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DeepMind and Blizzard to release StarCraft II as an AI research environment

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Re: DeepMind and Blizzard to release StarCraft II as an AI research environment

#201

Post by Ph0X »

plg wrote: post #196

I understand the challenge, and the importance of the proof-of-principle. But again? Having done Atari games, then Go, at what point exactly does google deepmind start attacking some real world problems of consequence? Or maybe the answer is never, other companies are supposed to do the hard work? We only play games?

Machine learning is currently being used all over the place, in almost every single of Google's products.

Projects like these may have a "fun" goal, but while reaching towards that objective, a lot of new techniques and theory is developed, which then gets used in real products.

Systems like this are much easier to use as a playground and test in than the real world. But as they mention, the messiness and stateful nature of games like SC2 will bring a lot of innovation which will be very relevant to the real world.

Re: DeepMind and Blizzard to release StarCraft II as an AI research environment

#202

Post by wsetchell »

plg wrote: post #196

I understand the challenge, and the importance of the proof-of-principle. But again? Having done Atari games, then Go, at what point exactly does google deepmind start attacking some real world problems of consequence? Or maybe the answer is never, other companies are supposed to do the hard work? We only play games?

They are publicly working on medicine and energy problems. Games just happen to be a convenient place to do research.

https://deepmind.com/blog/putting-patients-heart-deepmind-he... https://deepmind.com/blog/applying-machine-learning-radiothe... https://deepmind.com/blog/deepmind-ai-reduces-google-data-ce...

Re: DeepMind and Blizzard to release StarCraft II as an AI research environment

#203

Post by tempestn »

somerandomness wrote: post #195
arcticfox wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. I think you'd have to limit that machine's APM to somewhere around the human limit, and make it choose which actions it wants to spend its time on. Otherwise the AI is eventually just going to absolutely destroy humans with micro, which is not remotely interesting. We've known transistors were faster than fingers for ages.

'Computers are capable of extremely fast control, but that doesn’t necessarily demonstrate intelligence, so agents must interact with the game within limits of human dexterity in terms of “Actions Per Minute”.'

Yes, this is definitely necessary for it to be interesting. Even so the AI will have some significant advantages over a human, in terms of being able to perfectly time events like injects, chrono boosts, etc., and watching every visible area of the minimap at once, so never being unnecessarily surprised by an attack. There are plenty of other examples. Nothing that's technically impossible for a human, but the ai will be perfect at those aspects as a given. For the human player to win, even limiting the machine's APM, they will need considerably superior strategy to make up for these differences.

Also, I'm not sure how they plan to limit APM, but if it's done in the naive way - the AI simply isn't allowed to surpass an APM of X, there will be plenty of optimizing it can do in terms of spending those actions more optimally than a human could (in some cases by performing fewer but more difficult actions to accomplish a task), as well as by remaining at peak APM continuously throughout an entire match. (Something that is a hallmark of great players, but like map awareness and macro timing, no human is able to keep up their peak speed indefinitely without any lapses.)

Re: DeepMind and Blizzard to release StarCraft II as an AI research environment

#205

Post by andbberger »

formula1 wrote: post #15

I suspect this will eventually lead to AI as a service for games. Rather than build a terrible AI that delays a game by months, approaching a company that can build a decent AI initially which gets better overtime would probably be ideal and create better experiences. Im curious if a startup can be built from this.

It can! That is exactly was Deepmind was started to be!

Re: DeepMind and Blizzard to release StarCraft II as an AI research environment

#206

Post by __s »

patmcguire wrote: post #160
lordnacho wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Otherwise the AI is eventually just going to absolutely destroy humans with micro, which is not remotely interesting. If you could issue as many orders as you wanted, what would the optimal strategy be?

There's almost certainly a bunch of timing-based micro with animations/game ticks/etc that a machine would find. For example, if a machine does a sequence of actions with sub-millisecond precision they can pop a unit into range, fire, and then pop back out again without being fired upon over and over. A lot of units would be rendered useless because it's balanced for humans. That means the units they counter would be…

Rush is a bit risky, it has to be invested in before enough scouting & will go up against well micro'd workers

Meta is still pretty fast, here's a SC1 AI finals: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LjSXj4cb_Yo

Re: DeepMind and Blizzard to release StarCraft II as an AI research environment

#207

Post by ygra »

endgame wrote: post #181
chrishare wrote: post #177

Very interesting stuff. Allowing researchers to build AIs that operate on either game state or visual data is a great step, IMO. Being able to limit actions-per-minute is also very wise. The excellent BWAPI library for Starcraft Broodwar that is referenced ( https://github.com/bwapi/bwapi ) provides game state - and was presumably used by Facebook to do their research earlier this year ( http://arxiv.org/abs/1609.029…

I wonder if this would have ever been built or released if bwapi wasn't a thing.

BWAPI asked in the past, I think, and got pointed to the game's EULA, which forbids it. It may be a different thing if Google asks. Especially with a somewhat more remarkable result (AlphaGo) than "just" a bunch of student AI experiments.

Re: DeepMind and Blizzard to release StarCraft II as an AI research environment

#208

Post by stouset »

tyrust wrote: post #156
lordnacho wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Otherwise the AI is eventually just going to absolutely destroy humans with micro, which is not remotely interesting. If you could issue as many orders as you wanted, what would the optimal strategy be?

I haven't played SC in a few years, but I think I can give a basic answer. There's would not be one optimal strategy, but many optimal strategies depending on the matchup between units. By taking advantages in differences in movement speed, attack range, attack projectile speed, and attack cooldown, a weaker group of units can potentially beat a stronger group. This is an older video that demonstrates some examples o…

Given that the game wasn't balanced for the possibility of infinite micro, I think it's highly probable that there's a globally optimal strategy.

Re: DeepMind and Blizzard to release StarCraft II as an AI research environment

#209

Post by rfrank »

theptip wrote: post #198
burke wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When Google’s AI can beat a human at StarCraft, it’s time to be very afraid. I don't actually agree with this. Unlike Go, StarCraft is not only a game of strategy; "micro" (micro-managed tactics, basically) also plays a big role. An AI is going to be able to issue a LOT more commands per second than even the most skilled humans, giving them a natural tactical advantage. Strategy is more difficult for an AI, but not…

Agreed that micro is a big advantage that AIs have held in previous AI vs. Human StarCraft contests, but the OP stated that the SC2 research environment will limit the AI to (elite) human APM levels, so that edge will be somewhat blunted. It's probably fair to question whether all actions are counted equally; I could believe that an AI could allocate their action budget more widely than a human can, even while hittin…

When I was playing SC2 frequently a few years ago, someone made a program that used genetic algorithms to construct build orders [1]. It would produce a build that technically worked, but in a lot of cases they weren't very viable.

I tried to make a blink stalker rush that'd be the rough equivalent of the build shown in the post liked above, just with the Protoss race in the game. The program would tell me to do things like make two extractors but put fewer than necessary probes on them, pull probes to extractors after X trips or at X time (can't remember which), things like that.

1. http://lbrandy.com/blog/2010/11/using-genetic-algorithms-to-...

Re: DeepMind and Blizzard to release StarCraft II as an AI research environment

#210

Post by __s »

nazka wrote: post #39
Savageman wrote: post #17

That's so cool! I wish they could start doing AI for team based competitive games like League of Legends where meta-play and team decision making is important. Is that too complicated to tackle yet?

Wow that's a very interesting idea. Several models working together. Plus you limit their method of communication by being able to use the chat only. Inventing and learning new languages made by other models!

Base64 encoding of information deltas. Best chatlogs ever. Restrict controls to being halted while typing & limit characeter input, could work
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