Decision Mechanics

Insight. Applied.

OpenAI bots beat top players in multiplayer video game

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A team of AI bots created by OpenAI, a non-profit AI research company co-founded by Elon Musk, have beaten former professional Dota 2 players. It’s only been a few months since the bots were losing to amateur players.

Dota 2 is a multiplayer online battle arena game (MOBA) where two teams of five players compete to occupy each other’s bases.

While the human players displayed periods of indecision, the bots, known as the OpenAI Five, were able to coordinate their actions much more efficiently.

Making and implementing decisions requires effective communication. Coordination is one of five key factors to be considered when resolving dilemmas in confrontation analysis, for example.

The OpenAI Five will play an exhibition game against the winners of the main Dota 2 tournament at the end of August—pitting AI against the newly-crowned best players in the world.

Python tops programming language list

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Python has topped the IEEE Spectrum list of top programming languages again this year—extending its lead in the process.

The sources used to compiled the list cover

contexts that include social chatter, open-source code production, and job postings.

Obviously that list of sources isn’t an accurate reflection of what developers are doing day-to-day in organisations. Any list of top programming languages that puts R (#7) above JavaScript (#8) clearly has some methodological challenges. My belief is that the list reflects the current buzz around data science.

However, interest in Python clearly remains high. As it does in R—#7 is impressive for a domain-specific language.

Google reveals performance of its custom AI chips

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chart showing relative efficiency of different kinds of processing units

Google has just release performance data for its Tensor Processing Unit (TPU) custom machine learning chips.

TPUs are

  • 15-20x faster than GPUs and CPUs when running deep learning applications
  • 30-80x more power efficient (operations per Watt)
  • frugal in terms of lines of code required to control them (their deep learning applications are implemented using 100-1500 lines)

Google claim that without these chips they would have to double the number of data centers they run.

Vote HAL 2030!

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robot canvassing for votes

Confused by the rapid evolution of politics in the past year? Well, things might get even wilder if robots get to vote in 2030.

I’d comment, but, in 2030, when this post is dug out of the archives, I don’t want to be pilloried for any anti-machine bigotry. Such views could even be fatal by then.

Amazon AI

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digital brain

Amazon is the latest company to offer developers access to AI services. There are four available.

  • Amazon Lex—Build conversational interfaces using voice and text, powered by the same deep learning technologies as Alexa
  • Amazon Rekognition—Deep learning-based image recognition
  • Amazon Polly—Turn text into lifelike speech using deep learning
  • Amazon Machine Learning—A scalable machine learning service for developers