The program, which is called Polaris, will play four games of Poker Texas Hold’em. The opponents of the machine will be Phil Laak and Ali Eslami, who are both gamblers positioned in the top places of the high stakes cash poker circuit. The human players will get 5,000 dollars for every match they beat Polaris.

The money earned by the players is not much, in comparison to the prizes they are used to. However, Eslami commented that he had agreed to come to the western Canadian city and compete mainly because of his interest in artificial intelligence.

"I'm interested in being at the crest of this wave, it's like history unfolding. It's like watching the first launch of the space shuttle," Eslami said. "This is the beginning of the next revolution in computers, computers that can become human."

The man-machine poker game is been advertised as the highlight of the annual global conference of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence. More than 1,000 scientists from universities and corporations have already pre-registered for the event in the city of Alberta.