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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

#251

Post by imh »

burke wrote: post #132
theptip wrote: post #122

This is pretty interesting. DeepMind’s last triumph (beating the best human Go players with AlphaGo) is impressive, but Go is a great fit for neural networks as they stand today; it’s stateless, so you can fully evaluate your position based on the state of the board at a given turn. That’s not a good fit for most real-world problems, where you have to remember something that happened in the past. E.g. the ‘fog of war…

> 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…

>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”.

They address that in the article. The context they're talking about is a bot beating a human with human-like dexterity limits in place.

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

#252

Post by saghm »

jdoliner wrote: post #242
saghm wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't it also possible that the strategies employed by top human players (e.g. deceit, having a gut feeling of what the opponent will do) could be less effective or even useless against an AI that doesn't think or act like a human player? Given how human-influenced the meta seems to be (at least, to my understanding), it seems plausible to me that this could be the case

It's quite possible that AIs will reveal completely new and different types of strategies. It's very unlikely that a concept as broad as deceit is going to be disproven though. I mean just thinking about what that would look like that would mean an AI discovered that it's actually better to show your opponent what you're doing rather than trying to mislead them. I have a hard time believing that could possible be the…

> It's very unlikely that a concept as broad as deceit is going to be disproven though. I mean just thinking about what that would look like that would mean an AI discovered that it's actually better to show your opponent what you're doing rather than trying to mislead them.

I meant it in the other direction; what if top players rely extensively on deceiving each other, but an AI is better able to predict its opponent's strategy than a human an isn't fooled? Again, I'm not saying this is necessarily the case, but I don't think it's implausible

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

#253

Post by simonebrunozzi »

This is a wasted opportunity for other strategy games to become the most played game on the planet.

I sometimes play strategy games and I always find the AI disappointing. Any game with a great AI would be my favorite for years. Heck, I would even pay a few dozen cents/hour to be able to compete against a proper AI.

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

#254

Post by skybrian »

seanwilson wrote: post #248
jdoliner wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Similar things weren't really said about Go or Chess. Both are perfect information games so, by definition, they can't involve deceit There's no need to try to detect subtle patterns in your opponents behavior because you have the entire game in front of you. That's not to say it's impossible but they do very much have their work cut out for them. It's an entirely different type of game that is much more difficult th…

> Similar things weren't really said about Go or Chess. Both are perfect information games so, by definition, they can't involve deceit I took deceit to mean tricking your opponent into thinking you were doing one thing when you were actually going to do another. You can't do that in Go or Chess? What I generally meant was maybe there's some really boring numerical number crunching or some simple mechanical algorithm…

Deceit boils down to assuming your opponent will misjudge the situation and make a mistake. In Chess or Go, computer players choose the best move assuming that the opponent won't make any mistakes (will never be fooled). There's no attempt to model a weaker opponent.

This is why computer players in Go tend to fall apart when they start losing. They don't see a path to victory against a perfect opponent, so all moves look the same.

A Go AI that can win from behind (given a handicap) might be an interesting challenge.

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

#255

Post by dsjoerg »

seanwilson wrote: post #232

Can a simulation of a complete Starcraft game be done quickly and assuming it can't doesn't that present problems to training an AI? For example, I'm guessing complete games of Go are order of magnitudes faster to simulate which makes it more practical to do things like getting AlphaGo to play against itself to train.

No, the fastest they can do right now is 8x. And yes, that will become a substantial bottleneck for AI training. I imagine they're going to have to have a large sim-farm for just running the games at 8x for training.

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

#256

Post by quantumpotato_ »

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…

I thought units attacked instantneously, there was end-lag but no startup?

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

#257

Post by quantumpotato_ »

rlayton2 wrote: post #162
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?

Infinite micro? I'd just send all drones/probes/SCVs directly to the human's base and kill their drones. The extra drones that the human has wouldn't be able to make up the difference.

humans have tried this -- 6 pooling to grandmasters: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/sc2-strategy/283755-grandmas...

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

#259

Post by quantumpotato_ »

formula1 wrote: post #176
cableshaft wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been to the Game Developer's Conference (once) before. Believe me, there have been startups that have provided A.I. services for years (it was kind of like the equivalent of the Havok engine for physics, you had to implement it into your game). I don't know how well used they are, but I remember them being mentioned at one of the lectures about A.I. that I attended. They had tables and swag, too. I don't remembe…

Thats really interesting. Im curious why they havent been more popular. Were they heavilly focused on fps's?

In previous years I've seen a lot of AI tech for action-games -- not neccessiarly FPS but shooter in a flat world with obstacles. Eg. marking objects for cover, marking positions to defend from etc.

Doesn't quite apply to a mario style game

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

#260

Post by halflings »

anchpop wrote: post #250
tempestn wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 wil…

Why not limit it to a certain number of keys typed per second, and a certain rate of moving the cursor? Maybe randomly wait 0-150 ms before sending a keypress to simulate human imprecision?

What "somerandomness" what pointing out is that nobody in this thread seems to have actually clicked on the link. DeepMind's article clearly states that they would limit the number of actions per minute (traditionally referred to as APM in esports) taken by their AI, yet people are still saying that this wouldn't be impressive because the machine has an unlimited number of actions.
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