3 ms·

> 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

> 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.
  - posterboy 8y ago
    I said before, you could just integrate the intelligent micro part of the Ai into the game for humans to control. For game design the problem is, the border to macro is not a straight line, but fuzzy, so how far does it go. For SC2 and this specific bot, the problem isn't there, if the AI merely controls a strategy over hard coded tactics.
  - CydeWeys 8y ago
    Depending on how you define Chess, seeing the pieces and physically moving them is part of it as well. Chess-playing AIs haven't been required to have robot components because that's not the interesting part of the challenge of Chess. I'd argue the same is true of StarCraft, even more so, given that it's an innately computer-based game in a way that Chess is not. It seems arbitrary to require the presence of an electronic-to-physical bridge in the form of a robot only to then operate physical-to-electronic bridges in the form of a keyboard and mouse. Just let it run via the input devices directly. Give it some years and humans will be able to do this too. In other words, this isn't an interesting handicap to apply.
    - pdimitar 8y ago
      > It seems arbitrary to require the presence of an electronic-to-physical bridge in the form of a robot only to then operate physical-to-electronic bridges in the form of a keyboard and mouse. It's not at all arbitrary. SC2 match is won by a combination of reflexes and physical quickness with which the actions are executed, and strategy. The whole point is to even the playing field in the area of the physical limitations so that only the strategy part is the difference. You know, the "Artificial INTELLIGENCE" part?
- saberience 8y ago
  The point is, it's like being impressed by a calculator because it can multiply two massive numbers faster than we can... no shit, that's the whole reason we use computers, because they calculate faster than we can... There's nothing impressive in coding something that can execute something far faster than a human, or be so accurate and beat a human. There were Quake 3 bots that could wreck any human alive 10 years ago because they react in milliseconds and shoot you in the head perfectly. So what? It's obvious a computer can do that. It's like being surprised that a bullet beats a human in a fight, that's by design. I would be impressed if a computer learned from scratch without knowing anything about the game beforehand, about the controls, or anything else, with ordinary human limitations. Using vision processors to look at a screen to see the inputs and controlling a physical mouse and keyboard. That would be impressive. But watching a computer do perfect blink micro at 1500apm is just underwhelming, since that isn't new tech, you could hand code that without deep nets.
  - CydeWeys 8y ago
    > The point is, it's like being impressed by a calculator because it can multiply two massive numbers faster than we can Yeah, exactly. And when calculators first came out, people were very impressed by them. They upended entire industries and made new things possible that had simply never been possible before with manual calculation. When you're pooh-poohing the entire computational revolution you might want to take a step back and reconsider your viewpoint. It only seems not impressive now because we were born in a world where electronic calculation is commonplace and thus taken for granted. If you don't find this achievement impressive, then go look at some turn-based game where reaction time is eliminated entirely that computers still dominate at, like Chess or Go. The AIs are coming. Or give it a few months and they'll come back with a version hard-limited to half the APM of the human players and it'll still dominate. It's clear which way the winds are blowing on this. People who bet against the continued progress of game-playing AIs invariably lose. Go read the comments here for this exact same discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10981679 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10981679
    - pdimitar 8y ago
      > Or give it a few months and they'll come back with a version hard-limited to half the APM of the human players and it'll still dominate. And this is exactly what is being argued here. Let's see that in particular, not a demonstration that computers are faster than humans. Of course they are. Whoever argued that, ever? This has been known and envisioned even before calculators were invented. What people here are arguing with you for is that we want human-level limitations of the controls for the AI so it can clearly win by better strategy. Isn't that the goal here?

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.
- posterboy 8y ago
  I said before, you could just integrate the intelligent micro part of the Ai into the game for humans to control. For game design the problem is, the border to macro is not a straight line, but fuzzy, so how far does it go. For SC2 and this specific bot, the problem isn't there, if the AI merely controls a strategy over hard coded tactics.
- CydeWeys 8y ago
  Depending on how you define Chess, seeing the pieces and physically moving them is part of it as well. Chess-playing AIs haven't been required to have robot components because that's not the interesting part of the challenge of Chess. I'd argue the same is true of StarCraft, even more so, given that it's an innately computer-based game in a way that Chess is not. It seems arbitrary to require the presence of an electronic-to-physical bridge in the form of a robot only to then operate physical-to-electronic bridges in the form of a keyboard and mouse. Just let it run via the input devices directly. Give it some years and humans will be able to do this too. In other words, this isn't an interesting handicap to apply.
  - pdimitar 8y ago
    > It seems arbitrary to require the presence of an electronic-to-physical bridge in the form of a robot only to then operate physical-to-electronic bridges in the form of a keyboard and mouse. It's not at all arbitrary. SC2 match is won by a combination of reflexes and physical quickness with which the actions are executed, and strategy. The whole point is to even the playing field in the area of the physical limitations so that only the strategy part is the difference. You know, the "Artificial INTELLIGENCE" part?
saberience 8y ago
The point is, it's like being impressed by a calculator because it can multiply two massive numbers faster than we can... no shit, that's the whole reason we use computers, because they calculate faster than we can... There's nothing impressive in coding something that can execute something far faster than a human, or be so accurate and beat a human. There were Quake 3 bots that could wreck any human alive 10 years ago because they react in milliseconds and shoot you in the head perfectly. So what? It's obvious a computer can do that. It's like being surprised that a bullet beats a human in a fight, that's by design. I would be impressed if a computer learned from scratch without knowing anything about the game beforehand, about the controls, or anything else, with ordinary human limitations. Using vision processors to look at a screen to see the inputs and controlling a physical mouse and keyboard. That would be impressive. But watching a computer do perfect blink micro at 1500apm is just underwhelming, since that isn't new tech, you could hand code that without deep nets.
- CydeWeys 8y ago
  > The point is, it's like being impressed by a calculator because it can multiply two massive numbers faster than we can Yeah, exactly. And when calculators first came out, people were very impressed by them. They upended entire industries and made new things possible that had simply never been possible before with manual calculation. When you're pooh-poohing the entire computational revolution you might want to take a step back and reconsider your viewpoint. It only seems not impressive now because we were born in a world where electronic calculation is commonplace and thus taken for granted. If you don't find this achievement impressive, then go look at some turn-based game where reaction time is eliminated entirely that computers still dominate at, like Chess or Go. The AIs are coming. Or give it a few months and they'll come back with a version hard-limited to half the APM of the human players and it'll still dominate. It's clear which way the winds are blowing on this. People who bet against the continued progress of game-playing AIs invariably lose. Go read the comments here for this exact same discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10981679 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10981679
  - pdimitar 8y ago
    > Or give it a few months and they'll come back with a version hard-limited to half the APM of the human players and it'll still dominate. And this is exactly what is being argued here. Let's see that in particular, not a demonstration that computers are faster than humans. Of course they are. Whoever argued that, ever? This has been known and envisioned even before calculators were invented. What people here are arguing with you for is that we want human-level limitations of the controls for the AI so it can clearly win by better strategy. Isn't that the goal here?