What I Learned Playing Liar’s Poker Against AI
Yet another thing AI is better at.
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The most celebrated early successes of artificial intelligence were computers beating human champions in games such as chess and Go. Today we are all playing games against AI. The price you are offered on an item at Amazon, the chance of your home office deduction being accepted by the IRS, whether you get called for jury duty, what medical treatments you get — these and many other things are outcomes of contests against AI.
A new paper, titled “Outbidding and Outbluffing Elite Humans: Mastering Liar’s Poker via Self-Play and Reinforcement Learning,” applies a cutting-edge AI technique to the game of Liar’s Poker, testing it against some of the best human players who are also successful financial traders. (Disclosure: I know the authors and am featured in the paper.)