6 ms·

There has always been the issue of interface when playing videogames AI vs human. Either give the human a brain-computer interface or give the AI a mouse, keybo

by hoseja 7y ago

There has always been the issue of interface when playing videogames AI vs human. Either give the human a brain-computer interface or give the AI a mouse, keyboard, monitor, robot hands and a camera. Anything else seems inherently unfair.

Erlich_Bachman 7y ago
If you read the paper, this is exactly what they have done, and this is why this achievement is so interesting.
Aperocky 7y ago
Or connect the computer to human neurons directly.
- Symmetry 7y ago
  You'd be able to save the time it takes a nerve impulse from head to hand that way. It's not much but apparently it can be significant enough that in some DotA games shorter players are disproportionately successful in the roles requiring the fastest reflexes.
  - Shaanie 7y ago
    Is that supposed to be a joke? DotA doesn't rely on reflexes nearly enough for that to matter.
    - UserIsUnused 7y ago
      Data doesn't lie. When so many player play a game, even an almost irrelevant advantage can tip the scale. Or maybe it's a sociological factor, not a phisics ones. But the data doesn't lie.
      - VIPMaster 7y ago
        Sure, data doesn't lie, but where is the data? I'm a pretty seasoned DotA player myself and this is the first I'm hearing of any such phenomenon. I can't think of any hero that shorter players have been more successful on than taller players, or vice versa.
agumonkey 7y ago
some korean players were so quick at inputs you'd think they were half way to brain-computer interfaces already
ropman76 7y ago
Or even a turn based game, where click speed does not matter...
- the_af 7y ago
  But reaction time in a real time game is also an interesting problem with AI. If they factor out the merely mechanical (the UI itself), reacting to a situation unfolding in real time where you don't have a lot of time to think is a nice test of AI vs human strategic and tactical thinking.
- swarnie_ 7y ago
  My understanding is they've capped the AMP/EPM against a reasonably old EU/NA player.
- bakuninsbart 7y ago
  If Google could tackle Civilizations god-aweful AI next, I'd be over the moon.
  - the_af 7y ago
    Do you mean Google should write a better AI than the one in Civilization? Interesting. But also consider this: in casual strategy videogames -- actually, strike "strategy" and just consider videogames -- most players don't want a really hard opponent. A computer opponent that is really very hard to beat is not what we want, because that'd be frustrating and many of us play videogames (yes, even strategy games!) to unwind; we want the illusion of challenge, an opponent that is challenging to beat but within the possibilities of every person who buys the game. Which, by the way, is also the case with Starcraft II. Most people who bought it aren't tournament players. They expect a challenge, but not a really hard challenge. Game difficulty is all about perception ;) PS: I shamefully confess I reloaded my X-COM (DOS!) game every time I lost one of the soldiers I was emotionally attached to. I don't like losing! :P
    - PeterisP 7y ago
      In strategy games like Civilization the "preferred" difficulty level is that hard/easy to beat because it gets extra resources. It would be preferrable to have the same difficulty level through opponents that play better/smarter while having the same game mechanic consequences as players if they make the same actions, but we currently can't, so they get artificial production multipliers and such.
Pfhreak 7y ago
What are you solving for here? They already limit the AI to human like speed, reaction times, and accuracy.
username90 7y ago
They are testing the AI's ability to do tactics and strategy, not motor and visual tasks. It has built in delay and needs to move around the map to gather information just like a human, so it doesn't have any significant unfair advantages. Edit: Note that the version they sent out to the ladder had significant larger delay, significant lower APM, and didn't get any information not visible on the screen unlike the first iteration.
- jamra 7y ago
  However the computer can macro while in a fight which is something people can’t dI. We would miss the fight and lose the game. It’s not just a tactics game. Attention span and where your eyes are matter.
  - goalieca 7y ago
    It’s so bad that below master people shouldn’t really be doing too much micro during a fight because they’ll lose out on macro. Even in pro matches you see attention span issues and sometimes avoidance of too much micro to win. Really good Micro is going to win you any battle.
    - jamra 7y ago
      I’m in diamond 2 and I definitely micro in battles. The difference between platinum 1 and diamond 3 is largely macro but it very soon becomes micro as well.
  - jcampbell1 7y ago
    Elite players do this all the time. Serral would use his standard tactic of attacking in two places as the same time, and alpha star couldn’t figure out the best way to deal with it. When alpha star did the same thing to him, he would mitigate the smaller attack and even predict alphastar’s escape route and crush it.
- bsdetector 7y ago
  When Watson won Jeopardy, its lead designer thought a 5 ms reaction time was fair because one time a human anticipating the buzzer light got 2 ms. Of course to any reasonable person a consistent 5 ms is obviously vastly superior to once in a blue moon lottery-winning luck. Sounds like it's the same deal here, where the designers made some effort to level the interface playing field, but also left in some advantages like instantly being able to select individual units (or whatever it was the other players felt was not humanly possible to do). Probably because, at some level, they really want their system to win.
bjornjaja 7y ago
Interesting thing about AI is no matter how you spin things, the more advanced it becomes, unfairness grows proportionally. After all, isn’t that the point of AI? To perform better at certain tasks than humans? We are visitors in the digital realm, just like when we put on a scuba suit and jump in the ocean—even the smallest fish can out-swim us.
WhompingWindows 7y ago
Then we are stuck with an inherently unfair system, as robotics is nowhere near ready for keyboard/mouse, and neuroscience is nowhere near ready for CBI. This current modality is important, IMO, because we could potentially see neural networks performing tasks on other software, not just SC2. Imagine a neural network performing copy-editing in Word, writing code for CRUD applications, etc. Those are some mind-blowing potentials, we'd be losing out if we slowed down to work on robot hands.
roenxi 7y ago
Interestingly, the hardest part of AlphaStar looked like it was researching how to stop the computer winning through an overwhelming mechanical advantage.
hamilyon2 7y ago
22 actions each 5 seconds isn't that generous. Pro players have to manage apm too. Conserve it or spend where needed. I would say it is fair.
Ajedi32 7y ago
Depends on what you're trying to test. You could just as easily argue that _not_ allowing the AI to make use of its natural APM and interface advantages is unfair, and that it should be allowed to play without restrictions in order to demonstrate its full potential. AlphaGo had an "unfair" advantage in its games against Lee Sedol in that it was able to "think" far faster than you could reasonably expect a human to, and could therefore evaluate many, many more moves than a human player possibly could have. If you artificially limited the speed at which AlphaGo was able to "think" to match human limitations, would it have been able to win against Lee? I'd argue probably not. Similarly, here we have an AI that's easily able to crush top SC players if it plays with an uncapped APM and no camera limitations, but only reaches grand master level when you impose artificial restrictions that force it to behave more like a human. The question of which configuration is more "fair" is kinda arbitrary; it depends on what your goal is.
PeterisP 7y ago
The competition is not the goal - the point isn't to see "who's better", the competition with real humans is just a tool to help improve the reasoning, planning and decision making capabilities in a less artificial environment than usually. The purpose of that project is to use Starcraft as a playground to test, review and improve reinforcement learning methods so that they can be used for other needs. Any aspect of "fairness" is relevant if and only if it helps that goal. APM limits are important because we want the computer to choose strategies that would actually be good choices in that situation even for a human player, instead of being able to win with strategies that are powerful only because of superhuman clicking speed. On the other hand, requiring the computer to press buttons with a robot hand doesn't really facilitate improvements to the decisionmaking part, so it's irrelevant even if it would make it more fair.
- drivebycomment 7y ago
  Yeah. Bulk of the other comments are useless for that reason. It's almost like humans have inferiority complex against AI...
est 7y ago
Maybe we can train a better AI at turned based strategy games. I hope Civ5 could open up its API.

