As DeepMind's AlphaGo artificial intelligence continues to shock the Baduk (Go) community with consecutive victories against top pro player Lee Se-Dol, StarCraft has made an unexpected appearance in the spotlight. Google's Jeff Dean singled out StarCraft as a future challenge for DeepMind.

When interviewed by SBS News, Flash responded with guarded confidence.

"Honestly I think I can win. The difference with Baduk(Go) is both sides play in a state where you don't know what's happening, and you collect information—I think that point is a bit different."

Musicus

Germany23555 Posts

March 10 2016 14:12 GMT

So I am pretty sure they will go with Starcraft 1, question is if it's Vanilla or BW. Will take some time until this happens though.

brickrd

United States4894 Posts

March 10 2016 14:13 GMT

this is really cool! i've been following the go match a bit. competitive and learning AI are super fascinating. i also used to LOVE making custom games and watching AIs battle it out in BW and SC2, and the idea of watching strategically intelligent AI play the game excites me

if this gets serious and the AI is legit, i think showmatches would be an awesome way to generate interest in the game

ThomasjServo

15244 Posts

March 10 2016 14:34 GMT

Good to have goals, I'd watch a cast of it, but that is a tall, tall order.

B-royal

Belgium1330 Posts

March 10 2016 14:35 GMT

This will be quite scary I think.

AIs are able to have unlimited APM which allows for not only the obvious things such as impeccable micro, but also a significant boost in economy by micro-managing their workers (http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/brood-war/484849-improving-mineral-gathering-rate-in-brood-war).

Furthermore, when you think about it. AIs won't have as much of a problem with the "veiled information". For an AI it should be possible to determine based on unit building times and worker gathering rates to predict what an opponent reasonably could have during the game.

What will be the most difficult in my opinion is to have the AI make decisions such as where to attack, when to attack, multi-pronged attacks, when to get certain units and how to use spells such as dark swarm properly. It seems to me like it would be fairly easy to trick and abuse the behavior of the AI.

Pandemona

Charlie Sheens House50914 Posts

March 10 2016 14:36 GMT

Yea, i think AI would struggle in an RTS game. Yet i am still open to be surprised. Imagine God losing a bw series to an AI !!!

ETisME

Hong Kong12062 Posts

March 10 2016 14:38 GMT

if this is done on bw, there is even less chance to win, the AI would essentially playing without the buggy AI and mechanic barriers that made bw hard.

brickrd

United States4894 Posts

March 10 2016 14:42 GMT

On March 10 2016 23:36 Pandemona wrote:
Yea, i think AI would struggle in an RTS game. Yet i am still open to be surprised. Imagine God losing a bw series to an AI !!!

skepticism is natural, but i'm sure Go players were saying the same thing, just like chess players :D

Liquid`Zephyr

United States995 Posts

March 10 2016 14:45 GMT

i had read somewhere that these researchers thought an ai that could beat the best humans in sc1 would take 5-10 years. if thats true its unfortunate since the level of top play likely wont keep up to then (not enough interest/pros getting too old or other responsibilities/wrist problems etc)

Grumbels

Netherlands7028 Posts

March 10 2016 14:45 GMT

#10

i hope they are going to do this. I used to say something like the following: Starcraft AI's will easily crush all opposition if it is taken seriously as a research project by someone other than bachelor students. I imagine that is still the case, even if some people curiously said that because it is more difficult to quantify states in Starcraft it can't be done.

Glad_

France3 Posts

March 10 2016 14:46 GMT

#11

I want to see this on SC2 ! Imagine Innovation vs AI, machine vs machine, it would be so sick.

etofok

138 Posts

March 10 2016 14:47 GMT

#12

Honestly, the outcome will come down to its date: today? Flash. In a couple of years? AI 100%. Given the fact Google won't show up until they are ready they have already won, it just hasn't happened yet.

Even with APM cap a human will have very little chance. Given it's an RTS with FoW and such you can say AI technically can drop a game once in a while, but winning a long series after the AI is ready to show off is something that I do not expect.

"Time has been on my side, [...] fortunately there is no death sentence in this country"

c3rberUs

Japan11282 Posts

March 10 2016 14:50 GMT

#13

I'd still bet on pros or high level amateurs but a showmatch with an AI should bring attention to the game which is good.

OtherWorld

France17333 Posts

March 10 2016 14:52 GMT

#14

I'm quite confident FlaSh/a top BW player would win, at least if they do this before 2030 or so. It's much harder to determine the optimal move in a RTS than in a board strategy game like chess or Go.

opisska

Poland8852 Posts

March 10 2016 14:52 GMT

#15

Aren't there already many bots for BW? Are those easily beatable for good players or not?

sparklyresidue

United States5521 Posts

March 10 2016 14:55 GMT

#16

This would be super cool to watch, I bet the amount of case-specific AI for understanding weird micro tricks in an older game like BW would be high.

etofok

138 Posts

March 10 2016 14:57 GMT

#17

Aren't there already many bots for BW?

This is not just a bot mind you - it's a thinking AI that responds to situations accordingly to its accumulated experience. A bot is something that just has a decision making tree predetermined by its developer. This one develops its own decision making tree. On its own.

Watch 30 seconds of this guys.

WiSaGaN

203 Posts

March 10 2016 14:57 GMT

#18

I don't think this will become a strategy game.
It is more likely that the impeccable micro attack will just dominate the game.
How will Flash counter a perfect Drone hit-and-run?

pc_room_freak

United States26 Posts

March 10 2016 14:57 GMT

#19

Can we get tastosis cast the games for English speakers on a separate stream?

opisska

Poland8852 Posts

March 10 2016 15:00 GMT

#20

On March 10 2016 23:57 etofok wrote:

Show nested quote +

I understand that. My question is, whether those bots that exist are capable of beating a good player or not, because I just don't know that.

On one hand, I can imagine that the bots will be "strategically" stupid, but I can't judge if it couldn't be compensated by the flawless mechanics.