OpenAI’s bot crushes the world’s top Dota 2 players

0 2

By Matthew Griffin Intelligence and the Senses 2nd September 2018

WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF

Dota is a game of prediction, strategy and collaboration, and it’s been long thought that an AI couldn’t master it – until now.

A lot of humans think they’re so good at video games that they make the point of describing themselves as “gamers.” Well, the Artificial intelligence (AI) platform developed by OpenAI, which is a company backed by Elon Musk, would like to have a word, humans. After demonstrating its prowess in Dota 2 1v1 games, the newly enhanced “OpenAI Five” has shown that it can thrash even the best human teams. OpenAI challenged five of the world’s best pro Dota 2 players, and the AI won handily.

You might remember OpenAI popping up in the news a number of times recently when they developed an AI that evolved by itself to self-learn, and an AI powered robot hand that’s as dextrous as a humans. The OpenAI Dota bot gets better by playing games against itself at high-speed. Using a massively scaled-up version of “Proximal Policy Optimization,” which is a training system designed for OpenAI’s successful 1v1 Dota 2 bot. OpenAI Five plays the game for a whopping 180 years every single day thanks to 256 GPUs and 128,000 CPU cores in the Google Compute Cloud.

Watch the Bot plan ahead

The exhibition match was streamed live on Twitch and featured noted Dota 2 players Blitz, Cap, Fogged, Merlini, and MoonMeander. These are all people who currently or previously play Dota 2 professionally — they’re in the 99.95th percentile of human players. There were a few restrictions to drop features the bots hadn’t yet learned to use, but OpenAI was able to reinstate some previously blocked aspects like wards and Roshan (a powerful neutral creep that can be farmed for XP gains).

In the first match, the AI steamrolled the humans in just 21 minutes. That’s considered quite fast for a game of Dota 2, and the AI was confident. It predicted a 95 percent win probability after seeing the hero teams. In game two, the AI wasn’t as confident, giving itself a 76 percent chance to win. It still pummeled the human team in just 25 minutes.

Watch the bot predict the game

It was a best-out-of-three event, so the AI had already won when round three came along. For this match, the audience was allowed to choose heroes for OpenAI Five. Heroes in Dota 2 often interact in complex ways. Without the ability to build a team it knew how to play, the AI was at a disadvantage. It predicted a 17 percent win chance, and indeed it lost after a healthy 35-minute battle.

A few years ago, many researchers thought it was impossible for AI systems to get so good at complex team-based games like Dota 2, but here we are. The best gamers in the world are machines.

Matthew Griffin / About Author

Matthew Griffin, described as a "Walking encyclopaedia of the future" by NASA and a futurist polymath, is one of the world's most renowned futurists and strategic foresight experts. A serial entrepreneur Matthew is the Founder and Futurist in Chief of the 311 Institute, a global Futures and Deep Futures advisory firm working across the next 50 years, XPotential University, the world's first free futures and foresight university, and the World Futures Forum which works with the United Nations to solve the worlds greatest challenges. 13 times author of the Codex of the Future series, Matthew is an in demand international keynote, acclaimed university lecturer, and host of the hit Fanatical Futurist podcast.

A rare talent in his past Matthew helped build and run several multi-billion dollar business units for Atos, Dell-EMC, and IBM, and his ability to identify, track, and explain the impacts of hundreds of emerging technologies and trends on global business, culture, and society has earned him a powerful reputation and a roster of clients that include royal households, world leaders, G7, G20, and G77+ governments, and many of the world's most respected brands including ABB, Accenture, Adidas, AON, ARM, BCG, Centrica, Citi Group, Coca Cola, Dentons, Deloitte, Disney, EY, KPMG, Lego, Legal & General, LinkedIn, Microsoft, Pepsi Co, Qualcomm, RWE, Samsung, T-Mobile, UBS, VISA, and many others. He was also the only futurist invited to talk at the UN COP28 held in Dubai alongside world leaders.

Regularly featured in the global media including the AP, BBC, Bloomberg, CNBC, Discovery, Forbes, Khaleej Times, Telegraph, TIME, ViacomCBS, WIRED, and the WSJ, Matthews mission is to help organisations create a fair and sustainable future whose benefits are shared by everyone irrespective of their ability, background, or circumstances.