Can Bots Outwit Humans in One of the Biggest Esports Games?
This August, some of the world’s best professional gamers will travel to Vancouver to fight for millions of dollars in the world’s most valuable esports competition. They’ll be joined by a team of five artificial intelligence bots backed by Elon Musk, trying to set a new marker for the power of machine learning.
The bots were developed by OpenAI, an independent research institute the Tesla CEO cofounded in 2015 to advance AI and prevent the technology from turning dangerous.
Vancouver is hosting the annual world championship of Dota 2, one of the internet’s most-watched videogames. The prize purse is more than $15 million and growing, exceeding the $11 million at stake at golf’s Masters. In each game, two teams of five people attempt to destroy each others’ bases, playing characters that can include demons, spiders, and icy ghosts.
