Carnegie Mellon University's Libratus artificial intelligence, which scored an historic victory over four human poker pros earlier this year, has won the HPCwire Reader's Choice Award for Best Use of AI. The award from the supercomputing trade publication was announced at the 2017 International Conference for High Performance Computing, Networking, Storage and Analysis (SC17) in Denver, Colo.

Libratus, developed by Computer Science Profesor Tuomas Sandholm and Ph.D. student Noam Brown, used the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center's Bridges computer to compute its strategy both before and during the "Brains vs. Artificial Intelligence: Upping the Ante" competition this past January at Rivers Casino. The AI defeated four leading poker pros during the course of 120,000 hands of Heads-Up, No-Limit Texas Hold'em, leading them by a collective $1.8 million in chips by the end of the 20-day event.

This milestone in AI has implications for any realm in which information is incomplete and opponents sow misinformation, including business negotiation, military strategy, cybersecurity and medical treatment planning.

The award was one of five that the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center received this year, its best-ever showing. The other awards were Reader's Choice Awards for PSC Interim Director Nick Nystrom for Outstanding Leadership in HPC and for Best Use of HPC in Energy. The PSC picked up two Editor's Choice Awards — Best Use of High-Performance Data Analytics and Best Use of HPC in Life Sciences.

The Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center is a joint effort of Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh.