Google's DeepMind AI ranks higher than 99.8% of StarCraft II players

Google's DeepMind AI is now able to beat 99.8% of StarCraft II players, able to play at Grandmaster as and against all three of the game's playable races.

Dubbed AlphaStar, the AI has the same limitations as human players and played under "professional approved conditions," such as limited action economy, and viewing the world through a camera.

The AI was unleashed onto the StarCraft II community anonymously earlier this year, with players having to opt-in to face it.

It has since climbed to the top of the league, and is now among the most accomplished StarCraft II players in the world.

AlphaStar was taught the game through watching replays and self-play. It was restricted in being unable to learn new tactics from matches against human players as it progressed.

The purpose of the experiment was to test the limitations and potential of open-ended learning.

In a blog post, the AlphaStar team said: "Games like StarCraft are an excellent training ground to advance these approaches, as players must use limited information to make dynamic and difficult decisions that have ramifications on multiple levels and timescales."