Google's DeepMind AI Takes on Popular Video Game Starcraft

Google's DeepMind AI unit, which earlier this year achieved a breakthrough in computer intelligence by creating software that beat the world's best human player at the strategy game Go, is turning its attention to the sci-fi video game Starcraft II. The company said it had reached a deal with Blizzard Entertainment Inc., the Irvine, California-based division of Activision Blizzard, which makes the Starcraft game series, to create an interface to let artificial intelligence researchers connect machine-learning software to the game. London-based DeepMind, which Google purchased in 2014, has not said it has created software that can play Starcraft expertly -- at least not yet. "We're still a long way from being able to challenge a professional human player," DeepMind research scientist Oriol Vinyals said in a blog post Friday. But the company's announcement shows it's looking seriously at Starcraft as a candidate for a breakthrough in machine intelligence.