AI Couldn’t Beat a Team of Professional Gamers at DOTA 2, but It Held Its Own

A few last-minute gameplay changes might have tripped up the AI.

AI DEFEAT. AI may be able to best humans at games like Go and chess and poker. But for the cooperative strategy video game DOTA 2, AI still can't beat the pros — at least not yet.

That's the major takeaway from The International, a tournament for the computer strategy game DOTA 2. During the tournament, research group OpenAI had its OpenAI Five, a team comprising five neural networks, play against professional DOTA 2 players.

It was a best-of-three competition, but the team from paiN Gaming and an all-star team of pros from China confirmed humanity's superiority over the AI team in just two matches.

TWO TOURNEY TWEAKS. It's not that the AI is bad at the game. In fact, back in June, OpenAI Five beat a team of five human amateurs at DOTA 2.

But this match was different in a few significant ways. Previously, each member of the AI team had its own invulnerable courier, a key component of the game that delivers supplies to players. For The International, each team had only one courier to share — the OpenAI Five had just a few days to adjust to that prior to the match.

Players couldn't choose their own heroes this time around, either — DOTA 2 experts picked the characters for each player in the tournament, no matter if they were human or AI.

BACK ON TOP. Though the humans emerged victorious, OpenAI Five did hold its own. Each match lasted between 45 and 51 minutes — the humans didn't simply destroy the AI team right out the gate. With a bit more time to adjust to the changes from the June match, the AI team might have fared a bit better, too.

For now, the OpenAI researchers plan to continue to improve the system, so maybe it'll be ready to bring it in a future rematch.

READ MORE: AI Isn't Good Enough to Beat the Best 'Dota 2' Players Just Yet [Engadget]

More on OpenAI: The Digest: Five AI Algorithms Worked Together to Beat Humans at a Strategy Game