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While that would be amazing if true, I'm pretty sure if you take away the stalker blink micro AlphaStar loses hands down to humans. This isn't taking away from

While that would be amazing if true, I'm pretty sure if you take away the stalker blink micro AlphaStar loses hands down to humans. This isn't taking away from Deepmind's victory at all, but I think micro was what made the AI come out ahead in this one. In many of the games, Mana had much better macro only to lose to blink stalkers.

CydeWeys 8y ago
You play the game as it's written. Come back with another version of StarCraft that isn't so micro-intensive and we can see how the AI does on that. Chess and Go don't have any form of micro and AIs are nevertheless dominant there. I'd say, give AI development another year and I wouldn't expect there to be any kind of game, in any genre, that humans can beat AIs at. Whether it's Chess, Go, other classical board games, Civilization, MOBAs, RTSes, FPSs, etc.
- celeritascelery 8y ago
  > Chess and Go don't have any form of micro and AIs are nevertheless dominant there. Yes, but chess and go have a tiny problem space compared to something like Starcraft. People want to see an AI win because it’s smart, not because it’s a computer capable of things impossible for humans. If the goal was perfect micro they could write computer programs to do that 10 years ago.
  - CydeWeys 8y ago
    Then maybe we need a better game than StarCraft to test this on? Some kind of RTS that's less micro-heavy, perhaps? Maybe even an RTS where you can't give orders to individual units at all, like the Total War series? You can't fault the AI for winning at the game because of the way the game itself works. Even if you limit the AI to max human APM, it's still going to dominate in these micro-heavy battles because it's going to make every one of its actions count.
    - celeritascelery 8y ago
      > Even if you limit the AI to max human APM, it's still going to dominate in these micro-heavy battles because it's going to make every one of its actions count. right, and we saw that with the incredible precision with stalker blink micro. There are many ways you could make it more comparable to humans. They have already tried that by even giving it an APM. > You can't fault the AI for winning at the game because of the way the game itself works. But it does make the victory feel hollow when it wins using a "skill" that is unrelated to AI (having crazy high APM with perfect precision because its a computer). Micro-bots have been around for decades, and they are really good. The whole point of this exercise is to build better AI, not prove that computers are faster then humans. It would like if they wanted robots to try and beat humans at soccer, and the robots won because they shoot the ball out of a cannon at 1000 KPH. They win, but not really by having the skills that we are trying to develop.
      - CydeWeys 8y ago
        I just can't help but feel that nothing AI does will ever be good enough according to this mindset, i.e. true "intelligence" is by definition things that computers cannot do. Beating the world champion in Chess was, at one point, considered an impossible achievement for computers. Now it's considered so routine it doesn't even count as AI according to many. And in a few months when AlphaStar is beating top human players without having to use APM or viewport advantages, what will the next goalposts be?
        celeritascelery 8y ago
        > I just can't help but feel that nothing AI does will ever be good enough It can be good enough in a certain problem space, such as chess. But unlike chess or go, which are purely mental games, Starcraft has large physical component (vision, APM, reaction time). It can make it hard to determine when it has “mastered” this RTS. Like you said, it may be a few more months (years?) before AlphaStar can master Starcraft on “mental” level. The physical component is trivial for a computer, so mastering that is not much of a milestone.
  - taneq 8y ago
    "Yes but X has a tiny problem space compared to something like Y. People want to see an AI win because it's smart, not because it crunches numbers." 1980: X = Tic-tac-toe, Y = Chequers 1990: X = Chequers, Y = Chess 2000: X = Chess, Y = Go 2019: X = Go, Y = StarCraft 2030: X = Any video game, Y = ???
    - celeritascelery 8y ago
      Is a AI that wins at Starcraft only because it has crazy high APM really going to help get to the next X? We could have built that 10 years ago. All it proves is that computers have faster reflexes then humans. That won’t help them become problem solvers for the future.
      - CydeWeys 8y ago
        Speed of play is a fundamentally important gameplay mechanic of any real-time game. One of the main reasons the pros are better than amateurs at these types of game is because they play and react faster. And yes, of course computers are much better at doing things more quickly than humans. It's not even remotely close for us. The AIs are clearly better. It's not cheating either; they are legitimately better at it than us. It sounds like you're simply objecting to pitting people up against computers in real-time games entirely.
        celeritascelery 8y ago
        So all they really proved is computers are faster then humans. I knew that before this started. The Deepmind team knows the challenge isn’t to beat humans at Starcraft. That is trivially easy with the advantages you mentioned. The challenge is to be better at strategy then a human. That is why they tried to add artificial rules to make the AI have similar physical limitations to a human (emulated mouse, rate limited actions, emulated screen and visibility). There have been micro AI bots for years that could out preform any human. They knew they weren’t just trying to build another micro bot, because if they were it wouldn’t be much of an accomplishment.
- invalidOrTaken 8y ago
  I sure hope so---then I could a 4X AI that was worth a damn.
- cdelsolar 8y ago
  except Scrabble
  - intuitionist 8y ago
    I assume you’re joking, but just in case you aren’t, Scrabble bots have outperformed top humans for 20 years with little more than a basic Monte Carlo tree search.
    - cdelsolar 8y ago
      they haven't; I'm a tournament Scrabble player and the best program beats the best players at most 50% of the time.
celeritascelery 8y ago
Agreed. The micro was just too perfect to match. Can you imagine it with something like ravegers or reaper Grenades?
setr 8y ago
In the TLO matchup, the ai wins with an army of disruptors, and unupgraded stalkers; ofc, TLO wasnt playing his best (in terms of micro or race), but it was still doing well with a micro-lacking unit (outside of blowing up its own army repeatedly)

