[pmontra]

I understand the spirit of the proposal but that would be like limiting a computer to add at most two numbers per second. It's OK if we want an interesting contest against humans but it wouldn't be a fair estimate of a computer math capability. It's also not the point of using computers to do math instead of a room full of accountants. I'm OK with the AI going as fast as it can and play superhuman strategies because it can be that fast. After all we'll not limit AIs output rate when we'll let them manage a country's power grid.

[sl1ck731]

The purpose of limiting speed isn't to make an interesting contest, it is to accurately compare the "math" instead of the speed the math is done at.

It isn't surprising that its fast, the surprising part is that it can make human-like decisions. The only way to compare whether its thinking is human-like is to restrain it from "brute forcing" the contest through speed.

The model has likely learned that the faster it does things the better the outcome. What it needs to be measured on is strategy.

[freeflight]

But isn't the competency of a Starcraft player is also measured on his/her speed?

In that context, you can't really measure strategy without accounting for timing/speed because a lot of tactics and strategies only become viable once the player has the required speed to actually realize them aka "micro".

[b_tterc_p]

Exactly, and due to superhuman micro, the AI has cornered itself into learning a small subset of the strategy space. It’s not good at strategy because it’s optimized itself for just getting into micro-handled situations.

It’s not good at strategizing with all the options available to it given it’s micro ability, it has “one” strategy that leveraged the micro as much as it could, and when given a strategic challenge by mana, it didn’t know what to do.

[confiscate]

yes but the ultimate goal, is to make an AI as "smart", or "smarter" than a human. That's why they keep making AI's play against human players in Chess, Go etc. It's not to prove computers are faster than humans. It's to prove computers can be smart like humans.

They want to make an AI that can teach new ideas to humans. New strategies that human bodies are physically capable of executing, but no human was "smart enough" to think of yet. An example is when the AI built a high number of probes at the start. That's "smart".

The only way to train an AI to be able to come up with new ideas, is to force it to be "slow". Otherwise, it will just always do the easiest way to win, which is out-micro. There is nothing interesting about a game like that. That only shows the AI is fast, but it won't be clear that it's "smart"

[BigJono]

That's exactly why it's so important to try and constrain the system to as close to human parameters as possible. You can't compare strategic prowess if the two players are playing at a completely different level. It'd be the same as saying MaNa is better than say, Maru (who has just won 3 GSL Code S's in a row), because he has stronger strategies against ~30th percentile players. It makes no sense.

[arcticfox]

Speed is only interesting as part of fair human competition. It's trivial for the AI to win with speed and it doesn't have to be remotely smart about it. Serral (dominant world #1) was easily beat by 3 far weaker humans controlling one opponent - it wasn't even close. It's just stupid to even claim victory in those situations.

Making an AI that wins by outsmarting humans, on the other hand, is what we are all interested in.

[ajuc]

That would be right if AI and human player had the same opportunities for micro.

They don't, because AI doesn't use physical objects to move stuff in the game. AI just "thinks" that this stalker should blink and it blinks. Human player has to deal with inertia of his hand and of mouse.

If you want fair competition of micro - make a robot that watches screen through it's camera, moves mouse and presses keys to play starcraft.

Then the bandwith of the interface is the same for both players, and we can compare their micro.

[aurelwu]

you don't really need a real robot, but assign some "time cost" for various actions which depends on spatial distance and type of action and if it is a different action than the previous action. humans are really fast when for example splitting a group of units but performing multiple different actions on different areas on the screen or even multiple screens takes a lot longer. They don't need to fully emulate human behaviour but getting somewhat close would really show how strong teh AI is tactically and strategically without superhuman micromanagement.

[pmontra]

I try to make my point clearer.

If we want to measure strategy, I agree with you, and out of curiosity we might do it. But the goal is winning, so is strategy important as long as it wins? The AI can take every shortcut it finds IMHO. People do take shortcuts.

Cars and planes bring us across the world exactly because they don't walk like people and don't fly like birds. Wheels, fixed wings and turbofans are shortcuts and we're happy with them. We can build walking and wing flapping robots but they have different goals than what we need in our daily transportation activities.

[ajuc]

The problem with starcraft is - interface overhead is significant part of the game. AI doesn't have to cope with that - every click is perfect, and moving the mouse from one edge of the screen to the other takes no time.

If you want to make it fair - place an AI-steered robot in front of the screen, and make it record the screen with camera, and actually move the mouse and press the keys.

Then I can agree it's fair :)

But then of course AI would be incredibly bad.

Right now the advantage doesn't come from faster thinking, but from much higher bandwith and precision that AI has when controlling the game. It's anything but fair.

