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Humans Are Still Better Than AI at StarCraft (technologyreview.com)
29-year-old professional StarCraft player Song Byung-gu won 4-0 in the world's first contest between AI systems and professional human players, writes MIT Technology Review. An anonymous reader quotes their report:
One of the bots, dubbed "CherryPi," was developed by Facebook's AI research lab. The other bots came from Australia, Norway, and Korea. The contest took place at Sejong University in Seoul, Korea, which has hosted annual StarCraft AI competitions since 2010. Those previous events matched AI systems against each other (rather than against humans) and were organized, in part, by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), a U.S.-based engineering association.
Though it has not attracted as much global scrutiny as the March 2016 tournament between Alphabet's AlphaGo bot and a human Go champion, the recent Sejong competition is significant because the AI research community considers StarCraft a particularly difficult game for bots to master. Following AlphaGo's lopsided victory over Lee Sedol last year, and other AI achievements in chess and Atari video games, attention shifted to whether bots could also defeat humans in real-time games such as StarCraft... Executives at Alphabet's AI-focused division, DeepMind, have hinted that they are interested in organizing such a competition in the future.
The event wouldn't be much of a contest if it were held now. During the Sejong competition, Song, who ranks among the best StarCraft players globally, trounced all four bots involved in less than 27 minutes total. (The longest match lasted about 10 and a half minutes; the shortest, just four and a half.) That was true even though the bots were able to move much faster and control multiple tasks at the same time. At one point, the StarCraft bot developed in Norway was completing 19,000 actions per minute. Most professional StarCraft players can't make more than a few hundred moves a minute.
Though it has not attracted as much global scrutiny as the March 2016 tournament between Alphabet's AlphaGo bot and a human Go champion, the recent Sejong competition is significant because the AI research community considers StarCraft a particularly difficult game for bots to master. Following AlphaGo's lopsided victory over Lee Sedol last year, and other AI achievements in chess and Atari video games, attention shifted to whether bots could also defeat humans in real-time games such as StarCraft... Executives at Alphabet's AI-focused division, DeepMind, have hinted that they are interested in organizing such a competition in the future.
The event wouldn't be much of a contest if it were held now. During the Sejong competition, Song, who ranks among the best StarCraft players globally, trounced all four bots involved in less than 27 minutes total. (The longest match lasted about 10 and a half minutes; the shortest, just four and a half.) That was true even though the bots were able to move much faster and control multiple tasks at the same time. At one point, the StarCraft bot developed in Norway was completing 19,000 actions per minute. Most professional StarCraft players can't make more than a few hundred moves a minute.
It used to be news when software beat humans at yet another game. Now it is news when we find a game that humans can still win.
I'm genuinely wondering, what makes Starcraft stand out? Is it something particular about this game or is it just the most well known RTS game, and AIs have generally a problem playing RTS games well?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Unless we're talking about just clicking non-stop to make your groups move a few pixels at a time, I'm pretty sure I can't manage more than a dozen moves or so per minute.
#DeleteFacebook
Starcraft seems like a bad game for this
considering that so much of the high level play revolves around keeping your APM's up, and using the limited group selection keys to use them effectively.
It gives a bot an artificial advantage
Starcraft have the best "playability" (or "fluid gameplay") in multi player RTSs in this time, and by far, besides all the technical limitations of the time: the game was very playable even with lowend graphics card / CPU and dialup connection
At least some video game players will get to keep their jobs.
enjoy your humanity fas long as it lasts
At that point A.I. will completely own any non A.I. foe in star craft.
Because at that point properly configured A.I. will have been effectively playing for 200 years.
As with Go, it won't use existing strategies- humans will learn new strategies from playing against it.
And it won't cheat by playing 19,000 actions per turn.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Not all of the Atari games have been mastered yet by AI, either. Humans are still better at some of them.
There, I said it.
For some reason I am always amazed to find out there are people who can make enough money to live on by playing video games.
And yes, I'm old.
#DeleteChrome
Either AI does not have same access to inputs a human player does, or developers of the AI system are not competent enough at the game. Not really an AI problem, but insufficiency of data problem.
It's only a matter of time before the bots beats all humans.
Well Gramps, it's really the same thing as people who make a living playing soccer, or handegg.
Other people want to see it. Thus there's money in it to be made.
Yes, human players can still beat second tier AIs from Facebook and universities.
But if you turned the AlphaGo Zero team on it it would dominate it in a couple months max. AGZ learned, from scratch, how to beat every human on the planet at Go every single time in 3 days.
Go team "Smelly bags of mostly water!" Way to humiliate those dry silicates!
Why can't we go back to using jumpers to configure slot adapter cards? Why? I say!
but Koreans
Not many. You have to be pretty insanely good.
No gas needed to build pylons. Noob
I’d take offense at your comment, but it’s time for my nap. So maybe later, if I remember.
#DeleteChrome
personally I struggle with the idea of sports men and woman that make huge money playing as well. I have never understood peoples desire to watch others play games be it sports or computers, I love sport and computer games but never would I ever be bothered to watch someone play either (yes I know I am in the minority here).
I don't get this at all.
It's Texas. Wasn't everybody in the building carrying some sort of concealed firearm to defend themselves with, including the preacher?
No sig today...
Well Gramps, it's really the same thing as people who make a living playing soccer, or handegg.
Other people want to see it. Thus there's money in it to be made.
Other people want to see scat porn too. Doesn't mean it makes sense.
People make enough money to live on by throwing or kicking balls around, slapping rubber disks toward a net, punching each other in the face, etc.
People making money by "playing" games isn't exactly new. Of course just like physical sports, when you're playing at the professional level, its no longer just a game -- its a job and requires huge amounts of time and effort to maintain your skills at the peak level. Possibly even more effort than physical sports since in addition to maintaining their "fitness," players also have to continually keep up with changing game mechanics and metas as all major esports games are continually getting new units/avatars, balance tweaks, etc.
All the lions in the zoo agree.