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AIs vs Humans - Next Battle: Starcraft (businessinsider.com)
braindrainbahrain writes: Having conquered checkers, chess, and more recently Go, artificial intelligence research now looks at the next frontier: the popular real-time strategy game of StarCraft.
Blizzard Entertainment's president reached out to Google's DeepMind researchers last month, who are now describing StarCraft as "our likely next target". But many top StarCraft experts believe AIs will fail because "Unlike machines, humans are good at lying," reports the Wall Street Journal. An executive at the Korea e-Sports Association tells them "It's going to be hard for AI to bluff or to trick a human player."
One University of Alberta computer scientist David Churchill counters that âoeWhen the AI finds that the only way to win is to show strength, it will do that. If you want to call that bluffing, then the AI is capable of bluffing, but there's no machismo behind it." Unfortuantely, for five years Churchill has been running AI-vs-human StarCraft tournaments, and "So far, it hasn't even been close... Using a mouse and keyboard, the world's top players can issue 500 or more commands a minute," the Journal reports. But they add that now both Facebook and Microsoft are also working on small StarCraft AI projects.
Blizzard Entertainment's president reached out to Google's DeepMind researchers last month, who are now describing StarCraft as "our likely next target". But many top StarCraft experts believe AIs will fail because "Unlike machines, humans are good at lying," reports the Wall Street Journal. An executive at the Korea e-Sports Association tells them "It's going to be hard for AI to bluff or to trick a human player."
One University of Alberta computer scientist David Churchill counters that âoeWhen the AI finds that the only way to win is to show strength, it will do that. If you want to call that bluffing, then the AI is capable of bluffing, but there's no machismo behind it." Unfortuantely, for five years Churchill has been running AI-vs-human StarCraft tournaments, and "So far, it hasn't even been close... Using a mouse and keyboard, the world's top players can issue 500 or more commands a minute," the Journal reports. But they add that now both Facebook and Microsoft are also working on small StarCraft AI projects.
Through years of trial and error, Starcraft build orders (the order in which you build units and buildings) have been optimized to get you to a certain build state in the minimum amount of time. Build orders are queued, which means there's no human-induced delay. An AI will have little to no advantage there - it could gain a slight advantage with building placement to minimize unit travel times.
If you've watched any advanced Starcraft tournament games, the end result usually comes down to players' ability to micro while maintaining these build queues (an AI would probably win at those), or to bluffing. That's when you fake out an opponent by showing him a unit or building to make him think you're going for a certain build, but then you go for a different build. Your opponent scouts you, guesses what build you're going for, and modifies his build to counter yours. But you know you've been scouted so you change your build. Then when he's built up his army and encounters you again, he finds you've switched to a different build that his is ineffective against. And since different builds require different buildings and technology trees, it's too late to switch builds. Your opponent has to try to hold on with his inferior build as best as he can until he can get a new tech build up and running, all the while hoping your next tech shift won't counter that.
This is why in Starcraft it's not just important to scout, it's important to know how much of your base your opponent has scouted. You'll see advanced players do all sorts of crazy things like start constructing a building, then when their opponent's scout has left or been killed, they'll destroy the building and construct a completely different one. All the unit strength the AI can muster won't do it any good if the human has bluffed it into building ground combat units, while the human has built up a massive army of air units. And like the early computer chess games, once word gets out that an AI is vulnerable to a certain bluff, people will abuse it over and over.
The API is for the Starcraft Broodwar. If anyone knows of an API for the more recent Starcraft II, please post.