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AlphaStar AI goes 10-1 against human pros in demonstration…

Forum Index > SC2 General
374 CommentsPost a Reply
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404AlphaSquad
Profile Joined October 2011
839 Posts
January 24 2019 23:21 GMT
#41
I was extremely skeptical in the beginning. However i was positively surprised by the result. It is clear that Deepmind has done an amazing job. I do want to point out though, that I am fairly certain that after multiple games, the Pros can figure out a way to defeat the AI easily by exploiting AI patterns. That said, I am eager to see how much Deepmind can improve on what they already have.

I also want to point out that Pro APM compared to AI APM is hardly comparable, since every action of a PC is deliberate, while alot of actions of pro players are also spam. Maybe thats just nitpicking though.
aka Kalevi
deacon.frost
Profile Joined February 2013
Czech Republic12129 Posts
January 24 2019 23:22 GMT
#42
On January 25 2019 08:21 404AlphaSquad wrote:
I was extremely skeptical in the beginning. However i was positively surprised by the result. It is clear that Deepmind has done an amazing job. I do want to point out though, that I am fairly certain that after multiple games, the Pros can figure out a way to defeat the AI easily by exploiting AI patterns. That said, I am eager to see how much Deepmind can improve on what they already have.

I also want to point out that Pro APM compared to AI APM is hardly comparable, since every action of a PC is deliberate, while alot of actions of pro players are also spam. Maybe thats just nitpicking though.

Pros should less spam and do more effective action. Shame on them! Learn from the AI while AI is learning from you, this is a two way street
I imagine France should be able to take this unless Lilbow is busy practicing for Starcraft III. | KadaverBB is my fairy ban mother.
No_Roo
Profile Joined February 2010
United States905 Posts
Last Edited: 2019-01-24 23:35:35
January 24 2019 23:35 GMT
#43
I think this image from their blog is very telling: https://deepmind.com/blog/alphastar-mastering-real-time-strategy-game-starcraft-ii/#gif-265

Why converge on practically monobuilding stalkers? Well, this is a unit composition that becomes more attractive the more you can out control your opponent for one thing. It's a good strategy if you can click faster and more accurately than your opponent.
(US) NoRoo.fighting
alexanderzero
Profile Joined June 2008
United States659 Posts
Last Edited: 2019-01-24 23:42:49
January 24 2019 23:41 GMT
#44
On January 25 2019 07:30 Rodya wrote:
Show nested quote +
On January 25 2019 07:17 No_Roo wrote:
As many others are pointing out, there's not much to be impressed with while the AI is playing a different game. We already know that a microbot using an API can outmicro a human using a mouse. I look forward to seeing what they come up with in the future, but what I saw today was no more interesting than if they had been feeding the AI bonus minerals.

Also looking forward to detailed replay analysis, I expect that will reveal that "APM" is a very misleading metric to be using.

Exactly; from what I've glanced at the games this isn't very interesting. Perfect orb-walking and dropship/blink micro. If humans could do that then all dropships would be heavily nerfed and blink would be removed from the game. I'm sorry Google - no one is shocked nor cares about this.

Sadly their marketing department will continue to push this bot down our throats while they tell themselves that they've revolutionized AI.


There's plenty of room to debate the fairness of this test, and what the results mean, but you're off base when you claim that this isn't a shocking result and a breakthrough. A lot of people don't realize this, but writing an AI that is even capable of accurately evaluating the game state and producing a halfway competent strategy IS the notable result here. Previous RTS AIs were totally incapable of doing anything resembling a reasonable strategy, whether they had 200 APM or 10,000 APM.

Think back to the match where the stalkers targeted down the immortal that had popped out of the robo. No programmer ever entered code that said immortals were strong and that they should be prioritized. The AI figured that much out for itself, along with everything else it did to get there.
I am a tournament organizazer.
AKnopf
Profile Blog Joined March 2011
Germany259 Posts
January 24 2019 23:41 GMT
#45
This was a very well thought-out, well structured presentation with very good production quality and I enjoyed every minute of it.

Of course there were factors benefiting AlphaStar (only one map, only one matchup, maybe higher eapm than humans can do), but this was just a presentation to show how neural networks can learn a very complex domain with reinforcement learning. It was not a tournament to decide the fate of humanity, so maybe we can just relax a little over such details.

It was truly fascinating to see how the agents got better from the first match to the second one with another week (~ 200 years) of training. Artosis was spot on to highlight the great decision making (respect for ramps, disengaging).

I look forward to what AlphaStar will be able to contribute to the game. Maybe pros will think about building more probes earlier. Maybe we could have a live evaluation during human tournament games to see who is ahead or what a good strategy would be from the current state. Such tools are used in chess to great effect and can really add to the casting of a tournament.

