'Dota 2' The International 2017 News: Elon Musk's OpenAI Startup Invents Bot That Defeated Best eSports Players
A gaming bot has gotten so much better that even one of the world's best "Dota 2" players was unable to defeat it.
One of the surprises in the recently concluded The International event that was held last week was the introduction of a gaming bot operated by artificial intelligence technology. This came courtesy of Tesla CEO Elon Musk's startup, OpenAI company.
In a special event on Aug. 11 during The International 2017, OpenAI showcased the ability of their gaming bot by matching it against several of the top "Dota 2" players in the world. The gaming bot consistently won against Danylo Ishutin, aka Dendi, in a live 1v1 game.
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Dendi was defeated by the OpenAI bot twice. The professional "Dota 2" player then decided not to proceed with the next games.
Prior to that, OpenAI also said in a statement that their "Dota 2" gaming bot had emerged successful against other players made up of renowned professional eSports gamers, such as Syed Sumail Hassan, aka SumaiL, and Artour Babaev, aka Arteezy.
"Dota 1v1 is a complex game with hidden information. Agents must learn to plan, attack, trick, and deceive their opponents. The correlation between player skill and actions-per-minute is not strong, and in fact, our AI's actions-per-minute are comparable to that of an average human player," OpenAI added.
The highly human-like skills of the bot was also affirmed by Dendi, who stated in a post-match interview that the AI's skills "feels a little like [a] human, but a little like something else."
"Dota 2" is one of the largest free-to-play multiplayer online battle arena video games in the market. It features more than 100 heroes, each with unique abilities that players should understand in order to maximize their potential and progress in the game.
Since "Dota 2" is commonly played by humans against other playing humans, game situations constantly change. Outsmarting an opponent and predicting their next move will take years of first-hand experience in playing the game to master.
OpenAI pointed out: "Success in Dota requires players to develop intuitions about their opponents and plan accordingly."
The startup company also revealed that they have more plans to enhance their "Dota 2" bots. "Our next step is to create a team of Dota 2 bots which can compete and collaborate with the top human teams," OpenAI added.
