratus’” predecessor “Claudico” played 80,000 hands against another group of four poker professionals (Les and Kim were constants, joined by Doug Polk and Bjorn Li). In that match, three of the four pros (Les was the only exception) earned a slight edge on “Claudico,” but that was deemed to be insignificant in the overall scheme.
Other areas where AI has proven to be dominant are in the game of checkers and GO and with “Watson,” the AI created by IBM to play the game of Jeopardy!
The usage of artificial intelligence would be a tremendous leap forward in the civilized world. Having machines programmed with such abilities would allow them to take more dangerous jobs that would endanger human life. It would open the possibilities of things like the replicants in Blade Runner 2049 or its namesake predecessor or such robots that appeared in the film I, Robot.
There is the other side of the equation, however. Such singularity – an at-this-moment hypothetical time when artificial intelligence and other technologies have become so advanced that humanity undergoes a dramatic and irreversible change or perhaps even subjugation – could have unfortunate outcomes. For example, the Terminator films were based on the idea that robots would eventually begin to think for themselves and, in what they would deem a logical conclusion, think the extermination of humanity is an ideal situation.
In the case of PokerStars, it doesn’t look like terminating all of humanity is the desire. In fact, PokerStars doesn’t really say what they are planning with the usage of AI. According to Josem, the personnel are being hired as a part of their “innovation” team (re: new products) rather than their “Game Integrity” (re: customer protection from “bots) team. Is it possible that PokerStars would create their own “bots” that, in theory, would be separate from the playing side of the spectrum and more for training, but the question would exist why have the potential for wrongdoing in place (remember how well this worked for “God Mode”)?
For now, there are no pieces of AI running around on the PokerStars platform causing havoc for humans. But, if the rumors are true in the case of PokerStars, could such an AI be out of the question in the future?
