DeepMind's AI is Struggling to Beat Starcraft II

DeepMind, the Alphabet Inc. owned artificial intelligence company best known for creating software capable of beating the world’s best players at the strategy game Go, has targeted the science fiction video game Starcraft II as its next big research milestone. But so far, space is proving a difficult frontier for the company’s algorithms.

DeepMind’s existing algorithms, including those that performed with super-human skill across a host of classic Atari titles, “cannot win a single game against the easiest built-in AI,” in Starcraft II let alone challenge skilled humans, the company said in a blog post Wednesday. The built-in agents, which are created by Starcraft publisher Activision Blizzard Inc., use hard-coded rules to determine their game play rather than the kinds of advanced machine learning techniques the London-based DeepMind specializes in. The company said new breakthroughs in machine learning would be required for its software agents to master the game.

Just how close DeepMind may be to such breakthroughs, the blog post didn’t reveal. The algorithm that mastered the Atari games was unveiled in June 2016. Since then DeepMind has published a number of research papers that hint it may be closing in on creating software capable of many of the tasks – such as prioritizing goals, long-term planning, and memory – that any system will need in order to play Starcraft II successfully.