By Kang Seung-woo
After once again confirming machine domination of go, the world’s most difficult board game, Google’s artificial intelligence (AI) is now turning its attention to the real-time war strategy PC game “Starcraft.”
On Tuesday, the Google DeepMind computer program AlphaGo defeated the world’s top go player Ke Jie of China in Game 1 of the best-of-three series.
They will have two more games, but many go players believe humans will not be able to defeat the Google software in the complex strategy board game anymore. AlphaGo also claimed a resounding victory over Korean go player Lee Se-dol last year, beating him in four of five games.
Given the situation, Google has set its sights on Blizzard’s video game as the next test bed for AI supremacy, although it has yet to unveil a specific schedule for the much-touted AI-versus-human showdown in “Starcraft.”
“Starcraft,” one of the world’s most popular real-time strategy games, is seen as a bigger challenge for AI programs because players have to make decisions with only partial information and develop complex long-term plans in the game unlike a turn-based go match.
The AlphaGo developer remains upbeat over the next project.
“Starcraft is an interesting testing environment for current AI research because it provides a useful bridge to the messiness of the real world,” DeepMind said last November. “The skills required for an agent to progress through the environment and play Starcraft well could ultimately transfer to real-world tasks.”
Eyeing “Starcraft,” Google has made efforts to prepare its AI program for a possible AI-versus-human battle.
DeepMind announced its partnership with Blizzard last November to create a platform that will allow researchers and hobbyists around the world to build and train their own AI agents to play “Starcraft.”
In addition, the game maker plans to provide replay videos of “Starcraft” to help the AI learn strategies actually used in the game -- something similar to AlphaGo learning the manual of the go game.
However, the highly hyped match is raising controversy that it is physically unfavorable to human players.
“Starcraft” requires players to swiftly tap a keyboard and click a mouse and a top player can make 300 actions per minute, but an AI can make 20,000 per minute.
Considering the issue, Google is allegedly mulling installing a robot arm to even the playing field.