Wouldn't DeepMind have an unfair advantage, since the best human players are restricted by how fast they can use the mouse and keyboard (measured in actions per minute / APM), whereas DeepMind can easily outperform a human in APM?
I call massive bullshit until I see it. StarCraft was one of my favorite games ever due to good design of course but also all skills required to be good at it. There's literally so many ways to approach an AI with humans stomping them in hilarious ways basically every time.<p>They'd benefit best by categorizing attack strategies, counter strategies, aspects/units on map, and so on. The DeepMind system would do all that in a way that converts raw data into small, actionable information. Traditional methods could do pathfinding, buildup, time-limited decisions, micro-ing, and so on. A hybrid system seems best here.<p>They're not just going to throw DeepMind at it and beat good humans. We'll find its patterns, then outsmart it. Especially the pro's.<p>Competitions with bots and humans below:<p><a href="http://webdocs.cs.ualberta.ca/~cdavid/starcraftaicomp/report2015.shtml" rel="nofollow">http://webdocs.cs.ualberta.ca/~cdavid/starcraftaicomp/report...</a><p>Great survey of the problem domain and various techniques here:<p><a href="http://webdocs.cs.ualberta.ca/~cdavid/pdf/starcraft_survey.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://webdocs.cs.ualberta.ca/~cdavid/pdf/starcraft_survey.p...</a><p>EDIT to add:<p>I suggest a title change along the lines of "DeepMind will try to beat StarCraft next." That's more accurate in terms of both reality and original article.
I have a feeling that it would just have one main strategy and micro it's way out of any situation. Imagine a computer version of polt or marineking.