OpenAI to Battle with DotA 2 Pros

Subduing humans in chess and other such board games is typical in the world of artificial intelligence (AI). On June 26 this year, research lab OpenAI takes it up a notch with a squad of AI bots they are confident they can defeat the best of the best players in renowned battle arena video game DotA 2.

In preparation, OpenAI made enhancements to AI bots so that they are able to efficiently participate in 5v5 matches with humans, which demand better coordination and long-term planning. Though the company has yet to challenge the game’s top players, it will do so at the much anticipated DotA 2 tournament, Valve’s The International, to be occurring later on in the year.

In creating the bots, the company utilized a goal-oriented, machine learning method called reinforcement learning. This places the bots in a virtual environment where they are self-taught to reach their goals via a trial-and-error system. If they reach a goal, they are awarded points; if they don’t reach a goal, they don’t get points.

OpenAI reveals that with this method, the AI bots played at an accelerated rate of 180 years game time, per day. Such training went on for months.

OpenAI co-founder and CTO Greg Brockman shares the rationale behind this large-scale project, “This an exciting milestone, and it’s really because it’s about transitioning to real-life applications,” He continues, “If you’ve got a simulation [of a problem] and you can run it large enough scale, there’s no barrier to what you can do with this.”

Ultimately, video games are more complex, realistic, and unpredictable as compared to board games. After all, OpenAI even opens that its AI bots have to decide between 1,000 different courses of action whilst processing 20,000 data points representing what is happening in the game, and that is in any one time.

It is notable to mention that OpenAI also invented a system that could overthrow the game’s high-ranking players in 1v1 match-ups. This was during August last year, when the company first entered the DotA 2 gaming sphere.

According to the company website, OpenAI is a non-profit research company geared towards discovery and enactment of safe artificial general intelligence. This was founded by Elon Musk and Sam Altman. (Adapted by Lara Angeli Eviota)

Source: The Verge