Google is Building an AI to Kick Your Butt at 'StarCraft'

Google is trying to teach an AI how to beat the world's best StarCraft 2 players.

Because it's Google and they have the power to do that.

In 2014, Google acquired DeepMind, a company focused on artificial intelligence research and application. The company has worked with games before on the Atari to try and surpass human players. But StarCraft is a different beast, focusing on complex problem solving and the random variable of the human mind. You may think I'm going to construct an additional pylon, but what if I decide not to and instead pull a Zerg rush with my Protoss crew (always rolling with team Protoss)?

But that's exactly the type of environment DeepMind and Google want to jump into to further develop AI technology. They need those random variables. The company is partnering with Blizzard and have already released a new set of tools to help advance the project. This includes a release of content of the game for Linux, for the first time ever.

StarCraft has long been used as a test subject for AI and ML research. For a game with a 20 year history and a heavily devoted fan-base, you can bet that some of the best players in the world cultivated from the StarCraft arena. The game requires you to manage multiple functions at once: gathering resources, building up a base, defending your territory, etc. Players have to balance out the primary objective with the ancillary goals - an AI must do the same if they want to win. And unlike an Atari game with 10 actions a player can make at any one time (up, down, left, right, button), StarCraft can have up to 300. That is a lot of content an AI has to review.

Google and Blizzard hope that with the release of the tools and the research paper will drum up interest in the project and participants may be willing to throw themselves into the pool to be act as data/test dummies. It will be interesting to see what results are produced from the project.

WoW Gold Surpasses Value of Venezuela Currency

When video games get too real: Currency in World of Warcraft is now worth more then the Venezuelan Bolivar.

This is not a joke. Right now a monthly "food bag" is worth about 10,000 Bolivar - you can figure out the math from there. While that seems cheap by our Dollar, in Venezuela, the rate of inflation makes the price moot when minimum wage is $45 USD a month.

Which is why World of Warcraft currency is worth more then the Bolivar. This isn't the first time it's happened. Since President Nicolas Maduro came into power, the economy in Venezuela has been in a constant state of distress. Food shortages have led to increased prices and inflation in the market. Minimum wage has not kept up with the soaring costs. While the government recently passed laws to increase the wage by 60%, Venezuela's inflation is expected to grow up to 720% this year and over 2k% next year. Yikes.  Unfortunately efforts by the government to ease the inflation have been having the opposite effect.

So how much is WoW gold? 10k gold is worth roughly $1.21. 11,185.95 Bolivares is worth $1 on the black market. If you're an effective gold farmer, you could make $14.52 over 12 hours. 7 days a week for 30 days, that's $435.60 - more then the minimum wage in Venezuela. This might be a worth-while venture for those looking for alternate jobs that would provide better pay. While I don't condone the activity of gold farming, when your country is on the brink of famine and you have nothing to lose, at least this would put food on the table.