[shusaku]

It seems like an AI can now be trained just by encoding the rules and having it play itself (no database required to bootstrap). This should be great for variants (assuming enough processing power) since you will always be able to find a partner.

[toxik]

I think paying an AI won’t be very satisfying, though. You can’t do sneaky things to a player that is essentially statistics on steroids - even if you pull it off, it’s likely not that you were sneaky that gave you the win, you just found a pattern it didn’t know. It’s dead, cold, calculating. Beating a human will always be more interesting, because you can talk about it, “ha, you could’ve mated me then in two moves,” etc.

Humans will never be replaced by anything less than humans.

[chadcmulligan]

Yes, until artificial gloating I suppose - the next big thing :-)