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> more recently saw its self-taught agents thrash pros in the video game StarCraft II. Clarification: DeepMind never fully 'beat' SC2 pros the way they did in

> more recently saw its self-taught agents thrash pros in the video game StarCraft II. Clarification: DeepMind never fully 'beat' SC2 pros the way they did in Go. Their AI was super impressive, certainly far beyond any other that has been developed. But they only went so far as consistently doing 'okay' against top tier players on the ladder, and that with some significant caveats to their performance. In particular, it's debatable to the extent that they're overpowering some players through sheer APM, rather than superior tactics or strategy. Yes, this is true even after they put in certain restrictions. And given their recent silence on the issue, it looks like they may have given up, which would be unfortunate.

andy_ppp 6y ago
For those who didn't know (like me!) APM is Actions per minute... Seems as though the AI should be limited on this if it's to truly be outplaying humans; we all know computers are good at doing many many repetitive tasks extremely quickly.
- shawnz 6y ago
  It was limited, but the problem is that it was limited over various windows of time. The bot was able to execute short bursts of extremely high APM within those windows by being slower during non-peak moments.
  - andy_ppp 6y ago
    That makes it more impressive but I guess if it did learn to be efficient like that it optimised to the rules. Although, to be fair, human players seem to be super human in this statistic - I was thinking about maybe 1-5 actions per second but the world record is 818 APM === 13.67 actions per second!
  - TulliusCicero 6y ago
    Also, its interface with the game is simply more efficient. The APM managed superhuman control without using control groups; for a human player, not using control groups at all would be an enormous handicap. The implication here is that the AI can select units and buildings arbitrarily much faster than humans can, and doesn't need to spend APM on creating and maintaining control groups themselves.
loufe 6y ago
No, it's not true. If you followed closely their APM was hamstringed to the point of being lower than players in many cases. In many of the playbacks I've seen it is the strategy that helped them win. Though when they lose against grandmasters it is often obviously poor decisions caused by a rabbit hole of thinking.
- FeepingCreature 6y ago
  The one thing I was really wishing they'd demonstrate but that I don't think they did was a functional understanding of hidden information, ie. natural scouting and positioning to catch hidden moving units that you've seen glimpses of. I didn't see anything of that in the games, the AI won afaict largely on a superior understanding of economy.
  - ajuc 6y ago
    In the game after they introduced camera movement speed limits the AI lost pretty badly to warp prism harrasement. It reacted like a noob (moving the whole army back and forth instead of splitting it). That was a version that was trained for shorter time, though. I'd say AI won mostly because of better micro and less mistakes, but I haven't seen the most recent games, maybe that changed?
- JRKrause 6y ago
  This isn't true. Alphastar achieved super-human APM, in excess of 1500, in short bursts. Even if it's average APM was lower than a human this is still not a good comparison because it's value-per-click (e.g. not misclicking) is going to be extremely high. It's victories were largely due to superior micro control and a highly effective method of judging it's relative power in an engagement(i.e. when to push an engagement versus retreating). I think this says more about Starcraft II as a game than it does about the learning ability of DNNs. When you have perfect Stalker micro, nothing else in SC2 really matters (to some zero-th order approximation).
- hurrrr 6y ago
  Human players tends to maintain high APM even in "idle" situation like the beginning of the match in which you don't have many things to do. They do it because it's easier for an human to have constant APM instead of spiking in critical situation like combats. I think that this pumps the average APM of a human player. Example of human player playing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bexWuHmV32A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bexWuHmV32A
DecayingOrganic 6y ago
Here's what one of the pros who played against AlphaStar had to say about it: "MaNa: I would say that clearly the best aspect of its game is the unit control. In all of the games when we had a similar unit count, AlphaStar came victorious. The worst aspect from the few games that we were able to play was its stubbornness to tech up. It was so convinced to win with basic units that it barely made anything else and eventually in the exhibition match that did not work out. There weren’t many crucial decision making moments so I would say its mechanics were the reason for victory."
- TulliusCicero 6y ago
  The AI was really good at determining when a fight was winnable/unwinnable, I think. That was the most impressive part for me, usually AI's for BW/SC2 were awful at knowing when to push vs retreat. AlphaStar turned around on a dime when the human player had a better army.

andy_ppp 6y ago

For those who didn't know (like me!) APM is Actions per minute... Seems as though the AI should be limited on this if it's to truly be outplaying humans; we all know computers are good at doing many many repetitive tasks extremely quickly.

shawnz 6y ago
It was limited, but the problem is that it was limited over various windows of time. The bot was able to execute short bursts of extremely high APM within those windows by being slower during non-peak moments.
- andy_ppp 6y ago
  That makes it more impressive but I guess if it did learn to be efficient like that it optimised to the rules. Although, to be fair, human players seem to be super human in this statistic - I was thinking about maybe 1-5 actions per second but the world record is 818 APM === 13.67 actions per second!
- TulliusCicero 6y ago
  Also, its interface with the game is simply more efficient. The APM managed superhuman control without using control groups; for a human player, not using control groups at all would be an enormous handicap. The implication here is that the AI can select units and buildings arbitrarily much faster than humans can, and doesn't need to spend APM on creating and maintaining control groups themselves.

loufe 6y ago

No, it's not true. If you followed closely their APM was hamstringed to the point of being lower than players in many cases. In many of the playbacks I've seen it is the strategy that helped them win. Though when they lose against grandmasters it is often obviously poor decisions caused by a rabbit hole of thinking.

FeepingCreature 6y ago
The one thing I was really wishing they'd demonstrate but that I don't think they did was a functional understanding of hidden information, ie. natural scouting and positioning to catch hidden moving units that you've seen glimpses of. I didn't see anything of that in the games, the AI won afaict largely on a superior understanding of economy.
- ajuc 6y ago
  In the game after they introduced camera movement speed limits the AI lost pretty badly to warp prism harrasement. It reacted like a noob (moving the whole army back and forth instead of splitting it). That was a version that was trained for shorter time, though. I'd say AI won mostly because of better micro and less mistakes, but I haven't seen the most recent games, maybe that changed?
JRKrause 6y ago
This isn't true. Alphastar achieved super-human APM, in excess of 1500, in short bursts. Even if it's average APM was lower than a human this is still not a good comparison because it's value-per-click (e.g. not misclicking) is going to be extremely high. It's victories were largely due to superior micro control and a highly effective method of judging it's relative power in an engagement(i.e. when to push an engagement versus retreating). I think this says more about Starcraft II as a game than it does about the learning ability of DNNs. When you have perfect Stalker micro, nothing else in SC2 really matters (to some zero-th order approximation).
hurrrr 6y ago
Human players tends to maintain high APM even in "idle" situation like the beginning of the match in which you don't have many things to do. They do it because it's easier for an human to have constant APM instead of spiking in critical situation like combats. I think that this pumps the average APM of a human player. Example of human player playing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bexWuHmV32A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bexWuHmV32A

DecayingOrganic 6y ago

Here's what one of the pros who played against AlphaStar had to say about it: "MaNa: I would say that clearly the best aspect of its game is the unit control. In all of the games when we had a similar unit count, AlphaStar came victorious. The worst aspect from the few games that we were able to play was its stubbornness to tech up. It was so convinced to win with basic units that it barely made anything else and eventually in the exhibition match that did not work out. There weren’t many crucial decision making moments so I would say its mechanics were the reason for victory."

TulliusCicero 6y ago
The AI was really good at determining when a fight was winnable/unwinnable, I think. That was the most impressive part for me, usually AI's for BW/SC2 were awful at knowing when to push vs retreat. AlphaStar turned around on a dime when the human player had a better army.