The esports industry is one of the fastest growing and newest live sports industries in the world. We have seen a great emergence of esports leagues across the world in the US, Europe, South America, and Asia. Artificial Intelligence Esports team of the Future. Along with the growth and influx of money comes a mass push to improve technology for esports in the future. Technology giant, Qualcomm Technologies has now entered the field with their AI technology. This AI system Qualcomm they are creating is aimed at beating the best humans in the world at their own esport.
AI integrated with Esports was once long shot. Now, Qualcomm believes that they can defeat the worlds best in popular esport games like League of Legends. It seems impossible for AI to defeat the greatest in the world when it comes to a game like League of Legends. Unlike other games where AI have succeeded like chess, league of legends is not a game of math and instead a complex match where luck, skill, and strategy are all involved. Through machine learning and massive amounts of data, an AI in a video game will be able to decision make similar to humans. This is interesting because a game like league of legends offers millions of data for AI to study yet no single player int he game makes all the right decisions. On the other side, a major advantage that AI has in video games against players is the mechanical aspect. While macro has to be learned, an AI system can pretty much instantly learn the micro of the game and have better movement, timing, aiming, etc., than humans.
Qualcomm does not seek this accomplishment just to say that an AI can beat humans in a video game. They are instead developing what they see as tools for players in the future. If teams can utilize AI to play when other teams are not available to scrimmage they can have a substantial advantage. Another very important aspect is the data and analysis during the machine learning aspect to teach the AI decision making. With this data, teams can now better understand the strategy behind the game and improve their own play.
The applications of AI are nearly endless. I am very excited and interested to see powerful AI with time to learn and adapt to video game. These AI could push forward the competitiveness of Esports and overall improve the quality of games.
Questions:
1. Would you want to play online video games knowing that you could be playing human-like AI?
2. Do you think that AI will be able to compete with humans in games like League of Legends where on the fly decision making is a primary component.
3. If AI are able to beat human players, do you believe it could be harmful for the esports industry?
Sources:
https://venturebeat.com/2018/12/11/ai-is-esports-newest-weapon/
https://www.dailyesports.gg/qualcomm-developing-ai-esports-team-tencent-honor-of-kings/
As someone who plays video games often I would say I wouldn't want to play video games against like human-like AI. I would rather play against real people who have learned to play the game overtime. Personally, I think it would unfair for a computer to play against humans in competitive matches as they would be computed to be the best they can. I think AI would be able to compute against humans in games like League of Legends but I think it would be completely unfair and as a player would make me more inclined not to play as they would have an unfair advantage as they would computed to be better than us. I think this would be detrimental the gaming industry as it could make people not want to play as much as they think they're being cheated out of fair competition.
ReplyDeleteHi Kevin,
DeleteIt is definitely understandable how playing against real people who make decisions in real-time is more entertaining and engaging than playing against an AI that does not make mistakes. However, would you agree that playing against AI could help train a competitive player's mechanics at the highest level? If the best team in the world has no real competition, would it not be entertaining to watch that team fight an AI team that has flawless coordination and skill? It would be not as fun to play against it yourself, but even in games like chess, the AI has been used as a pseudo training ground, as you can see from the link below.
https://towardsdatascience.com/predicting-professional-players-chess-moves-with-deep-learning-9de6e305109e
Clearly, playing against an AI can have value in certain situations. Do you think it is never valuable to have AI to compete against in a video game?
Hi Dillon,
DeleteI think using AI to train teams will be inevitable because AI can be used to emulate certain aspects of a certain team or individuals. This would force current teams to act differently and be more creative when playing the game. This could revitalize teams and players could develop new countermeasures to what is effectively "active game film" or another thing could be that players can play against an AI version of themselves to find any gaps in their game or think like how an enemy player would react.