DeepMind's StarCraft-playing AI beats 99.8 per cent of human gamers

An artificial intelligence can now play the real-time strategy video game StarCraft II so well that it is better than 99.8 per cent of human players. The AI, called AlphaStar, was developed by tech firm DeepMind, which is owned by the same parent company as Google. AlphaStar played anonymously against human players in a series of online games on the official StarCraft II game server, Battle.net, and ended up ranked in the top 200 players for each of the leagues it competed in. StarCraft II is a popular science-fiction game that involves controlling armies and building infrastructure. Players must compromise between short-term payoffs and long-term gain.