StarCraft Pros Are Ready to Battle AI

Message from the world's best StarCraft players to the world's most advanced AI: bring it on. The space-war computer game is widely regarded as the ultimate challenge for AI programs due to its complexity and rapid pace. Expectations for a match-up between a professional StarCraft player and sophisticated AI ratcheted up last year after an AI program beat a highly ranked human player at Go, one of the world's most difficult board games. At the time, a number of AI experts pointed to StarCraft as the next target for an AI-versus-man showdown. Among them: Demis Hassabis, the founder and CEO of DeepMind, the AI-focused division of Alphabet that created the triumphant Go-playing AI program, AlphaGo.