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generic AI

You'd be forgiven for finding picayune exceptional about the latest defeat of an armory of poker champions by the computer algorithm Libratus in Pittsburgh last week. After all, in the last decade or ii, computers have made a addiction of burdensome board game heroes. And at offset blush, this appears to be but another iteration in that all-also-familiar story. Pare back a layer though, and the most contempo AI victory is as agonizing equally it is compelling. Allow'due south explore the compelling side of the equation earlier digging into the disturbing implications of the Libratus victory.

By now, many of us are familiar with the idea of AI helping out in healthcare. For the final year or and then IBM has been bludgeoning u.s. with Telly commercials near its Jeopardy-winning Watson platform, at present being put to apply to help oncologists diagnose and care for cancer. And while I wish to take nothing away from that achievement, Watson is a question answering system with no capacity for strategic thinking. The latter topic belongs to a class of situations more germane to the field of game theory. Game theory is usually tucked under the sub-genre of economics, for information technology deals with how entities make strategic decisions in the pursuit of cocky involvement. It'southward also the discipline from which the AI poker playing algorithm Libratus gets its smarts.

What does this have to do with health care and the flu? Think of illness as a game between strategic entities. Motion picture a virus as i player, a player with a certain gear up of attack and defense strategies. When the virus encounters your body, a game ensues, in which your body defends with its own strategies and hopefully prevails. This game has been going on a long time, with humans having simply a marginal ability to control the outcome. Our body's natural defenses take been developed in evolutionary time, and thus have a limited power to make on the wing adaptations.

Only what if nosotros could recruit computers to be our allies in this game against viruses? And what if the aforementioned reasoning ability that allowed Libratus to prevail over the all-time poker minds in the globe could tackle how to defeat a virus or a bacterial infection? This is in fact the subject of a compelling enquiry paper by Toumas Sandholm, the designer of the Libratus algorithm. In information technology, he explains at length how an AI algorithm could exist used for drug design and affliction prevention.

With only the health of the unabridged human race at pale, it'south difficult to imagine a rationale that would discourage u.s.a. from making utilize of such a strategic superpower. Now for the disturbing part of story, and the so-chosen legend of the sparrows recounted by Nick Bostrom in his singular work Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers and Strategies. In the preface to the book, he tells of a group of sparrows who recruit a infant owl to aid defend them against other predators, not realizing the owl might one twenty-four hour period abound up and devour them all. In Libratus, an algorithm that'south in essence a universal strategic game-playing machine, and is probable capable of besting humankind in any number of real-world strategic games, nosotros may take finally met our owl. And while the end of the story between ourselves and Libratus has all the same to be determined, prudence would surely propose we tread carefully.