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There are two ways the AI could win at Starcraft: 1. The game does not really depend on a larger context. What you see is what you get. The "muscle memory" of

There are two ways the AI could win at Starcraft: 1. The game does not really depend on a larger context. What you see is what you get. The "muscle memory" of a relatively simple ANI could therefore be enough. This is partially in contradiction with what you said above about bluffing, but I feel the contradiction is less than 50%. 2. Simple "muscle memory" strategies should not be enough to win the game, but the ANI's lightning speed reactions and its ability to see the whole game at once are enough to outperform more sophisticated-thinking humans who are slower and have tunnel vision w.r.t. the game. Basically the brute-force approach. I'm not placing bets, and I'm as curious as everyone else as to the result of the contest. I'm just saying - if the AI does win, these are the ways it could do that. I'm using the expression "muscle memory", which is inadequate, because I have no better way to express how current NNs operate. They are dumb at the higher semantic levels. They only become powerful through colossal repetition and reinforcement. Watching current NNs being trained never fails to give me flashbacks from my college days when I was practicing karate. We would go to the dojo, pick a technique, and then repeat it an enormous number of times, to let the sequence sink into muscle memory. I'm sure I still have some (natural) NNs in my brain that still have got that thing down pat - I don't have to think about doing the techniques, they just "execute" on their own. But there's no semantic level here, it's just dumb (but blazing fast) automation.

nickpsecurity 10y ago
It's possible but it's a lot more context-driven than you think with a human involved. The bots do great against each other with their strategies and muscle-memory stuff. Throw a human in the mix, they start noticing patterns in how the units are managed, what strategies are likely, etc. They've exploited these in the competitions to hilarious effect. Here's the main site on prior work & results at the competitions: https://www.cs.mun.ca/~dchurchill/starcraftaicomp/reports.shtml https://www.cs.mun.ca/~dchurchill/starcraftaicomp/reports.sh... Here's a few examples of how the muscle-memory approach, esp if focused on unit vs unit, can fail against humans. " In this example, Bakuryu (human) notices that Skynet's units will chase his zerglings if they are near, and proceeds to run around Skynet's base to distract Skynet long enough so that Bakuryu can make fying units to come attack Skynet's base. This type of behaviour is incredibly hard to detect in a bot, since it requires knowledge of the larger context of the game which may only have consequences 5 or more minutes in the future. " (2013) Note: At this point, they also sucked at building and expansion strategies which surprised me since I thought a basic planner would be able to do that. The constraints between rate of expansion, where to place stuff, what units to keep/build, and so on get really hard. The other thing they weren't good at was switching strategies mid-game based on what opponents are doing. " despite Djem5 (pro) making the bots look silly this year... they were able to defeat D-ranked, and even some C-ranked players. After the human players have played one or two games against the bots they are then easily able to detect and exploit small mistakes that the bots make in order to easily win the majority of games... " (2015) I don't have the 2016 result yet. It's clear they're getting better but there's a huge leap between bots and humans. Gap seems to be context, reading opponents, and expansion. Now, if they can fix those, they have a chance of taking down pro's combined with the machines inherent strength in micromanagement and muscle-memory on specific attack/defense patterns. Examples below of the AI's managing units in perfect formation & reaction below. It's like an emergent ballet or something. The second one could be terrifying if they can get it into real-world military. Figured you might enjoy these given your position. :) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DXUOWXidcY0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DXUOWXidcY0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IKVFZ28ybQs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IKVFZ28ybQs

nickpsecurity 10y ago

It's possible but it's a lot more context-driven than you think with a human involved. The bots do great against each other with their strategies and muscle-memory stuff. Throw a human in the mix, they start noticing patterns in how the units are managed, what strategies are likely, etc. They've exploited these in the competitions to hilarious effect. Here's the main site on prior work & results at the competitions: https://www.cs.mun.ca/~dchurchill/starcraftaicomp/reports.shtml https://www.cs.mun.ca/~dchurchill/starcraftaicomp/reports.sh... Here's a few examples of how the muscle-memory approach, esp if focused on unit vs unit, can fail against humans. " In this example, Bakuryu (human) notices that Skynet's units will chase his zerglings if they are near, and proceeds to run around Skynet's base to distract Skynet long enough so that Bakuryu can make fying units to come attack Skynet's base. This type of behaviour is incredibly hard to detect in a bot, since it requires knowledge of the larger context of the game which may only have consequences 5 or more minutes in the future. " (2013) Note: At this point, they also sucked at building and expansion strategies which surprised me since I thought a basic planner would be able to do that. The constraints between rate of expansion, where to place stuff, what units to keep/build, and so on get really hard. The other thing they weren't good at was switching strategies mid-game based on what opponents are doing. " despite Djem5 (pro) making the bots look silly this year... they were able to defeat D-ranked, and even some C-ranked players. After the human players have played one or two games against the bots they are then easily able to detect and exploit small mistakes that the bots make in order to easily win the majority of games... " (2015) I don't have the 2016 result yet. It's clear they're getting better but there's a huge leap between bots and humans. Gap seems to be context, reading opponents, and expansion. Now, if they can fix those, they have a chance of taking down pro's combined with the machines inherent strength in micromanagement and muscle-memory on specific attack/defense patterns. Examples below of the AI's managing units in perfect formation & reaction below. It's like an emergent ballet or something. The second one could be terrifying if they can get it into real-world military. Figured you might enjoy these given your position. :) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DXUOWXidcY0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DXUOWXidcY0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IKVFZ28ybQs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IKVFZ28ybQs