What: DeepMind‘s AI is now one of the world’s top StarCraft II players, making the game yet another esport that looks poised to fall under machine dominance.
According to the company, its AI, called AlphaStar, was the first in the world to enter the ranks of StarCraft II grandmasters. It was now better than 99.8% of the active players on the official game server Battle.net.
How: DeepMind trained the AI using general-purpose machine learning techniques like neural networks, imitation learning, self-play and multi-agent reinforcement learning.
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To level up the playing field, the AI learned to play under the same constraints that human players had. Those included looking at the game through a camera and limiting its actions per second, DeepMind explains in a paper published in Nature.
In the first sign of its advancing capabilities, earlier in 2019, the company announced that AlphaStar had been able to defeat two professional StarCraft II players.
DeepMind’s AI, AlphaGo, made headlines when it beat the world champion of Go.
So what: If all this sounds somewhat impractical, it is just the beginning of the AI journey. Companies are starting to use AI to solve difficult problems in medicine and science where implications will be much more far-reaching.
Watch here the DeepMind StarCraft II Demonstration
Now watch this awesome tennis-playing robot using deep learning
