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DeepMind StarCraft II Demonstration [video]

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Re: DeepMind StarCraft II Demonstration [video]

#81

Post by kzrdude »

cjbprime wrote: post #58
Veelox wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to a site [1] Mana is 19th. While that is probably overly high, I would say he is easily in the top 200 Starcraft 2 players in the world. I would also say that to get from beating a top 200 human to beating all humans is much smaller than from scratch to beating a top 200 human. [1] https://www.gosugamers.net/starcraft2/rankings

Aligulac's had Mana around 50th in the world consistently for a recent 12 month period, so I think that's a more reasonable claim, and I'm happy saying that the 50th best player is a "top player in the world".

Is Mana the best Protoss player in Europe?

Re: DeepMind StarCraft II Demonstration [video]

#82

Post by devilmoon »

codeflo wrote: post #71
devilmoon wrote: post #53

I'm not proficient in Starcraft, but if they have to make Pros play against 5 different agents for a Bo5 is it because the same agent would merely repeat the same game overall and the human player would be able to see through its strategy? AFAIK at least for Go/Chess DeepMind wasn't handpicking agents to send against human opponents, but it was simply a trained agent who would try its own strategy and respond to the…

There's a rock-paper-scissors like aspect to StarCraft openings where you essentially have to randomize your strategy so that the other player can't blindly counter what you're doing. I assume each of their agents learns one particular strategy; in that case, they could simply create a "meta-agent" that acts like one of their trained agents at random (probably using some weighted distribution).

Well, why wasn't this implemented then? For an hyped and live streamed event I'm expecting to see something that blows me away, not hand picked agents still in embryonic stage

Re: DeepMind StarCraft II Demonstration [video]

#83

Post by dllu »

asar wrote: post #67

The live exhibition match definitely made Alphastar look like a machine making the decisions, not a super smart being. The micro was obviously impressive but that should also be the easiest part to master. I share the sentiment that DeepMind is hosting big events to paint a very one-sided picture of man vs machine, so this last win of mana feels oddly satisfying.

It is a little disappointing that Mana's win was achieved in part by simply exploiting Alphastar's poor response to the immortal drops by doing it over and over again. In contrast, Lee Sedol's win versus AlphaGo involved profound strategy and a particularly inspired "divine move" that humans get to brag about.

Re: DeepMind StarCraft II Demonstration [video]

#84

Post by cjbprime »

kzrdude wrote: post #81
cjbprime wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aligulac's had Mana around 50th in the world consistently for a recent 12 month period, so I think that's a more reasonable claim, and I'm happy saying that the 50th best player is a "top player in the world".

Is Mana the best Protoss player in Europe?

Second-best, probably. Best Protoss players, approximate from older Aligulac data:

1. Classic (Korea)

2. Zest (Korea)

3. herO (Korea)

4. Stats (Korea)

5. Neeb (USA)

6. Dear (Korea)

7. Trap (Korea)

8. ShoWTimE (Europe)

9. MaNa (Europe)

Re: DeepMind StarCraft II Demonstration [video]

#85

Post by aurelwu »

kzrdude wrote: post #81
cjbprime wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aligulac's had Mana around 50th in the world consistently for a recent 12 month period, so I think that's a more reasonable claim, and I'm happy saying that the 50th best player is a "top player in the world".

Is Mana the best Protoss player in Europe?

he had the 2nd most WCS points in 2018 of all european protoss with Showtime having vastly more: https://liquipedia.net/starcraft2/Main_Page

Re: DeepMind StarCraft II Demonstration [video]

#86

Post by larkeith »

I only had a chance to see the live game, but very impressive stuff, especially in the early game! However, it does seem to have the same issue as all other AIs in that it is inflexible and fails to adapt to unusual situations - As the commentators pointed out, it kept building oracles when being constantly harassed by an immortal drop, whereas any amateur player would be able to react more effectively by building a single phoenix.

It also fails to recognize patterns - MaNa was able to find and repeatedly abuse a border between two strategies: whenever he was not actively dropping, AlphaStar would attempt to move out and push, then immediately retreat to defend when being dropped, whereas a human would recognize the reoccurring theme and either keep pushing or stay in their base.

While not groundbreaking, still exciting to see an AI that can hold its ground against pro players - it certainly demonstrates the potential of machine learning for constrained problem spaces.

Re: DeepMind StarCraft II Demonstration [video]

#87

Post by darkmighty »

I was left unconvinced (reproducing my comment from reddit):

AlphaStar had 0 cost to sense the entire map simultaneously, and when they introduced the attention/context switching cost (camera control) in the showmatch, it lost.

Also very notable for me in the showmatch was it seemed completely blind and exploitable to some strategies. When AlphaGo played top players, it made a few mistakes, but there wasn't anything obvious that it just couldn't see. Here it just couldn't think of making phoenixes vs. the warp prism harass which shows strategically it isn't near human level yet. It could clearly be exploited by back and forth harassment too (probably has to do with the limited memory those networks have).

Finally, DeepMind were just emphasizing average APM, when it clearly reached totally superhuman levels at times -- even a top professional can't execute 900+ flawless apm in a battle that we saw.

David Silver was clearly expecting the showmatch to be totally one sided (hence his speech that 'this is another historic victory for AI), but I were left with the opposite impression: that strategically top humans are still ahead in this game. This is not the end of the game for humans yet !

Re: DeepMind StarCraft II Demonstration [video]

#89

Post by gpm »

gambler wrote: post #80
Topgamer7 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are limitations they put on the AI to try ti restrict to human levels. Such as having an action counter. And in the demonstration they filmed today, they actually limited the information the AI knows about to the screen space, which is probably along the lines of what you were wanting.

>There are limitations they put on the AI to try ti restrict to human levels. Such as having an action counter. Which is exactly why StarCraft is not a very good game to test AI on. It's absurd to put arbitrary limitation on something to make the game "fair" and then pat yourself on the back simply because the algorithm won. If it can already win through pure micromanagement, why There are tons of strategy games whic…

> All turn-based games, for example.

You mean like chess? And go?

I think turning to a real time game with a complex rule set after showing they mastered turn based games with simple rule sets was very sensible.

> Or real-time games where building stuff is more important than combat.

Can you name one that is played professionally (important for balance and comparison to humans) where this is more true than starcraft 2? I think of starcraft 2 as very macro focused as games go.

I used to be ~80th percentile in North America (worst region) and I'm certain at the time any pro could have beat me without clicking anything outside of their own base (except the minimap).

Re: DeepMind StarCraft II Demonstration [video]

#90

Post by larkeith »

dllu wrote: post #83
asar wrote: post #67

The live exhibition match definitely made Alphastar look like a machine making the decisions, not a super smart being. The micro was obviously impressive but that should also be the easiest part to master. I share the sentiment that DeepMind is hosting big events to paint a very one-sided picture of man vs machine, so this last win of mana feels oddly satisfying.

It is a little disappointing that Mana's win was achieved in part by simply exploiting Alphastar's poor response to the immortal drops by doing it over and over again. In contrast, Lee Sedol's win versus AlphaGo involved profound strategy and a particularly inspired "divine move" that humans get to brag about.

On the one hand, it feels a bit cheap. On the other, getting ahead due to micro but losing due to lack of pattern recognition and problem solving seems like a rather complete demonstration of both the strengths and weaknesses of current AI.
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