Professional Poker Players Beaten by a Robot

Computers have now beat professional human poker players. Bluffing was part of the robotic strategy, and this points to another demonstration of uncanny robotic intelligence pushing into the realm of human-like capability.

Robots are not self-aware at this stage, but each little bit of progress in the cognitive capabilities of machines points to this longer term possibility, one predicted by some of our leading scientists and, notably, by Ray Kurzweil in his books and many presentations on the "singularity." For the details on the poker bot, check the Reuters news story here.  Image courtesy of clipart.com.