4 ms·

'Computers are capable of extremely fast control, but that doesn’t necessarily demonstrate intelligence, so agents must interact with the game within limits of

'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”.'

tempestn 10y ago
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.)
- anchpop 10y ago
  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?
  - halflings 10y ago
    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.
    - tempestn 10y ago
      My post (the grandparent to yours) fully acknowledges that. However, there are many different things that count as an action in starcraft, and even with a cap on APM, there will be many ways for a computer to pack in more useful actions than a human. Also a computer will have other innate advantages, like perfect timing and map awareness. An equally skilled human will therefore need stronger strategy to make up for these disadvantages. Your parent post appears to suggest mitigating these other advantages in various ways (although I don't personally agree with that approach, since the computer isn't doing something that's out of reach for humans, just things that aren't practical for humans to achieve consistently). If you did NOT limit APM, it wouldn't even be a contest. The AI could simply mass first tier units and crush any human opponent with micro.
      - halflings 10y ago
        I do not understand the point of an AI if you want it to be equal in all ways to a human. Why not just fight a human? The goal is to build an AI that is at least as good as pro players (which would involve building models and technology capable of taking complex decisions etc.). The goal was never to implement something that is strictly equal to a human. You cannot blame the AI for having a better memory and perfect timing, or next thing you know you'll ask them to limit the RAM to something comparable to the memory in a human brain and use older processors to restrict the unfair advantage current computation clusters have. Regarding your last point: even without limiting APM, there is no AI that can currently compete with decent players . If it was as easy as you say, people would've done that with Broodwar which has open APIs. The fact is that micro alone cannot win a StarCraft game. Perfectly micro-ed zerglings cannot do much against a terran turtling behind a closed wall and shooting with marines, or a protoss with immortals and adepts.
        tempestn 10y ago
        I agree with you. As I said, > Your parent post appears to suggest mitigating these other advantages in various ways (although I don't personally agree with that approach, since the computer isn't doing something that's out of reach for humans, just things that aren't practical for humans to achieve consistently). As far as your last paragraph, I suspect the issue is that people building AIs generally try to follow the spirit of the game. I believe it would be possible write an AI that wins by perfectly macroing out tier-1 units, rushing, and perfectly microing them (and obviously it would be much easier than to build a more general Starcraft AI). If it hasn't been done, I expect that's because it would be little more than a gimmick. It certainly wouldn't be any fun to play against, nor would it advance AI in general.

tempestn 10y ago

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.)

anchpop 10y ago
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?
- halflings 10y ago
  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.
  - tempestn 10y ago
    My post (the grandparent to yours) fully acknowledges that. However, there are many different things that count as an action in starcraft, and even with a cap on APM, there will be many ways for a computer to pack in more useful actions than a human. Also a computer will have other innate advantages, like perfect timing and map awareness. An equally skilled human will therefore need stronger strategy to make up for these disadvantages. Your parent post appears to suggest mitigating these other advantages in various ways (although I don't personally agree with that approach, since the computer isn't doing something that's out of reach for humans, just things that aren't practical for humans to achieve consistently). If you did NOT limit APM, it wouldn't even be a contest. The AI could simply mass first tier units and crush any human opponent with micro.
    - halflings 10y ago
      I do not understand the point of an AI if you want it to be equal in all ways to a human. Why not just fight a human? The goal is to build an AI that is at least as good as pro players (which would involve building models and technology capable of taking complex decisions etc.). The goal was never to implement something that is strictly equal to a human. You cannot blame the AI for having a better memory and perfect timing, or next thing you know you'll ask them to limit the RAM to something comparable to the memory in a human brain and use older processors to restrict the unfair advantage current computation clusters have. Regarding your last point: even without limiting APM, there is no AI that can currently compete with decent players . If it was as easy as you say, people would've done that with Broodwar which has open APIs. The fact is that micro alone cannot win a StarCraft game. Perfectly micro-ed zerglings cannot do much against a terran turtling behind a closed wall and shooting with marines, or a protoss with immortals and adepts.
      - tempestn 10y ago
        I agree with you. As I said, > Your parent post appears to suggest mitigating these other advantages in various ways (although I don't personally agree with that approach, since the computer isn't doing something that's out of reach for humans, just things that aren't practical for humans to achieve consistently). As far as your last paragraph, I suspect the issue is that people building AIs generally try to follow the spirit of the game. I believe it would be possible write an AI that wins by perfectly macroing out tier-1 units, rushing, and perfectly microing them (and obviously it would be much easier than to build a more general Starcraft AI). If it hasn't been done, I expect that's because it would be little more than a gimmick. It certainly wouldn't be any fun to play against, nor would it advance AI in general.