If You Find Yourself at a Poker Table With DeepStack, Walk Away

We recently reported on Libratus, a computer currently in a furious multi-day game of heads-up poker with four of the world’s best professional players. As of press time, Libratus had a handsome lead on three of its four opponents (live updates here).

But another AI machine out of Alberta, Canada — ominously named DeepStack — has beaten Libratus to the proverbial punch by. It just laid the smackdown on 33 professional poker players in 3,000-game matches using reasoning methods akin to our own.

Upon hearing news that a computer can defeat humans (and skilled ones) at a game of chance and intuition, you’d be forgiven for envisioning a Terminator-esque future. Then, given our collective capacity for decision-making in recent months, maybe handing the reins over to a rational, hyper-intelligent computer isn’t such a bad idea.