Libratus, is a bot made of Artificial Intelligence (AI) developed to win every play in poker, and recently has been hired by the Pentagon for 10 million dollars.
This robot became very popular a couple of years ago because it managed to defeat four expert players from the 'no limit Texas Hold'em'.
The contract with the US Army lasts for two years, so, during the next two years, he will work for the US Army.
The system faced in a championship of 20 days to four humans ... and the result could not be more conclusive. After 10 days, he already accumulated more than $ 670,000 - and that's considering that the first few days accumulated gains and losses in equal parts. However, little by little he began to learn from his competitors and that was when he won the victory.
Keep in mind that for an AI, poker is more difficult to learn than chess or 'go', since there is incomplete information: each player sees his cards, but not those of his rivals, so he does not It has all the necessary information to make decisions. Therefore, being a game of skill and not mathematics, things such as body language or deception come into play.
Well, at the beginning of last year, Tuomas Sandholm, one of the creators of this AI capable of winning poker, founded a startup called Strategy Robot to adapt this technology to governmental purposes, such as the development of military strategies and planning.
And it seems that he has achieved it. Libratus will now work within the Defense Innovation Unit, created in 2015 for the development and incorporation of new military technologies.
Specifically, the main challenge for Sandholm at this time will be related to mobility, because when he defeated those poker players he worked thanks to a supercomputer, something that is not especially easy to transport.
Of course, hopefully this partnership did not end up like the Google and Project Maven projects.
