Alphabet's DeepMind struggles to crack Starcraft II

DEEPMIND, the Alphabet Inc-owned artificial intelligence (AI) company best known for creating software capable of beating the world's best players at the strategy game Go, has targeted the science fiction video game Starcraft II as its next big research milestone. But so far, space is proving a difficult frontier for the company's algorithms.

DeepMind's existing algorithms, including those that performed with super-human skill across a host of classic Atari titles, "cannot win a single game against the easiest built-in AI" in Starcraft II, let alone challenge skilled humans, the company said in a blog post on Wednesday.

The built-in agents, which are created by Starcraft publisher Activision Blizzard Inc, use hard-coded rules to determine their game play rather than the kinds of advanced machine-learning techniques the London-based DeepMind specialises in.