Elon Musk's 'Dota 2' AI bots are taking on pro teams

The Dota 2 world championship, The Invitational, is fast approaching, and a top team will have a different-looking squad to contend with: a group of artificial intelligence bots. OpenAI, which Elon Musk co-founded, has been taking on top Dota 2 players with the bots since last year, and now it's gunning for a team of top professionals in an exhibition match at one of the biggest events in eSports. OpenAI took on individual players at last year's The Invitational in a one-on-one minigame, and pros said that by watching the matches back, they were able to learn from the bots. But playing as a team introduces different types of intricacies, and OpenAI had to teach the AI how to coordinate the five bots. At any time, a hero (or character) can make one of around 1,000 actions; the bots have to make effective decisions while processing around 20,000 values representing what's going on in the game at a given time.