Here’s how close AI is to beating humans in different games
Challenging artificial intelligence in the world of gaming can provide ‘a useful testbed' for real-world problems says AI researcher
Two decades after Deep Blue conquered chess and a year after AlphaGo took down go, there are still games that artificial intelligence can’t beat.
AI researchers like games because they offer complex, concrete, and exciting challenges, which can unlock broader applications. Take it from AlphaGo creator Demis Hassabis: Games “are useful as a testbed, a platform for trying to write our algorithmic ideas and testing out how far they scale and how well they do and it’s just a very efficient way of doing that. Ultimately we want to apply this to big real-world problems.”
How close is AI to beating different games? We asked a couple of AI experts for an update.
“StarCraft” is the next big target
After Google’s AlphaGo defeated grandmaster Lee Se-dol in go — that deceptively simple game of black and white stones with an immense number of possibilities — Hassabis called “Starcraft” “the next step up.”
Google engineer Jeff Dean, who leads the Google Brain project, went further: “‘StarCraft’ is our likely next target.”
“Starcraft,” released in 1998 by Blizzard Entertainment, is a real-time strategy game where players build a military base, mine resources, and attack other bases.