Tag Archives: DeepMind

DeepMind’s AlphaZero Beats State-of-the Art AI in Chess



DeepMind introduced AlphaZero in 2017. It is a single system that taught itself how to master chess, shogi, and Go, beating state-of-the-art programs in each case. AlphaZero has developed a ground-breaking, highly dynamic, and unconventional style of play.

A report titled: “A general reinforcement learning algorightm that masters chess, shogi an Go through self-play” was published by Science Magazine. Part of the report said: “The ability of AlphaZero to adapt to various game rules is a notable step toward achieving a general game-playing system.”

AlphaZero replaces the handcrafted knowledge and domain-specific augmentations used in traditional game-playing programs with deep neural networks, a general-purpose reinforcement learning algorithm, and a general-purpose tree search algorithm.

In chess, AlphaZero first outperformed Stockfish after just 4 hours. AlphaZero defeated the 2016 TCEC (Season 9) world champion Stockfish, winning 155 games and losing just six games out of 1,000.

In shogi, AlphaZero first outperformed Elmo after 2 hours. AlphaZero defeated the 2017 CSA world champion version of Elmo, winning 91.2% of games.

In Go, AlphaZero defeated AlphaGo Zero, winning 61% of games.

I wonder if, in the future, eSports will include competitions between AlphaZero and various other AI algorithms. It seems to me that people who love to play chess are very interested in AlphaZero and what it can do. I can see potential for chess players to learn some of AlphaZero’s strategies in an effort to improve their game.


Blizzard and DeepMind Announce StarCraft II AI Workshop



Blizzard Entertainment is the creator of StarCraft II (and several other popular video games). They have teamed up with DeepMind, the world leader in artificial intelligence research and its application for positive impact. Together, the two will co-host the StarCraft II AI Workshop.

The workshop is an opportunity for AI researchers, academics, bot programmers, and industry professionals to get together, exchange ideas, and collaborate on all things AI, utilizing the recently-released StarCraft II Learning Environment and StarCraft II API as a development platform.

The event is described as BYOC, meaning that you need to bring your own computer. Attendees will be provided with power drops, dedicated wireless internet access, and a catered lunch. Engineers and researchers from Blizzard and DeepMind will meet with attendees and answer questions about SC2LE and SC2API.

Space is limited. Those who want to attend need to apply by filling out a questionnaire. A final group of attendees will be selected out of the applications. The workshop will take place November 3 and 4, 2017, at the Hilton Anaheim hotel. The workshop is not part of BlizzCon (which will be happening at the same time in the Anaheim Convention Center.)