Google DeepMind has proved pretty effective at mastering various games over the years. It is officially the finest player of Go in the world after beating the sitting human world champion and has since turned its figurative hand to Starcraft 2, while also proving adept at guessing when patients are going to die. It truly is a jack of all trades. The problem is that DeepMind is very much a lone wolf. It works alone and doesn't necessarily know how to play nice with humans – or indeed other AIs. You might not consider the best remedy for this to be arming DeepMind, but the good news is that the weapons and battlefield are purely virtual: the AI has learned how to play Quake III's Capture the Flag multiplayer mode and, predictably, has got to the point where it can teach humans a thing or two.

AI agents continue to rack up wins in the video game world. Last week, OpenAI's bots were playing Dota 2; this week, it's Quake III, with a team of researchers from Google's DeepMind subsidiary successfully training agents that can beat humans at a game of capture the flag. As we've seen with previous examples of AI playing video games, the challenge here is training an agent that can navigate a complex 3D environment with imperfect information. DeepMind's researchers used a method of AI training that's also becoming standard: reinforcement learning, which is basically training by trial and error at a huge scale. Agents are given no instructions on how to play the game, but simply compete against themselves until they work out the strategies needed to win. Usually this means one version of the AI agent playing against an identical clone.

Those among us who fear that we've already passed the point of no return when it comes to artificial intelligence becoming self-aware and plotting to murder the human race will likely cite A.I. research company DeepMind's latest experiment as further proof of that notion. Using Id Software's Quake III Arena, DeepMind has managed to train artificial players to be even more effective than their human counterparts. The challenge for DeepMind was not to see if its A.I. agents could defeat human players in battle, but rather if they could work together on procedurally generated levels to complete an objective -- in this case, capture the flag. Because the levels' structure changes each time they play, the agents are unable to simply memorize locations in order to make it to the flag. This forced them to actually learn the strategies needed to win in a similar manner to how human players might improve at the game.

DeepMind, an Alphabet subsidiary, announced Tuesday its efforts to create an artificial intelligence (AI) that functions with human-like performance. Using Quake III Arena's Capture the Flag (CTF), a 3D first-person multiplayer video game, DeepMind taught AI how to work with and against humans to win the game. The rules of CTF haven't changed much since gym class. Two groups of individuals band together to steal the opponent's flag from their territory while also protecting their own. Teams can tag opponents that enter their territory, sending them back to their respective home base.

Britain's National Health Service (NHS) announced in a recent press release that it will anonymize patients' personal health data before sharing it with Alphabet's DeepMind. The process could help the pair more effectively train machine learning-based healthcare tools without the risk of compliance issues. As noted by our sister site ZDNet, the two companies use the data to analyze blood results and detect risk of acute kidney injuries or other illnesses. Back in 2016, the NHS and Google's DeepMind received major flack for personal data being shared without explicit consent from patients, but the anonymization of the data could help alleviate these concerns. "The new de-identification process (known as De-ID) will protect patient privacy by de-identifying a person's records in a consistent way," said privacy engineering company Privitar in the release.

On Monday, non-profit AI research company OpenAI published a blog post about OpenAI Five, a group of five neural networks designed to work as a team while playing the real-time computer strategy game called Dota 2. According to the post, OpenAI Five can now beat a team of five human amateur players at the game, albeit with specific restrictions placed on gameplay. In August, it will attempt to beat a team of professional Dota 2 players at The International (TI), an annual Dota 2 tournament hosted by the game's developer, Valve Corporation.

On Monday, non-profit AI research company OpenAI published a blog post about OpenAI Five, a group of five neural networks designed to work as a team while playing the real-time computer strategy game called Dota 2. According to the post, OpenAI Five can now beat a team of five human amateur players at the game, albeit with specific restrictions placed on gameplay. In August, it will attempt to beat a team of professional Dota 2 players at The International (TI), an annual Dota 2 tournament hosted by the game's developer, Valve Corporation.

The team focused on a capture the flag mode, one in which the map changes from match to match. Its AI agents had to learn general strategies to be able to adapt to each new map, something humans do easily. The agents also needed to both cooperate with team members as well as compete against the opposite team, and be able to adjust to different enemy play styles. "Our agents must learn from scratch how to see, act, cooperate, and compete in unseen environments, all from a single reinforcement signal per match: whether their team won or not," wrote the researchers in a blog post. They trained a population of AI-powered agents that learn by playing the game, much like we do.

Demis Hassabis, chief executive of UK-based tech company DeepMind, has been picked to advise the government's newly created Office for Artificial Intelligence. Hassabis (pictured above), who co-founded the Google-owned AI specialist, will "provide expert industry guidance" to the recently formed government body. The Office for AI was created as part of the Industrial Strategy unveiled by the government in November 2017, and has responsibility for delivering the initiatives set out in the £1bn AI Sector Deal published in April. "I'm honoured to be taking on the role of Adviser to the Office for AI, and look forward to the huge opportunity that lies ahead," Hassabis said. "I've always believed that AI could be one of the most important and widely beneficial breakthroughs of the 21st century – and as a proud Londoner, it's fantastic to see the UK's world-class universities and start-ups already making major scientific advances. Alongside the research, I'm very excited about the role the UK can play in making the case globally for AI's safe and ethical deployment."

Research in AI continues to make video games better. The technology informs NPCs that can move and fight more convincingly, orcs with personalities and ever-more realistic visuals. Now researchers at DeepMind have taught an AI to play a customized version of Quake III Arena like a human. The team focused on a capture the flag mode, one in which the map changes from match to match. Its AI agents had to learn general strategies to be able to adapt to each new map, something humans do easily.