The Speculist has an article up titled “All In”. It talks about poker and how computers are beginning to be able be able to beat humans at Poker. At one time somebody somewhere thought that when computers began beating people at poker that would be the indication that computers are becoming intelligent.
It wasn’t very long ago though when Chess was the big deal. At least until Big Blue came along and beat that Russian chess master. Then all of a sudden the goal posts got picked up and move somewhere else. Apparently a computer beating people at Chess is only natural once chess is reduced to a mechanical process. So now once again we the goal post moving brigade is springing in to action to once again move the goal posts. Apparently Poker is also a mechanical process too.
So what exactly is the difference between a mechanical process and intelligence? Perhaps the ability to lie, distort, cheat and be generally dishonest is the difference. If true it’s a bit sad. Or perhaps intelligence really isn’t all that special. Perhaps what we call intelligence is just a whole lot of different mechanical processes that get swapped back and forth.
Either way, maybe I need to build a better poker bot and go make some money online.