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DeepMind StarCraft II Demonstration [video]

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Re: DeepMind StarCraft II Demonstration [video]

#91
post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The DeepMind folks on stream just mentioned that Alphastar's inference speed is about 50ms from observation to action.

I thought they said 350ms. E: https://youtu.be/cUTMhmVh1qs?t=3272

They also say 50ms: https://youtu.be/cUTMhmVh1qs?t=7016

Re: DeepMind StarCraft II Demonstration [video]

#92
post #45

Very impressive... but it seems like the AI relies entirely on abusing blink stalkers which with perfect micro is basically impossible to counter. It is no surprise it can crush pros when it has perfect timing and zero mistakes in using these units. I think the coolest thing is how the play of AI mirrors a similar style to how pros have developed (Micro harrasing early, early expansions, a very good understanding of…

>I think the coolest thing is how the play of AI mirrors a similar style to how pros have developed I mean, the agents have learned the game from pro replays so to me it seems obvious it would evolve to play the same strats human pros use.

My understanding is that Alphastar is trained on reinforcement learning. I suspect this is unsupervised so it would have learned this behaviour independently without pro replays.

Re: DeepMind StarCraft II Demonstration [video]

#93
I haven't played SC in years. Surprised that it is still going strong considering I haven't heard much SC news in a while. I remember one trick against the SC AI was to send a probe to the AI's base and lure all the AI's probes out of its base. That was the easiest way to win against AI back then. Comparing DeepMind/Alphastar now to what SC AI was a decade ago really puts AI advancement into perspective.

Re: DeepMind StarCraft II Demonstration [video]

#94
post #45

Very impressive... but it seems like the AI relies entirely on abusing blink stalkers which with perfect micro is basically impossible to counter. It is no surprise it can crush pros when it has perfect timing and zero mistakes in using these units. I think the coolest thing is how the play of AI mirrors a similar style to how pros have developed (Micro harrasing early, early expansions, a very good understanding of…

It looks like a human/AI centaur[1] would far exceed the abilities of either alone. In chess that lasted for about a decade, before the human became superfluous. In Go it seems to have happened already? But given the complexity of Starcraft I expect it to take longer than Go.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Chess

Re: DeepMind StarCraft II Demonstration [video]

#95
post #4

I am somewhat disappointed that they stream only hand-picked replays. For a big, announced presentation, they should be at a stage to stream live games (like OpenAI did with Dota). However, apart from that great work by Deepmind and I am excited to follow the progress in this area.

> For a big, announced presentation, they should be at a stage to stream live games (like OpenAI did with Dota).

This is such an inane complaint. They didn't do it all live because they have results they want to show and don't have observer mode because they've been focusing on research and don't want to delay things.

Re: DeepMind StarCraft II Demonstration [video]

#96
post #83
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.

I agree that this makes Lee Sedol's one win against AlphaGo even more impressive. But deepmind also felt ready to host this event and it chose European pros to compete with not Asian pros, who arguably have better micro and innovate a lot of the new meta.

Re: DeepMind StarCraft II Demonstration [video]

#97
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.

They limited the APM to 180 for AlphaStar's input I think. An average professional player consistently plays at 200-300 APM with peak levels generally going to 350-400 APM during engagements.

To me, it seems like AlphaStar is actually at a disadvantage in its ability to micro, and has to make up for this in its macro level strategy.

Re: DeepMind StarCraft II Demonstration [video]

#98
post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I think the coolest thing is how the play of AI mirrors a similar style to how pros have developed I mean, the agents have learned the game from pro replays so to me it seems obvious it would evolve to play the same strats human pros use.

My understanding is that Alphastar is trained on reinforcement learning. I suspect this is unsupervised so it would have learned this behaviour independently without pro replays.

Per DeepMind's blog post[1], an agent was initially trained via supervised learning on pro matches. Then, the agent was forked repeatedly, as the population of agents learned via tournament-style self-play. So, while initial strategies could have been seeded by pro play styles, the final models were the result of models learning from games with other models.

[1] https://deepmind.com/blog/alphastar-mastering-real-time-stra...

Re: DeepMind StarCraft II Demonstration [video]

#99
post #96
post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I agree that this makes Lee Sedol's one win against AlphaGo even more impressive. But deepmind also felt ready to host this event and it chose European pros to compete with not Asian pros, who arguably have better micro and innovate a lot of the new meta.

TLO is to Starcraft* as Fan Hui is to Go. They are strong players but not the best. I am guessing that Deepmind knows that the strength of their bot isn't ready to take on the very top players, and wanted to show off against a well-known personality in the Starcraft II scene.

Incidentally, though, the strongest Starcraft II player currently is arguably Serral [1], who is Finnish. He beat the strongest Korean players to win the WCS World Championship last year.

[1] https://liquipedia.net/starcraft2/Serral

* at least TLO's skill level when offracing as Protoss. His main race, Zerg, is very strong, ranked around 70-80th in the world.

Re: DeepMind StarCraft II Demonstration [video]

#100
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.

They limited the APM to 180 for AlphaStar's input I think. An average professional player consistently plays at 200-300 APM with peak levels generally going to 350-400 APM during engagements. To me, it seems like AlphaStar is actually at a disadvantage in its ability to micro, and has to make up for this in its macro level strategy.

Most human APM is wasted on "spam clicks". The effective APM, or EPM, is probably quite a bit higher for AlphaStar than for human pros.
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