We all know how AI technology has progressed through the years, so the fact that it beat the world’s best players in chess and go is old news. However, just last August 12th, an OpenAI bot has defeated the world’s top DotA 2 player, Danil “Dendi” Ishutin, on a one-on-one battle. Audiences at The International (one of the biggest eSports events in the world) had witnessed the bot easily win the match, and now remains undefeated amongst all the other top DotA 2 players.
Now, you might be wondering how an AI bot was trained to win a game way more complex and strategic than chess and go. Well, the answer is simple: It just played against itself for several weeks. “We’ve coached it to learn just from playing against itself,” said Jakub Pachoki, researcher at OpenAI. “So we didn’t hard-code in any strategy, we didn’t have it learn from human experts, just from the very beginning, it just keeps playing against a copy of itself. It starts from complete randomness and then it makes very small improvements, and eventually it’s just pro level.”
Source: Youtube, Elon Musk
The next step for OpenAI is to train it to actually play against and alongside other human players in a full, 5v5, professional DotA 2 battle.
Unsurprisingly, Elon Musk, who was observing the match had expressed his thoughts on twitter, warning us about the potential dangers of unregulated AI technology.
OpenAI first ever to defeat world's best players in competitive eSports. Vastly more complex than traditional board games like chess & Go.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 12, 2017
Source: Twitter, Elon Musk
If you're not concerned about AI safety, you should be. Vastly more risk than North Korea. pic.twitter.com/2z0tiid0lc
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 12, 2017
Source: Twitter, Elon Musk
Nobody likes being regulated, but everything (cars, planes, food, drugs, etc) that's a danger to the public is regulated. AI should be too.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 12, 2017
Source: Twitter, Elon Musk
This isn’t the first time Musk has spoken out about AI regulation either. At the International Space Station R&D conference, Musk had spoken about his wish to have a government body regulate the usage of AI in the immediate future.
Naturally, as with most scientific and technological communities, other researchers disagree. One of which is Rodney Brooks, founder of iRobot and Rethink Robotics. In a statement, he said “If you’re going to have a regulation now, either it applies to something and changes something in the world, or it doesn’t apply to anything. If it doesn’t apply to anything, what the hell do you have the regulation for? Tell me, what behavior do you want to change, Elon? By the way, let’s talk about regulation on self-driving Teslas, because that’s a real issue.”
Whether or not you think AI should be regulated or not, the advancement of this technology continues to rise at a very fast rate. Hence, the tech community needs to come to an agreement, and they need to do so fast, before things end up messy and out of control.
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