Manipulation in the sense of being able to physically pick things up and manipulate them. Which is a difficult problem. StarCraft is moving a mouse pointer and clicking.

AlphaStar dropped the pretenses of even doing that much because it added too much complexity. For its show matches in Starcraft2, AlphaStar just uses an API to say "Target this specific enemy carrier". It doesn't have to do any vision recognition or differentiate between multiple overlapping units like humans do.

That was the original intent, but it appears the dropped it before public demos.

No - those systems simulate "control" at the level of giving commands, not actual motor control. So practically, current AI can win at Go and play at superhuman levels, but still cannot drive a car as well as most adults.

You can sit down for a game of Go or StarCraft against an AI, and it will wipe the floor with you.

But if you want it control a robot that's going to bring out a pot of tea while you play, you'll be wiping the floor.

This made me giggle like a dumbass. Thanks. I participate on the SC2 AI community. It is a-lot of fun. I use Python and CPP for my ML. The game matches are so unpredictable which makes the project questionable because the AI indeed smashes any opponent.

Even just laying bricks or picking fruit seems well beyond machines as of yet, despite all the promises to eliminate toil.