The End of Open AI Competitions – Towards Data Science

Update: Dota 2 does provide a scripting interface, enabling bots to be written in Lua. However, this limited interface does not enable bots to communicate with remote processes and save data about games played. OpenAI Five is a huge step forward for AI, but it's also really intimidating for AI researchers. Never before has there been so many open tools for building AI systems, but it also feels like the barrier to entry for academics has actually increased over recent years. I posted an open call for any interested parties to build the best StarCraft AI possible back in 2009, and it was open to anyone interested in AI. Now, it seems like you need to have access to closed APIs, massive compute power, and historic training data to make advances in AI.