by hoseja 7y ago

Erlich_Bachman 7y ago

If you read the paper, this is exactly what they have done, and this is why this achievement is so interesting.

Aperocky 7y ago

Or connect the computer to human neurons directly.

Symmetry 7y ago
You'd be able to save the time it takes a nerve impulse from head to hand that way. It's not much but apparently it can be significant enough that in some DotA games shorter players are disproportionately successful in the roles requiring the fastest reflexes.
- Shaanie 7y ago
  Is that supposed to be a joke? DotA doesn't rely on reflexes nearly enough for that to matter.
  - UserIsUnused 7y ago
    Data doesn't lie. When so many player play a game, even an almost irrelevant advantage can tip the scale. Or maybe it's a sociological factor, not a phisics ones. But the data doesn't lie.
    - VIPMaster 7y ago
      Sure, data doesn't lie, but where is the data? I'm a pretty seasoned DotA player myself and this is the first I'm hearing of any such phenomenon. I can't think of any hero that shorter players have been more successful on than taller players, or vice versa.

agumonkey 7y ago

some korean players were so quick at inputs you'd think they were half way to brain-computer interfaces already

ropman76 7y ago

Or even a turn based game, where click speed does not matter...

the_af 7y ago
But reaction time in a real time game is also an interesting problem with AI. If they factor out the merely mechanical (the UI itself), reacting to a situation unfolding in real time where you don't have a lot of time to think is a nice test of AI vs human strategic and tactical thinking.
swarnie_ 7y ago
My understanding is they've capped the AMP/EPM against a reasonably old EU/NA player.
bakuninsbart 7y ago
If Google could tackle Civilizations god-aweful AI next, I'd be over the moon.
- the_af 7y ago
  Do you mean Google should write a better AI than the one in Civilization? Interesting. But also consider this: in casual strategy videogames -- actually, strike "strategy" and just consider videogames -- most players don't want a really hard opponent. A computer opponent that is really very hard to beat is not what we want, because that'd be frustrating and many of us play videogames (yes, even strategy games!) to unwind; we want the illusion of challenge, an opponent that is challenging to beat but within the possibilities of every person who buys the game. Which, by the way, is also the case with Starcraft II. Most people who bought it aren't tournament players. They expect a challenge, but not a really hard challenge. Game difficulty is all about perception ;) PS: I shamefully confess I reloaded my X-COM (DOS!) game every time I lost one of the soldiers I was emotionally attached to. I don't like losing! :P
  - PeterisP 7y ago
    In strategy games like Civilization the "preferred" difficulty level is that hard/easy to beat because it gets extra resources. It would be preferrable to have the same difficulty level through opponents that play better/smarter while having the same game mechanic consequences as players if they make the same actions, but we currently can't, so they get artificial production multipliers and such.

