[littlestymaar]

> like imperfect information

The information is only imperfect for a human but an IA can have a way better access to information: - if you scout you opponent mineral line and click on the minerals, you know exactly how much minerals he's harvested since the beginning of the game. If you scout your opponent army and building, you know exactly how much he spent. Then you can deduce if he has something hidden somewhere or in production. Of course this is impossible to do for a human, but really easy for a computer. - scouting is easy but requires a lot of actions, an IA could have one mutalisk wandering over the map the whole game without being killed, which is impossible for a human unless you dedicate full time on this.

Imho, beating humans to StarCraft isn't a big deal in itself, but it would need a lot of work to build the AI to deal with the game's complexity. But it's merely domain specific work that has little to no interest on AI in general. Creating an AI that trains itself how to be good at StarCraft will take much more times and effort, but at least it will provide value outside of the specific problem.

[vk23]

> Then you can deduce if he has something hidden somewhere or in production. Of course this is impossible to do for a human, but really easy for a computer.

This is definitly not impossible for humans. High level SC players are able to keep track of the mineral and gas spendings of their opponent in the early game (After the early game there is usually no complete information to calculate this). Just seeing the timing of taking the gas geysers gives you information about the earliest possible time a certain unit/building can be produced.

Of course a AI can scout more and take more variables into account but humans are surprisingly good at this too.

> Imho, beating humans to StarCraft isn't a big deal in itself, but it would need a lot of work to build the AI to deal with the game's complexity. But it's merely domain specific work that has little to no interest on AI in general.

The same thing was said about early chess AIs and the Alpha GO project. In the end both lead to major advancements in AI. If you solve the domain specific problem starcraft you could easily apply the gained knowledge to similiar problems.

[jon_richards]

At the top levels, it's a lot more about where those units/buildings are than whether they exist. You know they're going to be mining and spending efficiently, so just seeing the number of workers gives you a very good idea of how much other stuff they have. Pros also check to see what technologies are being researched (buildings have a different animation while researching).

You can't get much more scouting than that because there is a cost associated with scouting, either because you lose a worker's time or because you spread out your army.

[vk23]

> You can't get much more scouting than that because there is a cost associated with scouting, either because you lose a worker's time or because you spread out your army.

I agree but I was mainly talking about the time it takes to perform the scouting. A AI could scout 5 different places at the same time which is pretty hard for a human to do without falling behind elsewhere. I know SC pros are really good at multitasking but at some point the AI is just superior. If this gives the AI a significant advantage is a different question.

[littlestymaar]

> The same thing was said about early chess AIs and the Alpha GO project

Afaik, chess AI (I mean, modern ones like deep blue) had little to no wide impact on AI. They had a lot of impact on chess though.

But it's way easier to model a chessboard than a game like StarCraft, the domain specific work is just orders of magnitude bigger.

[vk23]

> Afaik, chess AI (I mean, modern ones like deep blue) had little to no wide impact on AI.

Apart from the pure technical side (which I am no expert in so you might be right) the impact on public attention and awareness for AI was huge for those projects. It's important that "normal" people get a feeling for AIs and what they are able to accomplish.