An AI has finally beaten human poker champions

AI is a Martian playing poker,” says Sandholm. Libratus, concocting a strategy based on its knowledge of the rules of No Limit Texas Hold’em and the moves you can make in the game, began beating even the two champion players who had played Sandholm’s prior AI program, Clautico. It went like this: 27,000 hands in, Libratus had a $50,513 lead. AI has not only beat chess, Go, and Jeopardy champions, but now it has defeated some of the world's best poker players. And unlike chess or Go, playing poker involves unknown information like.

1. Feb 10, 2017 How an AI took down four world-class poker pros 20 days. One decisive victory. Chris Velazco, @chrisvelazco. February 10, 2017 Comments.
2. The AI Poker Champions. SciShow Fri, March 3, 2017 10:04pm URL: Embed: Artificial intelligence takes on Texas Hold ‘Em. Learn more about Artificial Intelligence.

An AI developed by Facebook and Carnegie Mellon researchers can reliably defeat a table of five professional poker champions (TechCrunch).

Multiplayer poker has long been a holy grail for AI research due to the complexity of reading human behavioural tells alongside raw probability calculations, but a key to the Pluribus AI's win was randomness, the team's paper says. By eliminating predictable patterns from its strategic choices, the AI won by simply not giving its opponents a handle on its playstyle, rather than by exploiting their weaknesses.

Some Google Assistant recordings are listened to – and leaked – by humans

Human workers listen to and transcribe Google Assistant voice queries, but also some random conversations picked up when a Google Home, Android or ChromeOS device is inadvertently triggered, in some cases including intimate moments and detailed personal information (Ars Technica).

Like its voice assistant rivals, Google depends on humans to train its Assistant AI to understand human speech in a variety of languages – one of many concerns for the privacy-conscious. A recent leak of Flemish recordings has prompted Google to publish a blog post in which it clarifies its transcription process for AI training and promises to improve security to prevent leaks of any more customer recordings.

Hayabusa2 has collected a sample from Ryugu's interior

JAXA's Hayabusa2 spacecraft has successfully touched down on the asteroid Ryugu and appears to have collected the material that it shot out of the asteroid's interior with a 2 kilo copper bullet earlier this year (Science). These subsurface samples will form part of the sample collection that Hayabusa2 will bring back to Earth in December 2020.

There's no way that France's new eco-flight tax will work (yet)

France is the latest country to introduce an “eco-tax”, which the government estimates will raise €180 million (£161m) a year from flights taking off and landing at the country’s airports (WIRED). The tax, which peaks at just €18 (£16) for long business-class flights, will be used to generate revenue that will be spent on other forms of transport like trains, the transport ministry said. But experts say that, for now, it's primarily a symbolic first step to get travellers used to a carbon tax on flights, and that it'll have to be raised before it has any real impact on behaviour.

Protesters are defending one of Germany's most ancient forests against coal mining

Germany is one of Europe's biggest coal burners and it's in the process of tearing up the ancient Hambach Forest to get to the vast coalfield that lies beneath the trees (BBC News). The German state has been ripping up the forest for four decades, but environmentalists taking radical action to counter these deforestation efforts have drawn increasing attention to the fate of one of Europe's oldest woodlands.

The return of Netflix's Stranger Things

Ai Poker Champion Gg

Listen now, subscribe via RSS or add to iTunes.