[nopinsight]

Your point regarding the fact that the bots ‘may’ not be adaptive to surprising strategies is a good one. We do not know for sure in the case of OpenAI Five as there are too few public games to look at.

AlphaGo Lee (the version which won 4-1 against Lee Sedol) did seem to get thrown off track by Lee’s surprising move and lost that game.

However, AlphaGo Zero, which is based on some of the same principles/sets of algorithms, were much stronger than AlphaGo Lee (More than 3 stones according to DeepMind. Three stones is about a difference between top pros and top amateurs/beginning pros.) and seemed like it would be insusceptible to any surprises thrown its way from human experts.

The difference was that AlphaGo Lee learned from play records of human Go experts while AlphaGo Zero did not and only learned via self-playing. Dota 2 is clearly more complex than Go but if the same principles apply then an AI trained from pure self-plays would be adaptive to most surprises in the domain, if the system had explored those edge cases before (which depends in turn on how the self-plays were conducted during training).

(As a side note: OpenAI Five probably chose the “simple-minded” snowballing-cheesing strategy because it determined from extensive experience that the strategy is most likely to yield a win given its capabilities (which are advantageous to humans in some respect like instantaneous global information observation, great coordination, consistency, etc). This is very different from the reason some human players choose the strategy. Perhaps precisely because Five bots don’t get sloppy that the strategy is so effective for them.)

[justicezyx]

My feeling is that humans are not adaptive to changing game flows either.

Most pro games are played with a strategy that is settled once draft is finalized. If the strategy turns out not working, Humans did not show noticeably different adaptivity.

Occasionally, a versatile team can transition from a late-game oriented line up to play a split push game. But usually such transition is based on a suiting draft, which requires the team members to be versatile in playing their heroes in slightly different styles; and a well-oiled team coordination to transition from one to another style.

> the “simple-minded” snowballing-cheesing strategy

In the show matches, there is no cheesing. It's plain team fight + push; the AIs executed the plan with ruthless precisions.

TBH, a typical pub game is best described as strategy-less game play. And pro games probably have 3 styles of play:

- Team fight

- Stick-together push

- Split push

The most close team that shows vastly better versatility is Wings gaming, which pretty much run any lineups they feel fitting.

Sadly the team disbanded after TI6, otherwise, their match against with OpenAI would be the most interesting thing I can imagine.

[iotb]

> My feeling is that humans are not adaptive to changing game flows either.

They are. I'd actually argue that this occurs much more in a pub game than with pros. I'm largely against the concept of a pro for this reason as it amounts moreso to having settled on lockin strategies moreso than intelligent/active/dynamic exchanges. I play a lot of pub games for this reason... To enjoy the heightened dynamics. Tons of rotations and adjustments. Tons of punishments for a great player hot dogging to break their psyche. Lots of very intense examples of dynamic human intelligence.

> Most pro games are played with a strategy that is settled once draft is finalized. If the strategy turns out not working, Humans did not show noticeably different adaptivity.

You're speaking moreso of 'pro games'. I encounter a great deal of dynamics outside of this grouping... It's where a lot of intelligence comes into play. I think a lot of people are completely uninformed about the game who watch others play a lot w/o actually playing themselves. Pro games are literal theatre for the masses like in a large number of professional leagues. The real stuff happens outside of the spotlight.

> Occasionally, a versatile team can transition from a late-game oriented line up to play a split push game.

This happens in just about every game I play... Tons of rotations and readjustments when things aren't working out [happens sometimes w/ no communication]. Tons of split pushes.. Strategic ganks. If people have good emotional stability, there will be a pronounced reflection/change after a massive team death incident.... The point of these games are highly intellectual battles. Its why it's a disservice to restrict any features of the game. It's how they maintain balance to avoid the game devolving into idiotic bot like cheesing. Games live and die based on how much cheese is present.

> But usually such transition is based on a suiting draft, which requires the team members to be versatile in playing their heroes in slightly different styles;

I'd expect pros to have these skill-sets yet I don't see it much because in such showcases its more about optimization and lockin strategies than dynamics.

> and a well-oiled team coordination to transition from one to another style.

Happens in regular pub and ranked matchups all the time many times w/ little to no communication. As long as someone is not an emotional child, it can sometimes be stressed and instantiated over prolonged swearing and yelling at various players. This is what's maybe missing from the Pro-league... Someone getting in your ass openly for doing something stupid like continuing to battle 3 well organized bots 3v1.

> In the show matches, there is no cheesing. It's plain team fight + push; the AIs executed the plan with ruthless precisions.

One of the games opened with 4 bots diving bottom tower to get a kill and persistently pushing bot. The human 'pro' sat there hashing it out even though he could have ran to safety and avoided another death and no one from top or mid tp'd to bot on the human team. This hamfisted cheesy snowballing occurred in every match on the bot's behalf because OpenAI restricted the gameplay to favor it. Even so, in a pub someone would have been swearing to the top of their lungs on a mic telling the $@(#@(%* at top/mid to immediately TP and punish such a brazen exchange especially with creeps all over them. Absolutely nothing was precise about the gameplay from the humans or bots. It was the kind of slop I see on servers from the southern portions of the world and punished heavily by any seasoned players. I guess this is where 'pros' are a meme and I've served a good number of them up with gameplay outside of their carefully scripted comfort zones.

> TBH, a typical pub game is best described as strategy-less game play. And pro games probably have 3 styles of play:

Typical pub is chaos which is why I've seen a number of pros get their behinds handed to them in it. They're sort of like bots in that they think they have the game completely figured out and have a golden strategy no one can defeat. It's a flaw not a good trait. In ranked, you're going to see some amazing gameplay even w/ random non-party individuals. Anyone who plays knows about the games where its like a symphony playing. Limited talking, tons of rotations/ganks/readjustments/team fights/split pushes/team pushes/ratting/baiting/etc.

