Many artificial intelligence solutions absolutely demolished gamers in the past. The reigning Go champion will recall those games vividly. It now turns out video games are not safe from AI domination either. A new artificial intelligence solution designed by one of Elon Musk’s startups has defeated the world’s top Dota 2 players. The future of eSports may look very different in a few years’ time.

Dota 2 Top Players Get Toppled by new AI Solution

It is fun to watch artificial intelligence absolutely dominate the world’s most strategic minds when it comes to gaming. Whether we are talking about board games or video games, there does not appear to be any limit as to what these computers can do. Now that the world’s top Dota 2 players have suffered a major loss at the hands of OpenAI, things have taken an interesting turn once again.

OpenAI is one of the many startups owned by Elon Musk, a name with which virtually everyone on the planet is familiar by now. The company has come up with an impressive artificial intelligence solution capable of playing the popular game Dota 2. In fact, it took on the world’s elite players during Valve’s Dota 2 tournament held last night. The end result was a lot different from what most people expected, as the AI absolutely thrashed the top human players in the world with relative ease.

Considering that OpenAI is a nonprofit organization, in this case the development of the AI was merely for fun. The bot amassed sufficient knowledge to beat the world’s elite Dota 2 players after just two weeks of training. That training came in the form of real-time learning, which allowed the bot to amass “lifetimes of experience” in a short amount of time. It will be interesting to see how this development affects the future of Dota 2, which has been rumored as an official competitive event in the 2024 Olympics.

Elon Musk is understandably excited about this development, as it is the first recorded instance in which an AI has beaten a pro at competitive eSports. This will not be the last time either, as there is still a lot of room for improvement to the technology. This demonstration was limited in its approach. Only a few variables of gameplay were used, yet it goes to show just two weeks of real-time learning can make a vast difference. If only we could bring this technology to serve us humans in some way, things would be only more intriguing.

Spectators present claimed that the AI bot had been more than capable of mimicking “human” movements and tactics. Dota 2 pro Danylo Ishutin got defeated twice in quick succession and decided not to partake in future games against the bot. It is not entirely surprising to note such a decision, since no one wants to be made a fool of by an opponent no one can see. He also felt the opponent showed some human traits, though performance-wise it was a few levels above any human player.

The future of artificial intelligence is looking very bright right now. Some people will claim beating eSports players is not a major development, but they would be missing the point entirely. There is no reason to think eSports are easy; otherwise, everyone would do it. Just because it is a concept few people grew up with does not mean it is something humans could pick up in just two weeks. Amazingly, artificial intelligence solutions learn these skills in that amount of time.