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By Yoon Sung-won
Professional gamers will play the computer strategy game "StarCraft" against artificial intelligence (AI) programs in Seoul next month, according to Sejong University, Wednesday.
The university plans to host the match March 30 when it will bring AI systems to see if they can outplay humans in diverse aspects of game performance.
"We have fixed the date for the StarCraft competition between AI programs and human gamers," Sejong University spokesman Kim Dae-jong told The Korea Times, Wednesday. "Details are not decided yet and we are currently working out how to organize the event."
The spokesman also said human players will be chosen from gamers at Sejong Cyber University. Korea's most-renowned professional StarCraft players such as Lee Young-ho, Kim Taek-yong and Song Byung-gu have attended this university.
Sejong University computer engineering professor Kim Kyung-joong said the AI systems participating in the annual Computations Intelligence in Games (CIG) StarCraft AI competition will be chosen to play against human players in the match.
The CIG competition is organized by the U.S. International Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) and has been considered one of the world's three largest AI StarCraft competitions alongside Canada's Artificial Intelligence and Interactive Digital Entertainment (AIIDE) and the Czech Republic's Student StarCraft AI Tournament (SSCAIT). Sejong University said it has hosted the CIG competitions since 2010.
At this competition, AI-based gaming programs, called "bots," made for multiplayer modes play with each other without human intervention.
The professor and his research team developed a StarCraft AI program called "Xel'naga" in 2011. Xel'naga is the only StarCraft AI system ever developed in Korea. Its name was derived from one of the highly advanced alien races of the StarCraft series.
In 2011, Kim and his team brought Xel'naga to join the CIG competition. Xel'naga ranked first in the preliminary round and finished third in the finals.
"The annual CIG competition ranks AI programs by winning rates in matches against each other," Kim said. "We seek to test if the best-performing AI programs at the CIG event can compete with outstanding human players."
Kim said the planned match will invite not only professional-level gamers but also players with relatively moderate levels of performance because the AI programs are not expected to outplay top-notch professionals.
"As AI programs made for the Asian game go have gradually advanced, not jumping into beating top professionals, we are thinking of matches against human players with diverse levels of game play," Kim said.
Kim said StarCraft AI programs' greatest weaknesses are strategic approaches, comprehension of battle progress and flexibility. He said, on the other hand, the AIs will exceed humans in simple tasks such as producing units or moving them.
According to the professor, research on such programs is in the early stages of introducing advanced AI technologies such as neural networks and self-learning algorithms.
"Whereas other AI sectors are increasingly adopting technologies like neural networks, we still are in the early stages because we cannot use highly complicated neural networks due to the fast pace of game play," he said. "We are also looking into self-learning algorithms. Programs can change their strategies by repeatedly playing against the same opponent."
Once this showdown opens as planned, it will be one of the world's first cases of human professional StarCraft gamers facing AIs.
When Google DeepMind's AI system AlphaGo played against Korean go champion Lee Se-dol last March, DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis said he was considering StarCraft as one of the next tests of the AI's capabilities. But no details about this competition have been revealed so far.