CydeWeys 8y ago

You play the game as it's written. Come back with another version of StarCraft that isn't so micro-intensive and we can see how the AI does on that. Chess and Go don't have any form of micro and AIs are nevertheless dominant there. I'd say, give AI development another year and I wouldn't expect there to be any kind of game, in any genre, that humans can beat AIs at. Whether it's Chess, Go, other classical board games, Civilization, MOBAs, RTSes, FPSs, etc.

celeritascelery 8y ago
> Chess and Go don't have any form of micro and AIs are nevertheless dominant there. Yes, but chess and go have a tiny problem space compared to something like Starcraft. People want to see an AI win because it’s smart, not because it’s a computer capable of things impossible for humans. If the goal was perfect micro they could write computer programs to do that 10 years ago.
- CydeWeys 8y ago
  Then maybe we need a better game than StarCraft to test this on? Some kind of RTS that's less micro-heavy, perhaps? Maybe even an RTS where you can't give orders to individual units at all, like the Total War series? You can't fault the AI for winning at the game because of the way the game itself works. Even if you limit the AI to max human APM, it's still going to dominate in these micro-heavy battles because it's going to make every one of its actions count.
  - celeritascelery 8y ago
    > Even if you limit the AI to max human APM, it's still going to dominate in these micro-heavy battles because it's going to make every one of its actions count. right, and we saw that with the incredible precision with stalker blink micro. There are many ways you could make it more comparable to humans. They have already tried that by even giving it an APM. > You can't fault the AI for winning at the game because of the way the game itself works. But it does make the victory feel hollow when it wins using a "skill" that is unrelated to AI (having crazy high APM with perfect precision because its a computer). Micro-bots have been around for decades, and they are really good. The whole point of this exercise is to build better AI, not prove that computers are faster then humans. It would like if they wanted robots to try and beat humans at soccer, and the robots won because they shoot the ball out of a cannon at 1000 KPH. They win, but not really by having the skills that we are trying to develop.
    - CydeWeys 8y ago
      I just can't help but feel that nothing AI does will ever be good enough according to this mindset, i.e. true "intelligence" is by definition things that computers cannot do. Beating the world champion in Chess was, at one point, considered an impossible achievement for computers. Now it's considered so routine it doesn't even count as AI according to many. And in a few months when AlphaStar is beating top human players without having to use APM or viewport advantages, what will the next goalposts be?
      - celeritascelery 8y ago
        > I just can't help but feel that nothing AI does will ever be good enough It can be good enough in a certain problem space, such as chess. But unlike chess or go, which are purely mental games, Starcraft has large physical component (vision, APM, reaction time). It can make it hard to determine when it has “mastered” this RTS. Like you said, it may be a few more months (years?) before AlphaStar can master Starcraft on “mental” level. The physical component is trivial for a computer, so mastering that is not much of a milestone.
- taneq 8y ago
  "Yes but X has a tiny problem space compared to something like Y. People want to see an AI win because it's smart, not because it crunches numbers." 1980: X = Tic-tac-toe, Y = Chequers 1990: X = Chequers, Y = Chess 2000: X = Chess, Y = Go 2019: X = Go, Y = StarCraft 2030: X = Any video game, Y = ???
  - celeritascelery 8y ago
    Is a AI that wins at Starcraft only because it has crazy high APM really going to help get to the next X? We could have built that 10 years ago. All it proves is that computers have faster reflexes then humans. That won’t help them become problem solvers for the future.
    - CydeWeys 8y ago
      Speed of play is a fundamentally important gameplay mechanic of any real-time game. One of the main reasons the pros are better than amateurs at these types of game is because they play and react faster. And yes, of course computers are much better at doing things more quickly than humans. It's not even remotely close for us. The AIs are clearly better. It's not cheating either; they are legitimately better at it than us. It sounds like you're simply objecting to pitting people up against computers in real-time games entirely.
      - celeritascelery 8y ago
        So all they really proved is computers are faster then humans. I knew that before this started. The Deepmind team knows the challenge isn’t to beat humans at Starcraft. That is trivially easy with the advantages you mentioned. The challenge is to be better at strategy then a human. That is why they tried to add artificial rules to make the AI have similar physical limitations to a human (emulated mouse, rate limited actions, emulated screen and visibility). There have been micro AI bots for years that could out preform any human. They knew they weren’t just trying to build another micro bot, because if they were it wouldn’t be much of an accomplishment.
invalidOrTaken 8y ago
I sure hope so---then I could a 4X AI that was worth a damn.
cdelsolar 8y ago
except Scrabble
- intuitionist 8y ago
  I assume you’re joking, but just in case you aren’t, Scrabble bots have outperformed top humans for 20 years with little more than a basic Monte Carlo tree search.
  - cdelsolar 8y ago
    they haven't; I'm a tournament Scrabble player and the best program beats the best players at most 50% of the time.

celeritascelery 8y ago

Agreed. The micro was just too perfect to match. Can you imagine it with something like ravegers or reaper Grenades?

setr 8y ago

In the TLO matchup, the ai wins with an army of disruptors, and unupgraded stalkers; ofc, TLO wasnt playing his best (in terms of micro or race), but it was still doing well with a micro-lacking unit (outside of blowing up its own army repeatedly)