[jukofyork]

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I think it's inevitable that they eventually will be able to beat any human at all forms of poker. In fact I'm fairly sure that eventually they will be able to beat humans at all forms of board games, card games, and even computer strategy games (which are much harder for AI due to their complexity).

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Whereas I stand by my prediction that computers will never be able to beat a table of good human players in no-limit poker.

Part of this is definitional. If the computer got sensory input from the humans, say by hooking each player up to a lie detector or using more advanced physiological sensors, the situation would be different. But I would argue that's no longer poker.

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I was only considering the abstract version of poker played out in a digital environment (much as today's online poker), but I'm not convinced adding sensory inputs will make it much harder for computers in the future and it could even make it easier. Machine Vision systems are only in their infancy and we've only fairy recently had hardware good enough to deal with the shear amount of data generated. It may turn out that future vision systems can watch all players at the table simultaneously at ridiculous frame-rates and be able to do things with the data we humans could only dream of. That's even ignoring the fact that computers may be able to add extra senses to their arsenal such as detecting tiny infra-red, micro-electric and/or chemical changes in the air (whether you would allow them to use these "extra senses" is another matter though).

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Also, some day someone might learn how to grow a human brain in a jar, and train it to play poker. I'm talking about something resembling today's computers, but faster and with cleverer programs, working with inputs of the cards and bets only.

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If computers keep on advancing it may be possible to completely model a human brain using the very same Von Neumann architecture as today's computers use, but I doubt very much this would be necessary and by the time we ever have that level of understanding we will most likely be able to design vastly better machine learning algorithms than were designed by evolution alone.

I also don't think for one second it will be a machine "programmed" in the current sense of the word, and I'm pretty sure that even if every poker player worked together they couldn't "program" a gigantic expert system to play world class poker.

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Playing a table is different from playing a hand heads-up. If all the other players conspire against you, you can't win however good you are. I think game theoretic play based on heads-up principles will naturally push all the other players to play to your disadvantage.

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I don't think the fact that other's can conspire against you is any different for a computer and this could just as easily be faced by a human. The fact that it complicates finding a game theoretic solution isn't a problem if presented with sufficient computing power. Even with the current state of algorithmic knowledge an algorithm could be created to find (near) "optimal" solutions to the n-player game by using some kind of evolutionary approach and/or fictitious play. If quantum computers ever arise then this may be possible much sooner than simply waiting for the current architecture to advance.

Juk [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]