The relevance of this blog entry is to a large degree about AIs and Starcraft. To reach that point, I first have to point out what the recent advancements in AI technology mean for societies as a whole.

So far, we think of AIs without bodies, but it's obvious that earlier or later (or even already) that some AIs will use bodies. Self-driving cars are a good example. Currently, they are probably better than the average human driver, but not by enough to make them the clearly better choice.  Computing power is still in the vehicle because mobile internet isn't reliable enough. But I'm pretty certain that eventually all motorized traffic will use a central AI to direct cars on the best routes, avoid traffic jams and so on. A “low processing mode” with localized computing as back-up will be used if network connections aren't reliable. That mode will be very risk-adverse and possibly even require a human driver. At that time, a human driver will be extravagant, and cheaper car insurances will prohibit human driving outside the  “low processing mode” or LPM.



That will over time, with mass production efficiency, be the case for most jobs. Better doctors, better nurses, better soldiers and generals, better sexual companions, funnier jokes — nearly everything will change. We don't even need faster processors. We just require a lot of them, probably solar-powered in the earth orbit and communicating with lasers over satellites. I don't know. I'm not an engineer.  At this point, creating an AI is as hard as playing script kiddie and clicking together a custom trojan to steal your parents' login data or credit card. AIs have a considerable range, but many of them do just a basic operation over and over and over.

 I'm not entirely certain about my next point as I don't have access to bleeding-edge AI development, but if humans can do something intellectual easily, then AIs are probably much better at it. So, I assume that AIs can create other AIs once some restrictions are lifted. At this point, it is impossible to put the genie back into the bottle. If we limit options for AIs, we still can't stop the creation of new AIs. Simply because it is trivial at this point and if private citizens can do that, states, terrorists, criminals, any company can do it as well. We might moan about AIs stealing jobs, but that's like saying calculators cost jobs. It's true, but it's also inevitable.



This brings me to the thing that will probably take AIs the longest to surpass humans. You guessed it. It's Starcraft and SC2 even more than BroodWar because BW is — compared to SC2 — more physically demanding and less about innovation. My reasoning is this: Unlike the scam with AlphaGo (great for winning at Go, not useable for Starcraft) anyone competing needs a body. As Starcraft is a game about human limitations, anything that gives an unfair advantage, like thinking 1000 times faster as the average human or having cameras/eyes with a much higher frame rate than the 30 to 60 for humans. It means AIs would need to downgrade their hardware and their processing power so that they don't possess an unfair advantage. Only then AIs could actually compete and do you really think a massively downgraded AI would beat a Serral, Maru or MaxPax right away? They could analyse replays much faster. But simply because the normal method of overpowering an opponent with superior computing power doesn't work, Starcraft will probably be among the last human bastions to fall. Being mothers and fathers (but not lovers) belong on that list in my humble opinion as well.


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