With chess it's not a problem, because interface overhead is negligible.

[pmontra]

Those are different engineering problems. I'm pretty sure that they could eventually build a pixel perfect camera and a fast pixel perfect robot mouse. They'll be at least as good as human eyes and hands, probably better. Done that, they'll keep winning.

It's surely interesting technology with positive impacts in a lot of areas but is it that the important part of the experiment? Humans need keyboards and mice to interface with computers, computers don't (lucky them.)

Sorry to insist on that analogy, but it looks to me as if my car should be able to fit my shoes and walk before I admit that it goes to another city quicker than me walking.

[ajuc]

No, these are not "just" engineering problems.

When you're trying to individually blink 30 stalkers at the perfect time they have almost 1 hp - latency is everything.

Camera has latency. Depending on various factors it takes even milliseconds of exposure for camera to gather enough light that it registers as a clear image frame. Human eye works on a different basis, but also isn't instant. You cannot cut that in software, human player cannot train to lower this. But AI doesn't need to do it - it has image provided as a memory buffer.

Image recognition has latency (both in the brain and in computer). Even as simple stuff as recognizing where the computer screen is as opposed to the background. It takes time. AI doesn't need to do it.

Muscles (engines in robot hands) have latency.

Mouses and hands have inertia and can't be moved instantly - have to be accelerated and stopped and even if you have optimal algorithm to be 100% accurate - it takes time.

It's not only hard to implement, it's also physically IMPOSSIBLE to do without introducing significant delays.

AI that is controlling the ui directly doesn't have to deal with most of these tasks, so it has a huge advantage in a game like starcraft. It's not that AI is so much better, it's that AI is high-frequency trading and human player is sending requests to buy/sell by telefax. By the time your request is processed the other guy had opportunity to do 10 different things.

If you want to focus on the part of the job that is doable now - sure, go ahead. But then don't abuse the unfair advantages you have and announce you "won". It's very low threshold to win in starcraft when your opponent has effectively 100 times the lag you do.

I'm sure someday we will have AI that can beat human player in starcraft without abusing this advantage, And I'm pretty sure the fastest way to this isn't to put a real robot in front of a screen, but it's to limit the intraface bandwidth of the AI to be on the similar level as that of human players.

> Sorry to insist on that analogy, but it looks to me as if my car should be able to fit my shoes and walk before I admit that it goes to another city quicker than me walking.

Let's remove the roads that we made specifically for cars and speak about this again :) Will your car move you through an untamed wilderness quicker than your legs? Possibly. Or not at all.

If I walk into a bullet train, slowly walk inside it, and walk out of it at the end of the route I will be even faster than the fastest car. Is it fair to say I'm faster than a car? After all it's not my fault the car doesn't fit inside that bullet train :)

We need to compare apples to apples, and comparing AI that doesn't need to deal with half the sources of latency with a human player that does, in a game where latency is very important - just isn't fair.

[otikik]

If you don't put any limits on the AI, it's not Starcraft any more.

You could make an AI which tries to hack the human computer to force a leave. That would also constitute a "win". Or one which hacks its own computer and displays "You win" immediately. Or one which tries to kill the human player, if we want to be really dramatic about it.

[mikeash]

Chess and Go both limit computers to one move per human move, and they’re still very interesting games for AI. You’ll always have limitations. When you’re playing a game, the limitations are largely arbitrary, and you choose them to make the game better achieve whatever goal you’re after.

[thomasahle]

You are right, but the point here is to force it to win by pure decision making. Having an AI play a game was always about challenging ourselves to improve our understanding of intelligence. Limiting APM is just another way to force us to come up with new ideas.

[ivalm]

So, in some sense this is a limitation of starcraft. The goal of this project is presumably have the AI play a high strategic depth game. However, with sufficiently high micro certain strategies that have low "macro depth" become unbeatable. So it's true the AI would win, but it plays in ways that do not expand our understanding of SC strategy, it is simply using a simple to understand and impossible for human to execute strategy. Think of aimbot in a shooting game, a human can try to play smart and attack from unusual angles/lay traps/crossfires, but if the AI can simply get instant headshots the AI can run straight to objective and win. It would be a winning play, and humans understand why it would be a winning play (boringly so), but it is outside of human execution.

[reitzensteinm]

But it's important to be clear about what's being measured. If the AI can take and successfully win engagements that no human could because of their superior micro, it's not necessarily winning via superior strategy (as is claimed).

[spiritcat]

but still, if you want to measure that then play a turn based game. if i could micro as good as the pros i'd be pretty damn good too.

hooking it up to a camera looking at a screen and a robot arm with a mouse would be more fair though.

edit: ok they did have a camera version, but i still want a robot arm.