Of course the most important thing about AIs (to me) would be the whole ethic complexity. We develop something that by many definitions is truly intelligent, yet we have no rules and no laws on how to interact with such machines. Who is accountable for mistakes of the AI would be one of those questions.
The world - its a funny place
Gfire
Profile Joined March 2011
United States1699 Posts
January 24 2019 23:43 GMT
#46
On January 25 2019 08:35 No_Roo wrote:
Why converge on practically monobuilding stalkers? Well, this is a unit composition that becomes more attractive the more you can out control your opponent for one thing. It's a good strategy if you can click faster and more accurately than your opponent.

I'd argue not just when you have better control than your opponent but when you have better control in an absolute sense. Meaning even playing against other AI agents with the same mechanical abilities the Stalkers will be the best unit. Even counter units like Immortals, also controlled by the AI, will fail against Stalkers, right? With equal control on both sides, as long as that level of control is high enough.

I'd be interested what units it would land on in other matchups.
all's fair in love and melodies
jalstar
Profile Blog Joined September 2009
United States8198 Posts
January 24 2019 23:48 GMT
#47
It's possible that the AI was overfit to its handicap, in the last match there were still multiple groups of stalkers over a screen away from each other, but the AI was slower without the handicap. Reminds me of Dota 2 and OpenAI, where the AI learned how to play using multiple couriers and developed strategies to fit that handicap, then lost to humans without it.
vesicular
Profile Blog Joined March 2010
United States1310 Posts
January 24 2019 23:53 GMT
#48
The AI result is quite incredible and is a hell of an achievement. Any "handicap" it had does not make this less so.

Like everyone, I'm excited to see how it fares in the future when not using a raw interface, while facing pros who are not off-race as well as how it does in non-mirror match ups.

The future here is rather exciting.
STX Fighting!
teamTV
Profile Joined June 2012
France16 Posts
Last Edited: 2019-01-24 23:58:19
January 24 2019 23:55 GMT
#49
The AI is in the good way. However, I was expecting more elaborate strategies. The AI kept bugging doing F2 against a drop harass instead of doing a phoenix ^^.

From what that I have seen from the stream and the replays : equivalent of 3/4 gold players playing archon vs GM :D. Not really fair. Give the AI a mouse and the same camera : different story.

10-1 is a misleading title indeed.
Xamo
Profile Joined April 2012
Spain886 Posts
Last Edited: 2019-01-25 00:00:49
January 24 2019 23:59 GMT
#50
Stalkers are balanced for humans and not for agents. As AlphaStar cannot perform more actions per minute than Mana, perhaps it is that it can perceive ("see") the HP-level of all stalkers at the same time, it doesn't need to focus its eyes in a particular one after the other like Mana would do. It always selects the best stalker to blink away, and uses its APM super-effectively. Under this conditions, stalkers are overpowered.

Most agents build way more stalkers than any other unit (see statistics at deepmind's website), because it is the best one on their "hands". Attacking or defending with it is too good of a strategy. This limits the strategic depth of the agent, particularly it does not need to scout because nothing counters stalkers properly.

To overcome this limitation, they could lower the average APM limit while training, or put an absolute limit to the instantaneous APM.

Almonst forgot it: AlphaStar is a tremendous achievement even at this stage of its development. Best gaming AI ever, easily. I cannot wait to see what Deepmind brings next time.
My life for Aiur. You got a piece of me, baby. IIIIIIiiiiiii.
LHK
Profile Joined May 2015
204 Posts
Last Edited: 2019-01-25 00:05:42
January 25 2019 00:02 GMT
#51
While this was cool, i'm really disappointed in

>While the first ten agents agents were effectively able to 'see' the entire map at once (NOT a maphack—more akin to a max zoom-out), the new agent was given restrictions to mimic human player's field-of-vision limitations during a game.

So much of Starcraft 2 is screen placement and attention. Letting the Agent basically be able to interact with an entire map at one point really defeats the purpose in my opinion. It's like letting your opponent move their chess pieces whenever they want while you can still only move 1 per turn. Feels like in that regard the Agent wasn't even playing "Starcraft" at that point.

That said, it's really cool and I'm happy for them.. It just feels like something is off with their approach. Showcasing an Agent with SUCH a huge advantage (arguably a core, fundamental aspect of SC2 being removed in its favor) vs a human player just doesn't feel like it means much to me. You can't handicap an agent enough to make up for this insane advantage.
-Laura
Waxangel
Profile Blog Joined September 2002
United States33629 Posts
Last Edited: 2019-01-25 00:11:14
January 25 2019 00:11 GMT
#52
On January 25 2019 09:02 LHK wrote:
While this was cool, i'm really disappointed in

>While the first ten agents agents were effectively able to 'see' the entire map at once (NOT a maphack—more akin to a max zoom-out), the new agent was given restrictions to mimic human player's field-of-vision limitations during a game.

