Starcraft 2 state is much bigger than Go's and requires real time action. Also, actions have to be performed in parallel in real time, which probably requires different techniques and probably puts a way lower bound on number of iterations doable in given time.
> state is much bigger.
Can AlphaGo not care about it and just play better and faster?
I think AI does have an advantage once it starts to be competent, especially if it's interacting through APIs exclusively and not the interface, which means that it's actions per minute could be astronomically higher than a human player, with unheard of levels of micro. At the same time, I think machine learning is almost an idea solution to figuring out build orders. It's gonna be fast and smart. Question just is how long?
There's no way they'll compete under unlimited APM rules, it wouldn't even be remotely interesting. We're trying to match wits with the AI, not the inertia and momentum of super slow fingers, keys, and mouse.
I'm sure they'll come up with an "effective APM" heuristic which compares similarly to top pros, and feed it as a constraint to the AI.
For AI vs AI it could be interesting to see what strategies develop with two opponents with the ability to perfectly microcontrol their units.
[0]Zerglings vs Siege Tanks when controlled by AI with perfect micro.
Otherwise, you make a fair point and that video is amazing. AI vs AI strategy with unlimited APM would be very exciting to watch.
For example the "All ravens, all the time" Terran player Ketrok just responded to the surge in popularity of Cannon Rushes by making a tiny tweak to his opening worker movement. The revised opening spots the Cannon Rush in time to adequately defend and thus of course win.
I'd be interested to see if it can "plan ahead". Maybe a Chess variant where you have to submit your next move before the current player moves, or something like that.
As far as I understand (and I am no expert at all), AlphaGo basically creates a heuristic of what move to play in a given situation (which heurisitic is created by playing against itself many, many times). Instead of trying to "break" the game, they just decided to simulate playing and results were good enough to outmatch humans, but we have no idea how close to the "perfect game" AlphaGo actually got.
But - whole input to a network is 19x19 array with 3 possible states per cell, plus maybe turn count and one bit for determining whose next move is. S2 network should process graphic stream (lets say 1280/720), needs spatial awareness(minimap), priority setting and computational resource management. And it has to be fast enough in the first place just to follow the game.
I'm not saying that won't happen (who predicted Go breakthrough?), but it at least seem like a much bigger challenge.
When AlphaZero plays Go with itself, it can basically go as fast as it can calculate next move. With Starcraft that's not the case - both networks have to work in sync, probably need some temporal awareness and probably will have some limit of actions per time fraction, which basically requires a whole new approach. Of course, I can be gravely mistaken, but I would like to now how they can circumvent this.