Grandmaster level in StarCraft II using multi-agent reinforcement learning

Re:Grandmaster level in StarCraft II using multi-agent reinf... by Strom on Thursday October 31, 2019 @03:37PM (#21412752)

The mistakes it makes are due to bad decisions. There have been no claims by DeepMind that they have some sort of chaos engineering [1] going on where the AI decides one thing and then the output system actually does another thing.

Also I think you overestimate the AI/IT knowledge of these top players that they're consulting. I have great respect towards them, but they're not renaissance men [2] who both play 10 hours of StarCraft per day and also know the subtleties of how computers work, not to mention bleeding edge AI. You can watch the previous showmatch [3] to see how DeepMind people lack knowledge of StarCraft and how the pro players they're consulting lack understanding of the AI and both are learning new things live on air. Its obvious that their cooperation is bearing fruit as they spend more time talking to each other, as evidenced by the new APM limits. However I'm willing to bet that they would reach many more good conclusions if they just continue working together.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaos_engineering

[2] The problem with both parties (the pros & deepmind) is that they're so overspecialized. I'm nowhere near as good as them at their respective fields, but I am a professional programmer and diamond in StarCraft II. In addition I've built StarCraft II AI myself, although with different goals related to finding optimal strategies.

[3] https://www.twitch.tv/videos/369062832

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Re:Grandmaster level in StarCraft II using multi-agent reinf... by chillee on Thursday October 31, 2019 @08:28PM (#21415187)

You're not giving them enough credit. Oriol Vinyals (head of this project) is both one of the leading AI researchers + was highest ranked StarCraft player in Spain back in high school.

Certainly the game is different, meta has changed, etc. But he's definitely not an amateur and is probably in the top percentile of players.

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Re:Grandmaster level in StarCraft II using multi-agent reinf... by halflings on Friday November 01, 2019 @01:21AM (#21416466)

>[2] The problem with both parties (the pros & deepmind) is that they're so overspecialized. I'm nowhere near as good as them at their respective fields, but I am a professional programmer and diamond in StarCraft II. In addition I've built StarCraft II AI myself, although with different goals related to finding optimal strategies.

So many things wrong with this comment.

You're nowhere near a professional StarCraft player if you're in Diamond league (I play casually and I'm on high plat, bordering Diamond), and Oriol Vinyals, the lead research scientist behind this project, is one of the most renowned scientists in the field and used to play StarCraft at a professional level. They also said that other employees at DeepMind are at Masters level, and helped test the AlphaStar.

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Re:Grandmaster level in StarCraft II using multi-agent reinf... by Strom on Friday November 01, 2019 @05:41AM (#21417286)

You quoted me saying that I'm not as good as them and then you say that my statement is wrong because I'm not as good as them. We seem to be in agreement. Maybe you misread? Anyway that was just a footnote to point towards my generalist nature, because I think that's a fundamental reason why I immediately see these things while for them it takes time to realize. Also to be even more fair towards them, my generalist knowledge around computer controlled gaming goes way beyond StarCraft II as I've written bots for many different games.

My main argument revolves around APM. Oriol Vinyals might be great, but I've also seen him make a statement on video in 2019 [1] how restricting the AI based on average APM during the whole game is reasonable. He has blindspots that someone like me can immediately spot.

[1] https://www.twitch.tv/videos/369062832

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Re:Grandmaster level in StarCraft II using multi-agent reinf... by posterboy on Friday November 01, 2019 @10:07AM (#21418971)

These live on air admissions of prior ignorance that you mention maybe for illustrative purposes, a PR gag to explain the difficult approaches to each other they had taken in development. It's like late night shows.

You must be one of the people who think really tv programs were really real.

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