[jacoblyles]

Starcraft has quite a few more variables than chess and tight time constraints to evaluate position, plan, and act so I don't expect Starcraft bots to get as clever strategically as Deep Blue. On the other hand, bots should be capable of flawless micro.

Is that enough to win a series against a champion of a major tournament? Is there a silicon BoxeR among us?

[jquery]

Flawless micro is an enormous, essentially insurmountable advantage, if backed up by even a modestly capable "strategic" engine. Even the world's best starcraft 1 pros make many micro mistakes over the course of the game--I'm talking blunders so bad that even I notice them. This is because a human cannot be everywhere at once, while an AI can. Take all the "mistakes" away and what you have is something that is nearly unbeatable without doing some sort of cheesy all-in strategy that gets lucky.

I think the true test of a Starcraft AI would be one with human-like restrictions. E.g., only so many actions allowed per minute, only vision of the current screen, built-in delays for actions that would tie up a human to perform, etc. Then the contest is truly more about intelligence and less about brute force.

[jacoblyles]

I'm not sure it is insurmountable. I would love to see Flash play against AI bots a la Kasparov.

[jamesaguilar]

Maybe your reasons are the ones why we will never see a starcraft AI superior to human ones. But I suspect the real reason is more closely related to the disparity in money and minds dedicated to the two tasks.