Talk politics.

AI defeated humans at StarCraft II. Here’s why it matters.



Sharing this because of how significantly this milestone will influence human history. Don't let the fact that this all happened in a video game marginalize the gravity of the situation.

Neurologists have conducted brain scans on professional Starcraft players to see why and how they think so different from everybody else. At any given time, only 700 people, out of millions, are considered Grandmasters. The United States Air Force uses Starcraft for advanced officer training. It's considered in the industry to be one of the most important, most complex and balanced strategy games in video game history.

The in-game AI is tough as hell, but I once defeated seven separate AI players that worked together as a team, and statistically speaking, I rank in the bottom of the top half of over 2 million players. I've won almost 3000 games of Starcraft in my lifetime, but I could NEVER beat a Grandmaster.

But a computer program, never coded by humans to play Starcraft but designed to create its own code by watching and mimicking shit (think a toddler) just beat two of the best players, five times in a row, each.

The entire article is provided below, but here's a summation of the article, along with some exposition regarding this event:

3 years ago Google amd Blizzard entertainment announced they were attempting to create an AI that can play Starcraft as well as Grandmaster (to which only 700 people in the world can claim this title) with the exact same human limitations.

Prior to this, in-game AI had the advantage of seeing the entire battlefield, while issuing commands to innumerable units simultaneously. This new experimental AI would be limited to seeing the map in the same way a human sees it, and would only be able to issue 300 commands per minute (or Actions Per Minute). 300 APM is the average for a Grandmaster. In comparison, my average APM is 106.

Last week, Deepmind defeated two separate Grandmasters five times in a row, each. Statistically speaking, a win record like that is attainable only if you were born in South Korea, are under the age of 24 and have been paid to play it like a fulltime job for over six years.

I'm only half-joking -- almost every world champion comes from South Korea. South Korea has TV channels dedicated to Starcraft - they're the reason Starcraft players went professional, and Starcraft is considered the Godfather of e-sports because of it. Without Starcraft, there would be no MLG.

Deepmind wasn't programmed to play Starcraft however. Instead, it was given replays to analyze, and practiced the same actions in-game that the human players executed against copies of itself (or agents), until it created its own algorithms to execute in-game. Just like a 16-year old who just got his first professional endorsement.

Technically speaking, from the perspective of a computer, Deepmind needed to play a million games over the course of a hundred years to become an undisputed Grandmaster as Protoss - one of three unique factions in the game.

In human terms, however, Deepmind mastered one of the three distinctly unique alien races in only two weeks. To learn the Zerg and Terran races would require the same time and effort on Deepmind's part, for each race. It could potentially win the World Championship forever by next month.

What makes Deepmind's performance in Starcraft more surreal than Gary Kasparov losing to a computer in chess? If Starcraft were chess, then chess would be go-fish.

A.I. has always been good at symmetrical, turn-based strategy games where the players each have complete information regarding the match and equal resources or pieces (Chess, Go, Risk, etc.) But AI always faltered at real-time strategy games where the players needed to aggresively seek information about the opponent's actions, and didn't need to "wait their turn."

This is mainly because, in Real-Time Strategy games, the layout of the game board could be manipulated at any time due to the human opponent while the AI calculated its possible moves. If Gary Kasparov was allowed to take a turn while his computer opponent put its virtual hand on a chess piece, the computer would essentially panic and inevitably lose. It wouldn't move because it would be too busy analyzing the board after every move Kasparov made.

But now, as depicted in Youtube videos of Deepmind's performance against one of the best clans in Starcraft -- TeamLiquid -- Deepmind excelled at micromanaging combat situations and maintaining map control. I've seen world champions panic during a battle, and their APM spikes to 500 while they focus on one or two battles and their economy. Deepmind's APM actually dropped to below 100, while attacking on five separate fronts, and stealing an expansion location for additional economy, with the same physical (not neurological) handicaps as a human.

Starcraft is considered by far one of the most complex yet balanced RTS' in video game history -- this is why Starcraft is used by the United States Air Force in advanced officer training.

This is a huge milestone in Artificial Intelligence. I respect this advancement about as much as I fear it.

To put my fear and respect in perspective, I recently read a book where an AI that (spoiler alert) lowkey holds an entire US state hostage, assassinates a bunch of high-profile people, and convinces the mass populace that it doesn't even exist. That story is very relevant to our time because, in real life, the very same people who are developing Deepmind gave their word on-the-record ten years ago that they will accept any decision that real AI comes up with regarding the very existence of human beings, even if it decides we should be extinct. I am not making this up folks... those are the words of Ray Kurzweil, the de facto "Prophet of technological advancement" who was hired by Google shortly after he said those words.

Friends and loved ones, I am privileged, and at the same time ominously cursed, by the fact that I just watched a toddler version of Skynet own two world-renowned strategic masterminds at their own game. No pun intended. ;-)