So much of Starcraft 2 is screen placement and attention. Letting the Agent basically be able to interact with an entire map at one point really defeats the purpose in my opinion. It's like letting your opponent move their chess pieces whenever they want while you can still only move 1 per turn. Feels like in that regard the Agent wasn't even playing "Starcraft" at that point.

That said, it's really cool and I'm happy for them.. It just feels like something is off with their approach. Showcasing an Agent with SUCH a huge advantage (arguably a core, fundamental aspect of SC2 being removed in its favor) vs a human player just doesn't feel like it means much to me. You can't handicap an agent enough to make up for this insane advantage.


I mean all of these handicaps to try and mimic human limitations will be flawed. You could even take this further to and say "well the AI should only be able to focus its 'eyes' on a X by Y size portion of a screen at a time, and require at least Z milliseconds to process that information." You'll never please everyone, and the best we're gonna get to is 'good enough.'
AdministratorHey HP can you redo everything youve ever done because i have a small complaint?
xongnox
Profile Joined November 2011
540 Posts
January 25 2019 00:16 GMT
#53
Well the first 10 games was played with no "camera simulation", ie like "full zoom out" : the AI can see, react, click and micro everywhere visible on the map. This way perfect blink micro on 3 separated fronts surrounding MaNa army was possible with not-that-much APM, but still a very inhuman action.

Camera decision (where to look) and minimap-guessing ( you see a dot on the minimap : what is it ? should you respond to it now or next ? ) is very important skills in decent human players.

Furthermore, between game+screen+eyes+brain, their is a minimal delay to understand and react each time a player change the camera location. Then there is even delay with mouse control, etc.

Still, very impressive results although expected coming from Deepmind.
Next step should be more mechanical fairness (see the minimap and 1 screen, max 4 screens/second, etc, mouse cursor simulation, etc) before playing all races all MU, because it is already over-fitting the "full zoom-out" setting, as seen in the mass blink-surrounding play.
jalstar
Profile Blog Joined September 2009
United States8198 Posts
January 25 2019 00:20 GMT
#54
The last AI we saw was still very good and would have beaten other humans who aren't as good as Mana
swissman777
Profile Joined September 2014
1106 Posts
Last Edited: 2019-01-25 00:23:12
January 25 2019 00:21 GMT
#55
I don't like how a lot of the news articles imply that AlphaStar had beaten the best that humans can offer. I believe this conclusion should be given once the BEST human players had the opportunity to interact with the AI for a while to come with strategies catered towards the AI, and then the AI beats them 99 percent of the time. Otherwise, the AI is just another extremely good player, but not the unbeatable colossus that it was in chess and go.

Moreover, deepmind should really cap the peak apm, bc no player can go 1000 apm microing stalkers at three different fronts chipping away all the units little by little. That's just micro-bot doing its thing. I wish we could limit its apm so much so that AI is forced to beat the human players not by micro, but by sheer ingenuity and picking the right compositions. That will be the actual great milestone in AI imo.
xongnox
Profile Joined November 2011
540 Posts
January 25 2019 00:21 GMT
#56
On January 25 2019 09:11 Waxangel wrote:
You'll never please everyone, and the best we're gonna get to is 'good enough.'


Yep. But full zoom-out hack (while very convenient from a technical standpoint) is far away to "Good Enough" conditions but closer to obvious cheat. It is even close to a human-used cheat, because even human players play better with possibility to zom-out more.
snakeeyez
Profile Joined May 2011
United States1231 Posts
Last Edited: 2019-01-25 00:25:06
January 25 2019 00:24 GMT
#57
IDK if they will, but I would like to see alphastar play some more games against some of these pro players. Also it would be interesting to see the best like an innovation play against the AI.
I still think what they have right here, and these results of a fair AI that is no cheating playing a full game at this level and winning is still a pretty amazing achievement. I would like to see more games where the pro players can look for more weaknesses, but the AI being completely unpredictable makes it harder to predict than a normal person
Its too bad they cant transfer this AI to brood war so we could see a flash or jaedong play against it. I also think brood war is a more balanced time tested game than sc 2
swissman777
Profile Joined September 2014
1106 Posts
January 25 2019 00:24 GMT
#58
Do you think we'll soon get the best best players to play against AlphaStar? I wish they had at least one S level player today instead of Mana or TLO (though not to say they're bad players at all).
xongnox
Profile Joined November 2011
540 Posts
January 25 2019 00:25 GMT
#59
On January 25 2019 09:20 jalstar wrote:
The last AI we saw was still very good and would have beaten other humans who aren't as good as Mana

Yes but it is time to stop over-fitting the zoom-out. I guess as seen with the 11th game they understand that. So using the cheat-code version to get to 10-0 is a bit frustrating, ideally they should have waited for the more-legit version to be able to win games vs pro before the exhibition matches.
swissman777
Profile Joined September 2014
1106 Posts
January 25 2019 00:26 GMT
#60
Also does anyone know how to open the replays? I can't seem to be able to open them.
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