An artificial intelligence blessed by Google has defeated some top players in Starcraft 2. However, upon closer inspection, it’s not as impressive as it seems. The AI broke its own rules.
This news is raising eyebrows: The artificial intelligence “Alpha Star” was developed by the AI team “DeepMind”. It swept aside two players from the eSports team Liquid in two 5-game series in Starcraft 2, winning 10-1.
The opponents were impressed by its performance: the AI appeared to exhibit almost human behavior, winning with advanced moves and different strategies in each game.
DeepMind Team: Our AI cannot click faster
This is why it made such waves: Starcraft 2 is a real-time strategy game where speed of reaction is crucial.
One might think: “Of course the AI wins, it can click much faster.” But that’s precisely what it reportedly did not do.
The team behind the AI emphasized that AlphaStar did not defeat the players through superhuman action speed. Rather, the AI was constrained in this regard.
The AI AlphaStar could not perform more “actions per minute” than a human player.
These “actions per minute” (APM) averaged at 280 per minute. That is below the level of a professional team.
The idea, then, is that true “intelligence” won here – the AI was simply smarter than its opponents. The DeepMind team pointed out: “The AI won through superior macro and micro decisions, not through a superhuman click rate.”
This caused a stir because it appears there is indeed intelligence at work here.
Analyst: AI clicks superhumanly fast in sprints and always precisely
This is why it’s not that cool: The result was later analyzed and criticized on the site Medium. Apparently, the AI did win with superhuman clicking ability after all.
Though the average “APM” was relatively low, the AI could perform an insane number of actions per minute during critical phases. This went far beyond what is possible for humans.
AlphaStar could reach up to 1500 actions per minute during short sprints lasting only a few seconds, an author on Medium explains.
In these sprint moments, the AI could gain a lead, which increased due to the snowball effect.
Additionally, the critic explains, it’s not just the speed of clicks that matters, but also precision. Here the AI has a mechanical advantage. It doesn’t miss clicks.
A human can indeed click incredibly often (the spam clicking), but many clicks will go astray.
Ultimately, the AI AlphaStar did not win due to superior decisions but through faster and more precise clicking. The way the AI team presents the AI’s victory and how statistics are used comes dangerously close to deception.
To truly measure the intelligence of the AI, more handicaps would need to be imposed. At the moment, it carries out maneuvers that are physically impossible for a human.
Nevertheless, the critic also states that DeepMind and the performance in StarCraft 2 itself are very impressive.
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