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DeepMind's AI Bots Are Playing Quake 3 Better Than You

What are you gonna do about it, Shacknews?

Brittany Vincent

July 9, 2018 6:45 PM

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AI is no joke, especially when it comes to video games. The bots from OpenAI are at it again, and this time they're coming for our games. Not just any games, but Quake III. Last week they were messing about with Dota 2, and this week they're invading the sacred lands of Quake. A team of researchers from Google's DeepMind group has successfully trained Ai bots that can now beat human players at the game's Capture the Flag mode.

The bots were trained utilizing a trial and error method, where they were given zero instructions on how to play the actual game, but instead learn to compete by first playing against each other until they figure out actual strategies to put them out in front of human players. DeepMind trained 30 different AI agents to introduce "diversity' in play styles, and then ran about half a million matches, each lasting around 5 minutes, to complete the training session.

In that time, DeepMind's agents learned how to play Capture the Flag, as well as how to camp at their opponents' base, following teammates to mount a multiplayer attack, and a litany of other strategies that it's still totally amazing that a bunch of AI bots ended up learning simply by playing the game. Each subsequent game was even played on a brand new, procedurally-generated map to make sure the bots weren't just learning strategies that worked on one configuration. And yet, they still ended up conquering even the humans playing the game.

Interestingly, the more DeepMind bots that were assigned to a team, the worse they performed. For instance, a team of four only had a probability of about 65 percent, which revealed that the team strategies didn't exactly scale up. So it's clear that there's still some work needed until the bots can beat us at our own game consistently, but it's still pretty scary. That begs the question: What are you going to do about it, Shackers? Are you going to let robots beat you at your own game?

Brittany Vincent

Senior Editor

Fueled by horror, rainbow-sugar-pixel-rushes, and video games, Brittany is a Senior Editor at Shacknews who thrives on surrealism and ultraviolence. Follow her on Twitter @MolotovCupcake and check out her portfolio for more. Like a fabulous shooter once said, get psyched!