"Pros" are not Pros in my book. They're a group of players who center on a optimal echelon of gameplay that everyone at that level tends to agree upon. Throw some dynamics in and they fall apart.

What I saw across all of the OpenAI bot games is nothing to go home writing about. If they were true to things, they'd show how these bots play in all-pick no restrictions. They claim to be after Strong AI not Weak based game bots. It's not about winning/losing... It's how you play.

This is enough of my personal commentary on this issue. People are unable to see past these approaches and what they truly are and that's fine with me at this point.

Catch you on the flip side.

[nopinsight]

Really curious: If pub-styled plays are much more adaptive/superior to pro-leagued style as you said, why don’t top pub players simply team up (and perhaps sharpen some ‘simple’ micro skills) and take on pros in TI to win > $10 million prizes and live really well?

What would really happen when pub-styled play is actually used in pro scenes for million-dollar prizes? If it is actually superior, why none of the pro teams caught up and tried using it to win?

[iotb]

> We do not know for sure in the case of OpenAI Five as there are too few public games to look at.

Thus the nature of a canned showcase demo. We do know they have a slew of restrictions. As an avid player, I know exactly why : because such combos require much deeper and true intellect to play efficiently. Even as such, given that I know i'd be up against an optimization algorithm, my strategy would be to create as much chaos and uncertainty as possible. Information theory is clear as to the impact this would have : It would be unstructured noise that would be hard to optimize and likely not seen before or significantly reflected in the AI's weighting system. This is the basis of adversarial attacks. I'm sure with a decent amount of games I'd be able to figure out a suitable one for 5 linked bots.

The perspective as to what's going on with this demo is much different if you actually play the game. I've actually seen a number of games like this bot exhibited. It's a strategy low skilled players engage in with the hope of overwhelming opponents with brute force. The character restrictions favor it. So its not by accident that this all converged into a demo that favors an unintelligent brute force optimization bot.

It favors something that can do range/hit point calculations quickly/accurately. Snowballing is required because there is no broader intelligence among the bots. When the bots snowball, it's essentially just one big optimization function. When they're stretched apart, the calculations are much harder.

Knowing what I know about the game and the fact that I'm up against a Weak AI bot with an optimized model, I'd know exactly how to screw it up with an adversarial attack. I'd train a team of people on that and show everyone exactly what human intelligence of capable of and why its superior. This happens in your average dota 2 match constantly.. Low skill players attempt brute force strategies just like these bots and you essentially wait them out and pick them apart. This isn't a new and amazing style of gameplay or something. There's already names for it.

When I used the term 'sloppy' I meant against the spirit and nature of the game and w/o consideration of the 'way in which one wins'... Ambushing towers at open 4v1 or 2 is some very hamfisted foolishness. Even in regular pub games with upper avg. players, there'd be a sharp punishment for such bro-tier gameplay. It usually results in an equally massive 'gank'. The way the human players responded in these pressure scenarios really has me questioning the whole event as I see avg. random players make far better decisions every day in dota.

That's just my unfavorable two cents. I'm not impressed because I understand how their bots are doing what they're doing, where the advantages lie, and I'm aware of what restrictions they placed on the game in favor of their bot.

Elon claims he's worried about a dark future with AI, it's actually solutions like this that are most scary because there is zero intelligence and a [by any means possible so long as you achieve the object] steering function. If you want to unleash chaos and destruction on the world and see a darker side to human intelligence you've never seen before, start releasing such 'weak AI' to manipulate people from the shadows. This is not strong AI or a path to it. It's more of the same Weak AI provided with exclusive and insane amounts of computer power/data and an objective to optimize for by any means necessary. In cases where it dominates, it's almost certainly a reliance on finding loopholes/flaws in a particular game not actual intelligence. You should see the danger in this right away.

Funny because OpenAI originally opened with the spoopy terminator like dangers of AI being so destructive we needed a group like them to save us... To now openly sharing such unintelligent and dangerous weak AI optimization platforms in the mainstream fear. Sort of like the 'Do no Evil' Mantra that was just slogan.

I think this is a great engineer accomplishment that no doubt taught them a lot. I don't see any broader 'safety' ideology underlying this... Just another great team of people trying to achieve AI like everybody else utilizing popularized approaches. It's better to just come out and say that. We can drop the 'Save the world from AI'/'Safety' superman talk and get to the brass tax of what they are doing and how, if at all, its different from what anyone else is doing in the space.

[jjjjjjjjjjjjjjj]

> The perspective as to what's going on with this demo is much different if you actually play the game. It's a strategy low skilled players engage in with the hope of overwhelming opponents with brute force. The character restrictions favor it.

As a dota player who has been in the 99.5th percentile mmr at several occasions (right now at 98th) I disagree with this and a lot of the stuff you're trying to say. Dota is a strategy game, and the meta dictates what strategies are strong at a given point in time. The death ball strategy that the bots played is a result of that being the best strategy in the bot meta. So in contrast to what you said, it's not low skilled players that play these strategies, but rather high skilled players that play whatever strategy is popular in the meta (regardless of how 'intelligent' it is), in order to increase the chances of winning.

[nharada]

My impression is that when rich and powerful people talk about "the dangers of AI" what they really mean is "the dangers of AI (to me when it's not controlled by me)"

[red75prime]

It is nothing new, or particularly bad. If we (good guys) will not have (insert powerful technology), then bad guys will have it and everyone will be worse off.