Tag Archives: artificial intelligence

Human Pros Dominating Poker AI

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At the halfway point of the “Brains Vs. Artificial Intelligence” poker competition between software developed at Carnegie Mellon University and four of the world’s best players, the nod unquestionably goes to the humans.

The CMU computer program, Claudico, is playing a total of 80,000 hands of Heads-Up No-limit Texas Hold’em against Doug Polk, Dong Kim, Bjorn Li and Jason Les. And after 42,100 hands, the humans had a cumulative lead of 626,892 chips.

Source: Human Pros Dominating Poker AI – Robotics Trends

Looks like poker may be more difficult than chess and Jeopardy.

Carnegie Mellon Computer Faces Poker Pros in Epic No-Limit Texas Hold’Em Competition

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In a contest that echoes Deep Blue’s chess victory over Garry Kasparov and Watson beating two Jeopardy! Champions, computer poker software developed at Carnegie Mellon University will challenge four of the world’s best professional poker players in a “Brains Vs. Artificial Intelligence” competition beginning April 24 at Rivers Casino.

Over the course of two weeks, the CMU computer program, Claudico, will play 20,000 hands of Heads-Up No-limit Texas Hold’em with each of the four poker pros. The pros — Doug Polk, Dong Kim, Bjorn Li and Jason Les — will receive appearance fees derived from a prize purse of $100,000 donated by Microsoft Research and by Rivers Casino. The Carnegie Mellon scientists will compete for something more precious.

Source: Brains Vs. Artificial Intelligence: Carnegie Mellon Computer Faces Poker Pros in Epic No-Limit Texas Hold’Em Competition-Carnegie Mellon News – Carnegie Mellon University

“Computing the world’s strongest strategies for this game was a major achievement — with the algorithms having future applications in business, military, cybersecurity and medical arenas,” Sandholm said.

Microsoft demos breakthrough in real-time translated conversations

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Skype Translator results from decades of work by the industry, years of work by our researchers, and now is being developed jointly by the Skype and Microsoft Translator teams. The demo showed near real-time audio translation from English to German and vice versa, combining Skype voice and IM technologies with Microsoft Translator, and neural network-based speech recognition.

via Microsoft demos breakthrough in real-time translated conversations – The Official Microsoft Blog – Site Home – TechNet Blogs.

App Pays Attention to Phone’s Behavior to Spot New Malware

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Today, San Francisco-based Zimperium unveiled its zIPS Android app (the “IPS” stands for “intrusion prevention system”), which the company says uses machine learning to watch how your smartphone normally acts and can spot strange changes in its usage, enabling it to detect and prevent attacks, including those that may strike via unprotected Wi-Fi networks.

via App Pays Attention to Phone’s Behavior to Spot New Malware | MIT Technology Review.

Google to Buy Artificial Intelligence Startup DeepMind for $400M

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This is in large part an artificial intelligence talent acquisition, and Google CEO Larry Page led the deal himself, sources said. According to online bios, Hassabis in particular is quite a talent, a child prodigy in chess who was later called “probably the best games player in history” by the Mind Sports Olympiad.

via Exclusive: Google to Buy Artificial Intelligence Startup DeepMind for $400M | Re/code.

What If IBM’s Watson Dethroned the King of Search?

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Google continues to top the search game with the mission of “organiz[ing] the world’s information and mak[ing] it universally accessible and useful.” But now this mission is limited given how rapidly artificial intelligence has pushed the boundaries of what’s possible. It’s raised expectations of what we expect from computers. Even Siri has. In that mindset, Google is basically a gigantic database with rich access and retrieval mechanisms without the ability to create new knowledge.

via Google in Jeopardy: What If IBM’s Watson Dethroned the King of Search? | Wired Opinion | Wired.com.

In other words: Google can retrieve, but Watson can create.

I Flirt and Tweet. Follow Me at #Socialbot.

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For some, the goal is increasing popularity. Last month, computer scientists from the Federal University of Ouro Preto in Brazil revealed that Carina Santos, a much-followed journalist on Twitter, was actually not a real person but a bot that they had created. Based on the circulation of her tweets, a commonly used ranking site, Twitalyzer, ranked Ms. Santos as having more online “influence” than Oprah Winfrey.

via I Flirt and Tweet. Follow Me at #Socialbot. – NYTimes.com.

Socialbots are tapping into an ever-expanding universe of social media. Last year, the number of Twitter accounts topped 500 million. Some researchers estimate that only 35 percent of the average Twitter user’s followers are real people. In fact, more than half of Internet traffic already comes from nonhuman sources like bots or other types of algorithms. Within two years, about 10 percent of the activity occurring on social online networks will be masquerading bots, according to technology researchers.

NASA’S Mars Curiosity Debuts Autonomous Navigation

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The drive on Tuesday, the mission’s 376th Martian day, or “sol,” took Curiosity across a depression where ground-surface details had not been visible from the location where the previous drive ended. The drive included about 33 feet (10 meters) of autonomous navigation across hidden ground as part of a day’s total drive of about 141 feet (43 meters).

“We could see the area before the dip, and we told the rover where to drive on that part. We could see the ground on the other side, where we designated a point for the rover to end the drive, but Curiosity figured out for herself how to drive the uncharted part in between,” said JPL’s John Wright, a rover driver.

via NASA’S Mars Curiosity Debuts Autonomous Navigation – NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Grading Essays at College Level

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EdX, the nonprofit enterprise founded by Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to offer courses on the Internet, has just introduced such a system and will make its automated software available free on the Web to any institution that wants to use it. The software uses artificial intelligence to grade student essays and short written answers, freeing professors for other tasks.

via New Test for Computers – Grading Essays at College Level – NYTimes.com.

Two start-ups, Coursera and Udacity, recently founded by Stanford faculty members to create “massive open online courses,” or MOOCs, are also committed to automated assessment systems because of the value of instant feedback.