Every so often on the podcast we will bring you something that is a little bit different.

This episode is part one of a conversation with Esports Legends TLO & MaNa. They are professional Starcraft II players and they tell us the story of what it was like to compete against Google DeepMinds AlphaStar AI agent.

This is a fascinating discussion about the technical capability of AI agents and about the psychology involved when Humans take on the machines.

Episode Summary

• A typical day for an esports athlete
• The similarities and differences between Esports and normal sports
• The importance of actions and screens per minutes for high performance
• The role of gaming in driving development of AI
• Evolution of gaming AI agents
• The challenges in competing against a blackbox
• Exploiting the game playing tendencies of the AlphaStar
• The psychological pressure of playing against AlphaStar
• Underestimating the ability of AlphaStar

Resources:

Deepmind Alphastar Videos:

https://deepmind.com/research/open-source/alphastar-resources

TLO Profile: - https://liquipedia.net/starcraft2/TLO

MaNa Profile: - https://liquipedia.net/starcraft2/MaNa