Episode 225 – Ah ha – it’s AI!

Michael and Michael take on the topic of the advances Google’s DeepMind has made since playing Go by examining the AlphaStar results with StarCraft II. Games have long been used by AI to have the AI play the game against itself to learn and improve. Michael and Michael talked about AlphaGo back in 2016 during Episode 133 — Game Brains and a team of AIs playing Dota2 was not quite the match for a human team during Episode 202 – Everything Old is New Again in July of 2018. It is clear that the bots are making great strides in more and more complex games.

Robots & drones factor into this week’s episode with Facebook partnering up with Airbus to provide internet connectivity by flying solar powered drones in Australia, reminding the team of Google’s Project Loon, which aims to accomplish the same idea with balloons. Amazon is in the mix with utility belts that help the bots in the warehouse know where the humans are, and create a safety zone around the human workers.

Being music fans and 1980s music fans, Michael and Michael just loved the easter egg in Just Cause 4 — have a look at the show notes below to see for yourself. Totally awesome.

Selected Links

TechCrunch article: StarCraft II-playing AI AlphaStar takes out pros undefeated — https://techcrunch.com/2019/01/24/starcraft-ii-playing-ai-alphastar-takes-out-pros-undefeated/

StarCraft II — https://starcraft2.com/en-us/

AlphaStar: Mastering the Real-Time Strategy Game StarCraft II — https://deepmind.com/blog/alphastar-mastering-real-time-strategy-game-starcraft-ii/

AlphaGo: https://deepmind.com/research/alphago/

The Verge article: A video game-playing AI beat Q*bert in a way no one’s ever seen before — https://www.theverge.com/tldr/2018/2/28/17062338/ai-agent-atari-q-bert-cracked-bug-cheat

Eurogamer article: This Just Cause 4 Easter egg is the greatest Easter egg of them all — https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2018-12-09-this-just-cause-4-easter-egg-is-the-best-easter-egg-of-all-time

a-ha Take On Me video —