Blizzard and Google are inviting developers to experiment with artificial intelligence in the game "StarCraft II."
"StarCraft II" Challenge
According to VentureBeat, Google and Blizzard announced their collaboration at the BlizzCon fan event in Anaheim, California, on Friday, Nov. 4. Google's DeepMind AI division explains the partnership on a blog post that clarifies why "StarCraft II" has been chosen for machine-learning research.
Google's blog post states that "StarCraft" provides a useful bridge to the real-world, making an interesting testing environment for current AI research. The skills required for an AI system to play "StarCraft" could transfer to real-world tasks. The game requires players to learn information and act on the information learned over a long period of time.
The game provides an environment with ever-changing variables and this makes for a complex challenge. Google's blog explains that "StarCraft" makes an interesting contrast to other information games such as go and chess. Being a real-time strategy game played simultaneously by both players, it is required that every decision is computed quickly and efficiently."
DeepMind AI
Researchers can use Google's DeepMind AI to test various artificial intelligence theories within Blizzard's real-time strategy game "StartCraft II.". The main focus of the research is to determine new ways to teach AI machines on how to make sense of complicated systems.
In the real-time strategy game "StarCraft II" players are gathering resources to pay for offensive and defensive units that help them fight against one another. The game has already its own competitive community composed of players with high skill level. But Google hopes that its DeepMind AI will be able to win against the human players.
Google's ambitious goal is not so surprising, taking into consideration the fact that DeepMind AI has previously conquered complicated turn-based games like go and chess. In this context, it makes sense that Google is setting DeepMind AI's next frontier with a real-time strategy game.
DeepMind is a British artificial intelligence company now a part of Google. The DeepMind AI revolutionary system is based on machine learning and built on neural networks. By teaching itself through trial and error, Google's DeepMind AI was able to learn how to beat the best go players in the world.
The researchers had only to explain DeepMind how to determine success. The AI system played games against itself on a loop, reinforcing any strategies that lead to more success. Now, within the new experiment, it is expected that humans will have to teach AI very little about how to win at "StarCraft."
The AI system will be asked to prioritize how much damage it does to the enemy's primary base and how long it survives. Researchers may also try to find a more abstract way of defining success in "StartCraft II." According to The Verge, creating an AI system strong at playing "StarCraft" would also have major implications for the game itself, offering the potential for creating customized "StrarCraft II" virtual coaches.
The complex strategy game involves battle tactics and resource management. The present AI system in "StarCraft II" operates on completely different principles to DeepMind's AI. The challenge for Blizzard is to design a "StarCraft" AI player that is being bound by the same limitations as a human player but it is stronger.
