Age of AI

We are in the age of AI.

From takes that suggest it’ll revolutionize the way we work to glimpses of a full on cyberpunk revolution, we are living in a future that would have looked sci-fi to those living a few generations before. Imaginations of interconnected networks in an abstract cybernetic realm had penetrated mass consciousness in the 1980s, through works like Neuromancer and Blade Runner. What artists tried hard to predict and capture, we are actually a part of. AI esports domination is just one aspect the vast advanced planet as we know it.

We live in a futuristic world, though perhaps more tame than artists may have imagined. We are currently breathing in an era where advertisers can access an infinite ocean of information and target ads to thousands of screens in a flash. Our pockets hold the largest library in human history. We merely have to turn on our phone’s 4G browsers and input letters into a search bar. Robot dogs can charge themselves and respond to human faces. The possibility of a Mars landing and space vacations are becoming more and more real.

Something that our species built can lay to waste a human’s grueling dedication to theory, practice, and mentorship at a craft.

The Dominance of AI in Chess

In February of 1996, When Deep Blue defeated World Chess Champion Garry Kasparov in an epic bout of Man vs Machine, he was furious. He refused to believe that a machine was capable of the moves being generated. He accused the Deep Blue team of using other top chess players to help the computer by inputting suggestions. By that point, it had widely been considered, in the game’s thousand year history, to be the greatest player of all time. His launch towards the summit of the game’s greats required him to continuously innovate and push his mental limits.

What is human genius and intuition compared to raw, brutal calculation?

What to him was anger was a shock to the world. All at once it was a symbol of humankind’s triumph and humankind’s fall. Something that our species built can lay to waste a human’s grueling dedication to theory, practice, and mentorship at a craft. It’s unreal what one has to do to become the World Chess Champion. All the drama and willpower to acquire that knowledge and skill are just calculations to a machine. Humans will never be able to acquire the ability to analyze millions of moves per second. What is human genius and intuition compared to raw, brutal calculation?

Kasparov at a chess simul, playing multiple players at once.

Continuing Dominance: AI Esports Ascent

Since then, no other game has been safe to test the limits of engineering. Especially since we have AI in our arsenal now, computers are able to improve at a rate that would be impossible for humans. With artificial intelligence, machines learn and discover on their own.

In the chess world, humans stand no chance against computers at this point, even if humans are given a massive four move advantage. Go has been figured out. World Champion Go player Lee Se-dol quit the game because AI had become too powerful. Poker, a game that might not seem to be as calculated, has also been figured out, with AI winning by using methods that humans would never think of.

All the emotions, drama, heartache, and triumph that comes with playing countless games and working together to become the best team in the world are just information and combinations to OpenAI.

And the sights now turn towards esports like Starcraft 2. Conquering chess is one thing, but the dynamic possibilities of an esport as dynamic as Starcraft 2 is a whole other endeavor. While reaching the top of the chess world requires feats of a superhuman mind, Starcraft 2 requires speedy multi-tasking, reaction time, and strategy. It is the highest measure in esports for strategical complexity and actions per minute (APM), having to construct military buildings, produce armies, and command these armies of different alien races, Protoss, Terran, or Zerg, to overwhelm and outmanoeuvre another.

Board games are static and turn-based, so on a technical level, they need to account for far less variables. If you play against the default AI in DOTA 2 or League of Legends, they seem robotic and unable to do anything that would actually match up to a person who has mastered the game. When given to a team of researchers, however, you don’t want to bet against machines. DOTA 2, the more complicated of the two, has had the World Championship team OG defeated by OpenAI.

Though debatable, DOTA 2 is a few degrees less complicated than Starcraft. You control only a single unit rather than an army. It’s still incredibly difficult to reach the upper echelon of the game, requiring thousands of hours of play. There are over a hundred heroes to learn, hundreds of abilities to keep track of, countless item combinations for each hero. Add that to the fact that you have to learn to coordinate with your team, then the game becomes incredibly nuanced.

They were shocked when OpenAI, who had lost only a year before to top teams, now stood at the top as the best entity in the galaxy at DOTA 2.

Coming into the match, OpenAI had already played 45,000 years worth of games and learned from each one. It had no knowledge of DOTA 2 prior to being dropped into the jungle to learn on its own. What is remarkable or scary about it, depending on your perspective, is that it doesn’t feel tired, angry, upset, or bored. It simply does. All the emotions, drama, heartache, and triumph that comes with playing countless games and working together to become the best team in the world are just information and combinations to OpenAI. It simply soaks in information, learns, and executes.

Humans laughed when OpenAI spends in-game gold to immediately bring back heroes to life after death. They were puzzled when OpenAI rotated more than humans do to defend turrets. They were shocked when OpenAI, who had lost only a year before to top teams, now stood at the top as the best entity in the galaxy at DOTA 2.

Before the 19 minute mark of the first game, OpenAI declared in the chat that it had a 95% probability of winning. From a human perspective, it was an even game at that point, which caused spectators to chuckle. Two minutes later, OpenAI was barreling down the middle lane, executing on its prophecy. They destroyed so much of the World Champions’ base that it made the declaration eerie. They disposed of the champions handily in the next game.

Child’s play.

The same thing is happening in Starcraft 2. For as complicated and variable as the game is, DeepMind has reached Grandmaster tier at the game and is ranked at the top .2% of all players as the first non-human entity to do so. This is with limitations put into the program, so that it could mimic standard human movement. It can’t click faster than a human possibly could, for example. Over the past decade, it was a struggle to even have a program that could reach the top of the Starcraft 2 scene. Now, it looks inevitable.

One wonders whether AI will be used for competitive esports like it is used for chess. For a chess player to rise to the top without the aid of strategies from a computer seems unthinkable now. New opening lines are discovered and prepared for through the use of computer engines. They are used to lead opponents to lines of play they are not familiar with, to find cracks in a certain opening, and to learn from all the possible scenarios that could have happened in a game that was lost. It shouldn’t be a surprise if esports coaches’ use of AI becomes the norm in the next ten years, with the talented youth of today spearheading this future.

Future of AI Esports and beyond

You can see this collaboration with AI in several fields. They can automate grading tasks of educators. Their algorithms help those in the medical field process medical data. Businesses use the data to know which ads work on which groups of people. The military profession might be the most analogous, given the warlike nature of esports video games. Military tactics are simulated with the use of AI.

With AI, we are forced to rethink what being human means.

Esports’s role in this new science is an important one, giving machine learning scenarios in which to test its limits. In the arts, this is also the case. We might laugh when computers are used by researchers to make music or literature. Maybe if aliens come and discover the planet that was Earth, they’d deem the pinnacle of artistic achievements as ones computers generated.

With AI, we are forced to rethink what being human means. And for now, as we learn and grow with machines, we can further philosophize what our role in the cosmos will ultimately lead to.