Pro gamer beats AI programs in StarCraft battle

SEOUL, Oct. 31 (Yonhap) -- A professional computer game player overwhelmed his artificial intelligence (AI) rivals in a StarCraft competition on Tuesday. But the AI robots also displayed their evolving skill by defeating two amateur gamers in the event hosted by a Seoul university. South Korean pro gamer Song Byung-gu and two student players competed with three top-ranking AI machines in the popular strategic computer game. Song beat all his opponents -- ZZZK from Australia, TSCMOO from Norway and MJ Bot from South Korea -- inspiring applause and cheers from the audience packed into a 300-seat auditorium at Sejong University. He went on to crush Cherrypi, an AI robot created by Facebook. But his win came only after the two amateur competitors lost to the machines 5:1. Prof. Kim Kyung-joong, who led the development of MJ Bot, said the result was expected as the machines are far less capable than AlphaGo, a Google Inc. AI program that gave a crushing defeat to South Korean Go master Lee Se-dol last year. It is the second human-AI battle the university has hosted. In February, it held a translation competition of professional interpreters versus the AI programs created by Google and Naver Corp., the operator of South Korea's largest search engine. The AI interpreters lost the competition. elly@yna.co.kr (END)