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Gamers everywhere were watching as OpenAI, an artificial intelligence lab co-founded by Elon Musk, pitted a team of bots against some of the world鈥檚 best Dota 2 players at an annual tournament back in June.

Machines had been on a winning streak. In 2016, DeepMind鈥檚 AI mastered Go. In 2017, a poker-playing bot called Libratus, developed by a team at Carnegie Mellon University in Pennsylvania, won a professional Heads-Up No-Limit Texas Hold 鈥楨m tournament. Dota 2, a popular online battle game, looked to be next in line.

In the end, the bots beat amateur players and lost to pros 鈥� but that probably won鈥檛 be the case next time. 鈥淚 think OpenAI鈥檚 chances are pretty high,鈥� says Julian Togelius at New York University.

In Dota 2, two teams of five vie for territory and resources across a fantasy-themed map, lobbing spells in a confusion of colour. The spectacle can feel like watching fireworks from a plane. Yet behind the fast-paced action, players make constant trade-offs between short-term advantage and the long game. This makes it hard for computers to master.

After playing thousands of years鈥� worth of the game, Open AI鈥檚 bots managed to beat a team of amateurs, largely by dominating skirmishes. The bots have a reaction time of 0.2 seconds 鈥� roughly that of humans 鈥� but in that instant they can take in the entire state of the game, including details that human players have to click on or switch screens to read.

This makes the bots formidable in battle because they know the exact effect of any action at all times. The bots are also ruthless. Human players often get killed trying to save their buddies. Bots aren鈥檛 so stupid.

Even so, the pro players at June鈥檚 contest beat the bots by outplanning them. But better planning is something OpenAI has said it will be focusing on. With another 12 months of training under their virtual belts, the bots look to be where the smart money will head at 2019鈥檚 tournament.

This article appeared in print under the headline 鈥淣ews Preview 2019: AI beats the best at big battle games鈥