--- title: "StarCraft Champion Trounced by AI: “Very Human Style of Gameplay”" description: "Alphabet's DeepMind AI dominated at the game of StarCraft II beating two of the world's best (human) players 5-0 in a best-of-five." date: "2019-01-25" modified: "2019-01-25" authors: - name: "Victor Tangermann" job_title: "Senior Editor" link: "https://futurism.com/authors/victor" url: "https://futurism.com/google-deepmind-ai-beat-starcraft-ii-players" categories: - "Artificial Intelligence" tags: - "alphabet" - "artificial intelligence" - "DeepMind" - "machine learning" - "starcraft" --- # StarCraft Champion Trounced by AI: “Very Human Style of Gameplay” ![Alphabet's DeepMind AI dominated at the game of StarCraft II beating two of the world's best (human) players 5-0 in a best-of-five.]() *\Image: DeepMind\* ## AlphaStar Shutout Party's over. The machines have the upper hand. Alphabet's revolutionary DeepMind artificial intelligence bot, dubbed AlphaStar, just dominated at a game of StarCraft II — a popular sci-fi strategy video game — by beating two of the world's best human players five games to zero. According to an AlphaStar [Q&A on Reddit](), it took up to "200 years of learning" until AlphaStar was able to keep up. ## "Very Human Style of Gameplay" StarCraft II is one of the top competitive esports video games out there, with professional gamers competing at international championships for prizes of [up to $700,000](). Two of those players — Grzegorz "MaNa" Komincz from Poland and Dario "TLO" Wunsch from Germany — took on DeepMind's AlphaStar bot on Thursday. AlphaStar had some key advantages: it was looking at a zoomed-out bird's eye view of the entire map, whereas players usually focus in on a single area of the map. An experimental version that only saw a smaller portion of the map, like a human, was not able to beat them at the game, [*New Scientist* reports](). The reason the AI had a zoomed out view was "mostly due to computational reasons," according to Oriol Vinyals, DeepMind AlphaStar's lead researcher, who [answered some questions]() over on Reddit. Despite that advantage, AlphaStar played convincingly like a human. "I was impressed to see AlphaStar pull off advanced moves and different strategies across almost every game, using a very human style of gameplay I wouldn’t have expected," said Komincz during DeepMind's [livestream]() yesterday. ## Only the Beginning DeepMind ran on a straightforward computer with an off-the-shelf graphics card. It did have access to an additional 16 "tensor processing units" for deep learning that trained it how to play — not exactly average gamer gear. To many, the results don't come as a surprise. "We were pretty much to a point where it was just a matter of time," Georgia Tech associate professor Mark Riedl [told *Wired*](). "In a way, beating humans at games has gotten boring." **READ MORE:** [DeepMind Beats Pros at StarCraft in Another Triumph for Bots]() \[*Wired*\] ***More on AlphaStar: [DeepMind is Teaching AIs How to Manage Real-World Tasks Through Gaming]()*** ## Author I've been at Futurism since 2017, where my role has evolved to encompass design, writing, and increasingly editing. I've always been fascinated by space exploration and advanced transportation, which I've leaned into by interviewing luminaries in those fields while closely following the dimensions of policy and regulation that allow next-generation projects to succeed -- or, sometimes, to fail. I'm also keenly interested in the effects of generative AI on society, policies, and democratic institutions, as well as clean energy, physics and biology, and the vagaries of tech leadership. My work for Futurism has been cited by publications including Ars Technica, Gizmodo, PC Magazine, Jalopnik, Fox News, and the New York Post. I spent my childhood living in locations including Manila, the Philippines, and Geneva, Switzerland, attended McGill University, and now live in Toronto, Canada. Before Futurism I worked at AskMen and a small photography studio. In my free time, I'm an avid gardener, foodie, and craft beer lover, as well as a maker of artisanal hot pepper sauces. I have a magnificent dog named Freida. ### Author social links [Bluesky]()