Pfhreak 7y ago

What are you solving for here? They already limit the AI to human like speed, reaction times, and accuracy.

username90 7y ago

They are testing the AI's ability to do tactics and strategy, not motor and visual tasks. It has built in delay and needs to move around the map to gather information just like a human, so it doesn't have any significant unfair advantages. Edit: Note that the version they sent out to the ladder had significant larger delay, significant lower APM, and didn't get any information not visible on the screen unlike the first iteration.

jamra 7y ago
However the computer can macro while in a fight which is something people can’t dI. We would miss the fight and lose the game. It’s not just a tactics game. Attention span and where your eyes are matter.
- goalieca 7y ago
  It’s so bad that below master people shouldn’t really be doing too much micro during a fight because they’ll lose out on macro. Even in pro matches you see attention span issues and sometimes avoidance of too much micro to win. Really good Micro is going to win you any battle.
  - jamra 7y ago
    I’m in diamond 2 and I definitely micro in battles. The difference between platinum 1 and diamond 3 is largely macro but it very soon becomes micro as well.
- jcampbell1 7y ago
  Elite players do this all the time. Serral would use his standard tactic of attacking in two places as the same time, and alpha star couldn’t figure out the best way to deal with it. When alpha star did the same thing to him, he would mitigate the smaller attack and even predict alphastar’s escape route and crush it.
bsdetector 7y ago
When Watson won Jeopardy, its lead designer thought a 5 ms reaction time was fair because one time a human anticipating the buzzer light got 2 ms. Of course to any reasonable person a consistent 5 ms is obviously vastly superior to once in a blue moon lottery-winning luck. Sounds like it's the same deal here, where the designers made some effort to level the interface playing field, but also left in some advantages like instantly being able to select individual units (or whatever it was the other players felt was not humanly possible to do). Probably because, at some level, they really want their system to win.

bjornjaja 7y ago

Interesting thing about AI is no matter how you spin things, the more advanced it becomes, unfairness grows proportionally. After all, isn’t that the point of AI? To perform better at certain tasks than humans? We are visitors in the digital realm, just like when we put on a scuba suit and jump in the ocean—even the smallest fish can out-swim us.

WhompingWindows 7y ago

Then we are stuck with an inherently unfair system, as robotics is nowhere near ready for keyboard/mouse, and neuroscience is nowhere near ready for CBI. This current modality is important, IMO, because we could potentially see neural networks performing tasks on other software, not just SC2. Imagine a neural network performing copy-editing in Word, writing code for CRUD applications, etc. Those are some mind-blowing potentials, we'd be losing out if we slowed down to work on robot hands.

roenxi 7y ago

Interestingly, the hardest part of AlphaStar looked like it was researching how to stop the computer winning through an overwhelming mechanical advantage.

hamilyon2 7y ago

22 actions each 5 seconds isn't that generous. Pro players have to manage apm too. Conserve it or spend where needed. I would say it is fair.

Ajedi32 7y ago

Depends on what you're trying to test. You could just as easily argue that _not_ allowing the AI to make use of its natural APM and interface advantages is unfair, and that it should be allowed to play without restrictions in order to demonstrate its full potential. AlphaGo had an "unfair" advantage in its games against Lee Sedol in that it was able to "think" far faster than you could reasonably expect a human to, and could therefore evaluate many, many more moves than a human player possibly could have. If you artificially limited the speed at which AlphaGo was able to "think" to match human limitations, would it have been able to win against Lee? I'd argue probably not. Similarly, here we have an AI that's easily able to crush top SC players if it plays with an uncapped APM and no camera limitations, but only reaches grand master level when you impose artificial restrictions that force it to behave more like a human. The question of which configuration is more "fair" is kinda arbitrary; it depends on what your goal is.

PeterisP 7y ago

The competition is not the goal - the point isn't to see "who's better", the competition with real humans is just a tool to help improve the reasoning, planning and decision making capabilities in a less artificial environment than usually. The purpose of that project is to use Starcraft as a playground to test, review and improve reinforcement learning methods so that they can be used for other needs. Any aspect of "fairness" is relevant if and only if it helps that goal. APM limits are important because we want the computer to choose strategies that would actually be good choices in that situation even for a human player, instead of being able to win with strategies that are powerful only because of superhuman clicking speed. On the other hand, requiring the computer to press buttons with a robot hand doesn't really facilitate improvements to the decisionmaking part, so it's irrelevant even if it would make it more fair.

drivebycomment 7y ago
Yeah. Bulk of the other comments are useless for that reason. It's almost like humans have inferiority complex against AI...

est 7y ago

Maybe we can train a better AI at turned based strategy games. I hope Civ5 could open up its API.