Man vs Machine: Three Times AI Has Won Against Humans in Gaming Competitions

“Man vs Machine: Who wins?” has been one of the greatest debates in history. The debate has found itself in the gaming arena with AI programs challenging humans to games such as chess, checkers, and the board game, Go.

While the buzz around AI might have started recently, technology has been around for quite some time, even as early as the 1990s. Year after year, the technology continues to get better, and even now, with the power of generative AI, more is yet to come. Artificial Intelligence has played a key role in the gaming industry, helping developers come up with immersive and personalized games with deep storylines.

In the world of online casinos, AI is often used to provide a tailored gaming experience and even offer customer support chatbots. When it comes to the competitive aspect of the games, AI continues to dominate.

An AI called Libratus, developed by computer scientists at Carnegie Mellon University, beat four pro Texas Hold’em poker players to win the top prize. Another popular game in online casinos is blackjack, though we are yet to see an AI compete in this game. However, you can leverage AI tools to enhance your blackjack strategies and potentially maximize your earnings. By learning and applying these AI-driven strategies, you can improve your gameplay at the best blackjack casinos, even as we wait to see the first-ever AI to compete directly in blackjack.

Still, AI has shown its prowess and capabilities in games outside casinos, some going way back to the 90s.

1. IBM’s Deep Blue Wins Against Chess Grandmaster Garry Kasparov

In 1996, history was made when IBM’s Deep Blue supercomputer became the first-ever computer to win against a reigning world chess champion. Garry Kasparov played against Deep Blue, and the AI won the first match. However, they played a couple more games, and the result ended as 4-2 in favor of Garry.

Noticing what needed to be improved, IBM went back to work and sharpened Deep Blue’s skills in chess end games and requested another duel with the chess master. In May 1997, at the Equitable Center, New York, Deep Blue competed once more against Garry, and this time, the supercomputer only lost 1 game, drawing 3 and winning 2, making it the undisputed champ.

2. The Ultimate Checkers Program That Can’t Be Beaten

Checkers is a popular board game that dates as far back as 3,000 B.C., and one can say it now has its ultimate master. The story of how this came to be is quite hilarious, and it starts with a computer scientist obsessed with checkers but who’s a self-described “awful” player. Dr. Jonathan Schaeffer started the Chinook project together with his colleagues at the University of Alberta to test the processing and memory capabilities of computers and turn it into a checkers expert.

The project started in 1989, and in 1990, Chinook earned the right to compete in the championship. In 1992, the AI lost in the championship match but later came to win in 1994, becoming the first computer program to win a human world championship in any game. The project was then retired in 1997, but Schaeffer being the checkers enthusiast he is, revived it in 2001. After running the program through billions of scenarios, Chinook became unbeatable, and the best a human player can get is a draw.

3. IBM’s Watson Computer Wins A $1 Million Prize in Jeopardy Beating Champions

If you are a big fan of game shows, you must have watched Jeopardy! A thrilling question-and-answer show that has been around for decades. Even though there’s the current Jeopardy Masters show, let’s take you back to 2011 when the unimaginable happened. One of the contestants was a supercomputer, or AI called Watson, who won the grand prize.

In what can only be termed the best game show script ever, Jeopardy hosted three top contestants — two human champions and one computer. The two humans were Ken Jennings, who won a record of 74 consecutive games from 2004-05, and Brad Rutter, who had won a total of over $3 million in prize money. The computer was Watson, a supercomputer with a database that can be compared to reading over 200 million pages of content.

Unlike chess or checkers, which are mathematical and well-defined, Jeopardy was a different ball game, with open-ended questions and subtleties of language, including riddles and puns. The competition was tight, but Watson emerged as the winner, depicting human-thinking capabilities and winning $1 million donated to charities.

Personal Experiment For You

If you want to test. Try to record an audio of yourself like a podcast or some speech and then check how much time it takes for you to record the whole script.

Once you do it, try some of the best free text-to-speech tools like the on4t text-to-speech tool, and then just put the script that you have used to record yourself.

Our Winner Is…

Maybe it’s time to accept that AI is slowly but surely becoming better than we are. From the examples given in the article, the dates go back to 2011 and even 1997, when the term Artificial Intelligence (AI) wasn’t as popular, and people referred to it as a program, but still, it was superior.

So, what about now? When companies are investing billions of dollars to make it even more intelligent. Soon, we will see more AI applications in gaming tournaments, and if your guess is as good as mine, you will know where to put your money.