Author Archives: tim chan

Google AI Dominates 99.8% of Population – At Least In StarCraft II

Posted on November 11, 2019 | 2 comments

AlphaStar, DeepMind’s StarCraft II playing AI, has achieved Grandmaster level in StarCraft II and is now ranked higher than 99.8% of the active StarCraft II player base.

StarCraft II Logo – pngimg

StarCraft II is one of eSports most beloved games. The strategy game features fast-paced real-time strategy and battle between players who take command of one of three fictional in-game races.

However, players faced a new opponent this summer – AlphaStar, Google AI firm DeepMind’s foray into the world of eSports.

 

StarCraft II‘ s Extraordinary Complexity

StarCraft II  was chosen for its incredible complexity. StarCraft players control hundreds of soldiers, vehicles, and warships simultaneously and in real-time. Furthermore, unlike common board games like chess and go, StarCraft II players cannot see what the opponent is doing unless the player physically sends a unit to gather information. This meant that AlphaStar had to choose the best of the 1026 possible actions that it can make based on the information that it had gathered.

Gameplay of StarCraft II – Vicente Alfonso, Flickr

 

AlphaStar’s Journey and Its Next Steps

AlphaStar used a fully-automated system to learn how to play StarCraft II. It used many general-purpose learning techniques, such as self-play and imitation learning, where the AI plays against itself and imitates others respectively, to teach itself.

Depiction of some learning methods and challenges involved – DeepMind

AlphaStar was first pitted against two professional level players in December of last year, however many felt as though it wasn’t a fair fight.  Therefore, DeepMind adjusted and limited AlphaStar’s reflex speed to even up the playing-field before unleashing AlphaStar onto the European StarCraft II servers in July.

In order to keep the experiment blind, DeepMind used a myriad of techniques, such as playing on multiple different accounts and constantly changing between these accounts.

Although AlphaStar wasn’t able to beat all opponents it met, many of which were some of the best in the world, it was still able to achieve a very high ranking and can be considered a huge step in progress for artificial intelligence.

Although DeepMind considers AlphaStar a success, StarCraft II is far from being beaten. AlphaStar does not quite play at the world champion level and you should expect to see more from AlphaStar and other artificial intelligence in the future.

 

Written by Tim Chan

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How Do Wombats Make Cube Shaped Poo?

Posted on September 30, 2019 | 1 comment

How do wombats make cubed poo? That was what Patricia Yang and her fellow researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology wanted to know. Their research, which was first presented at the 71st Annual Meeting of the APS Division of Fluid Dynamics and which has since gone on to win an Ig Nobel Prize earlier this month, sheds light on the processes involved in the creation of the distinctively shaped feces.

Wombat – Wikipedia Commons

 

Why Cubes and Why Is It Interesting?

In the modern world, most cubes or rectangular prisms are formed by one of two methods, extrusion and/or injection molding.

Extrusion is the same process that occurs when you squeeze a tube of toothpaste out, producing a long cylindrical piece. In essence, extrusion involves pushing a material through a die shaped like the cross-section of the final product (in the case of a cube, the cross-section would be a square). The resulting extrudate (the material that has been extruded) is then cut to size.

Injection molding is takes a material in a heated and liquid state, and injecting it into a mold. As the  material cools, it takes on the shape of the mold cavity. The mold is then separated and the resulting injection molded piece is then cleaned.

Cubes are a shape rarely found in nature and therefore, the wombat’s cubic scat has always been a fascinating mystery.

Lego, Injection Molded Plastic Toy Bricks – Semevent, Pixabay with Editorial License

 

As it turns out, wombats use piles of their poop to mark territory, much like how dogs use urine to do the same. Like their plastic brick counterparts, cubed poos are simply better at stacking than conventionally shaped fecal matter.

Wombat Excrement, Showing Distinctive Cube Shape – Wikipedia Commons

 

So How Do Wombats Make Cubed Poo?

When Dr. Yang and her fellow researchers were given two corpses of wombats euthanized after vehicle accidents, they began to dissect them immediately. The researchers began by inflating a long balloon into the animal’s intestines. They measured the elasticity of the intestinal walls and found that the elasticity varied at different points of the wall. The researchers theorize that the stretchier sections were responsible for the curved corners where as the more rigid sections were responsible for the straight and flat edges of the poop. They also found that only the last 8% of the intestines were actually responsible for the shaping of the excrement. Some also think that wombat diet has much to do with the formation and stability of the cube shape. The dryness of wombat diet helps maintain the rigid shape.

Why Is This Important To Us?

As mentioned previously, we normally use extrusion or injection molding to form cubic shapes. The revelation that we can use soft elastic tissue to form cuboids may provide new techniques for manufacturing.

 

Written by Tim Chan

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