StarCraft 2: Google DeepMind AlphaStar (A.I.) vs Pro Gamer!

Google DeepMind AlphaStar versus professional gamer in StarCraft 2.

This is such a cool project that Google is working on. This self taught AI called AlphaStar from the Google DeepMind team is now advanced enough to face and beat professional StarCraft 2 gamers.

StarCraft 2 is a military science fiction real-time strategy video game developed and released by Blizzard Entertainment.

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[RICH_FROM_WORK]

They trained an AI to control an army of killer robots. This is fine

[nqh]

He needs to learn to trash-talk his opponent too, then he will be complete.

[ilanouh]

"After 1000 years of games, AlphaStar has determined that nexus recall rush and cannon rush are the best strategies. Also it started trashtalking. We renamed it AlphaMermaid"

[abathur]

Concern expressed.
Development of terran artificial intelligence improving. Adapting.
Must prepare swarm. Improve intelligence of zerg organisms.
Must succeed.

[hudsoncaceres]

When talking about the AI’s apm, you need to take into consideration the possibility that each action being performed is more valuable than a humans average action. When a human has 600 apm, most actions are probably repetitive and unnecessary, but being performed to avoid missing an action. The AI, though, is probably capable of performing each action with only one command. That would hypothetically make an AI with 200 apm the equivalent of a human with 1000 or something.

[ПетърПетров-иы]

Probe overproduction answer:

- reserves in case of raids, as shown in the game.
- Later transiotion to another base.

[lelouchvibritannia]

The thumbnail says man vs machine

I thought this was gonna be Innovation vs someone else

[HotSoupYum]

To Humans, this is an RTS. To AlphaStar, this is a turn based game.

[MrFarkasOfficial]

You merely adopted the Starcraft 2. I was born in it. Moulded by it.

[ArcadeFL]

Let AlphaStar play against Has and he will probably break the whole AI with his confusing strategies :D

[sab]

Your new mission: cast every AlphaStar game that you find. *All Of Them*

[CalculusDaddy]

20:06 "Are we going to have Ai vs Ai tournaments?"
They have these tournaments in chess. Anyone can develop a chess engine to bring to the tournament. It's like a great robot fight, but digital. It's quite the engineering affair...

[MarkfrmCanada]

Not to knock SC2, but imagine being forced to play it for 200 years! "Why is the AI trying to exterminate humanity?"

[Bloodyaugust]

I'm so glad you did this! As a developer who frequently works with different types of Machine Learning, I've been keeping real close tabs on this project. When I saw they uploaded the replays, my immediate thought was "this needs more Lowko"... Thanks for reading my mind! ;)

[cccpredarmy]

Immortal: best unit to deal against mechanized enemies
AlphaStar: I'm gonna end this man's whole career

[lelouchvibritannia]

Deepmind, pls don't make a terran AI

Just fix Innovation. It will save money

[wei]

don't forget the primary purpose of the wall in from the very beginning is to prevent zergling rushes. so perhaps the AI sees little value in that since there is no zergs.

[lelouchvibritannia]

Beastyqt: This is Masters 3
Winter: This is terrifying
Lowko: This control is impressive

[zHqqrdz]

I work with AI and machine learning a lot, and there are a lot of misconceptions here.


When you as a human see that the AI doesn't do something that most humans do, it doesn't "think" that this action is bad for X or Y reason, it always acts on "better" plays. You also have to put in context that it's an AI, not a human. So it's not subjected to the same caveats.


To give an extreme but simple example, a progamer could choose to always use a rush strategy against a bad player, because as a human it's hard to react well and fast when under pressure. But psychological pressure does not exist for an AI. So unless a rush is actually pressuring in terms of micro and macro even if the opponent reacts perfectly, it'll be more worth it to do something else.


Also making it play against a human actually puts it at a disadvantage, because it's never played against this type of opponent. Self learning AIs are by definition learning by playing against themselves (often different versions of themselves), or other AIs to play crazy amount of games and generate experience very fast. So even though it may appear as "oh it's a bot that's played billions of games, it cannot lose against a human player", it's actually a very hard problem for the AI to solve. It'd be much easier for it to play the perfect AI that it is itself.


Finally, these little details about sending X probes to minerals and Y probes to gas to get "perfect" amount in the early game is a typical human thought. We love to get very tiny aspects of a problem solved perfectly so that we can focus on everything else. But the AI solves the most valuable problems first to get the highest rate of winning possible, so it could definitely be possible that this aspect of sending X probes to minerals and Y probes to gas at minute Z is at the very end of the solving tree priorities for the AI. (For example, when trying to make a 2nd base the AI saw a huge improvement in winrate, so that became very important to it, while making perfect micro-macro at the beginning might not have improved its winrate by much).

[JohnSmith-txmz]

So trying to beat Alpha Star is like trying to kill the six paths of pain as the ramen guy.