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Video Ristretto–Why a poker-playing AI should have designers looking for a new job - Web Directions

Video Ristretto–Why a poker-playing AI should have designers looking for a new job

John Allsopp

31st January, 2019

@johnallsopp

As we count down to the launch of the program for Design, our Product Design conference, taking place in Melbourne in April, we’re looking at some of the most interesting presentations from last year’s inaugural Design conference.

A 2013 report called ‘The Future of Employment: How susceptible are jobs to computerisation?’ left some occupations like soccer umpires feeling very vulnerable, and designers feeling very smug. However as a weird mix of content strategist, UX designer and former poker player my smug job-secure world was thrown upside down by the success of the Libratus poker AI in January of this year – the first to comprehensively beat multiple poker professionals over a series of four days.

If you’re wondering what poker has to do with design – the answer is a lot! In this talk Corey-Ann Joseph covered why the mix of probability, pattern-matching, human behaviour and context in poker strategy is a good model for design, how game theory in poker strategy might be used to ‘solve’ design (and possibly front-end dev!), where design AI efforts are at, and why we should stop treating AI like a digital butler and start imagining the tools of the future – even it if puts you out of a job.

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