AlphaStar, Google's AI, Hit Grandmaster Rank in Starcraft 2

You’ll recall that about four months ago, Google announced that they planned to let their AI program AlphaStar play against random humans in Starcraft to see how well it would perform. You remember that, right? And how they were going to disguise it so no one knew they were playing against an AI opponent? And how they artificially slowed down it’s response time to human levels so it would have to win with strategy rather than mechanical advantage?

I wrote all about it, guys, do you not pay attention geez.

Anyway, after around six weeks of playing online, we now know the obvious: machines, even artificially restrained machines, are really, really good at video games. Because Google has announced that AlphaStar just broke the final barrier and reached the rank of Grandmaster – meaning it’s in the top 200 players in the world, beating out 99.8 percent of all its human competition.

Granted, it had a bit of a head start: before it started playing against humans, it watched a bunch of games and was forced to play against itself a lot, so it could get a grip on the game and figure out what mistakes to avoid. But still, the results speak of themselves.

No word if any eSports organizations will be signing AlphaStar.