Robots can outwit us on the virtual battlefield, so let's not put them in charge of the real thing

Artificial intelligence developer DeepMind has just announced its latest milestone: a bot called AlphaStar that plays the popular real-time strategy game StarCraft II at Grandmaster level. This isn't the first time a bot has outplayed humans in a strategy war game. In 1981, a program called Eurisko, developed by artificial intelligence (AI) pioneer Doug Lenat, won the US championship of Traveller, a highly complex strategy war game in which players design a fleet of 100 ships. Eurisko was consequently made an honorary Admiral in the Traveller navy. The following year, the tournament rules were overhauled in an attempt to thwart computers.