It may seem like artificial intelligence is on a path to rule the world, but there’s still a flicker of hope for humans.
In December, Google’s DeepMind AI program called AlphaStar played a series of StarCraft II matches against two human players, though the results weren’t revealed until Thursday. While the AI won ten games, signaling that the robot overlords are still on a quest to take over, one of the professional human players still managed to squeak out a single win in his match-up against the computer.
This is it, ladies and gentlemen! For the first time in history a pro concedes to an Artificial Intelligence! GG WP @DeepMindAI! #AlphaStarhttps://t.co/5VE3QQNqiwpic.twitter.com/0iQKT13dEA
— StarCraft (@StarCraft) January 24, 2019
For the uninitiated, StarCraft II is a video game made by Blizzard Entertainment and is popular on the e-sports circuit, where professional gamers compete to win prizes. While in many traditional games humans take turns, StarCraft II is a bit different, requiring opponents to continually perform actions as the clock runs down.
StarCraft II also averages between “10 to the 26 legal actions at every time-step,” according to DeepMind’s blog, making it different than a game like chess, where a limited number of strategies could lead capturing the opponent’s king.
To people saying Mana didn't play well, trust me it's very difficult playing against an opponent like alphastar that plays completely different than a human and that you have no previous experience with. Alphastar is extremely impressive and imo unprecedented in gaming AI.
— Dario TLO Wünsch (@TLOgg) January 24, 2019
Demis Hassabis, founder and CEO of DeepMind AI, gave a shout out on Twitter to Grzegorz Komincz, the professional gamer known as MaNa who managed to outwit the computer during a single match.
While the results have interested gamers—and perhaps depressed some humans—Hassabis said the artificial intelligence powering DeepMind could have a way to help people in the real world.
“I’m excited that the techniques behind #AlphaStar could be useful in other problems such as weather prediction & climate modeling, which also involve predictions over very long sequences,” he tweeted.