Watch Elon Musk's OpenAI DOTA 2 Bot Destroy The World’s Best Players At The International

We've talked lots on the site about how AI is going to change our future, and how we should proceed with caution in some regards. We've seen some pretty serious uses for AI, and some a little less important. Today, we learn of a use that might not be too important, but still shows us how far along AI has come, and what's in store for the future.

At Valve's enormous The International Dota 2 tournament, world-class player Dendi was brought out on stage for an epic 1v1. We're not sure if he knew in advance what he was going to be up against, but the crowd definitely didn't. As a PC was strolled out to the floor, the crowd erupted in applause (a video is found below).

Ultimately, this AI-powered player defeated Dendi, which is saying a lot given the fact that we're dealing with a player who knows the game inside and out. With this AI, built through Elon Musk's OpenAI organization, a lot of training had to take place to bolster its abilities. We wouldn't go as far to say that the AI "mastered" the game, as its execution wasn't entirely elegant (it's purpose-built, so we'd expect that). However, AI is designed to get better, so it doesn't seem unlikely that this AI could reach a point where no human player even has a chance.

OpenAI first ever to defeat world's best players in competitive eSports. Vastly more complex than traditional board games like chess & Go.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 12, 2017

The video below highlights some of the things this AI learned to better itself at Dota 2. You'll notice that a lot of trial and error has to happen for the AI to get better, and while it requires a lot of horsepower behind the scenes to become smarter, the fact that we're seeing what we are here is proof that really advanced AI is already all around us.

Think about this: what's the future of gaming going to be like with AI in our hands? Today, the amount of processing power to create AI bots like this one is pretty ridiculous, but as technology marches on, we're inevitably going to have access to a ton of that processing power in our own homes. In the future, will online games have to deal with players armed with AI bot software? A couple of years ago, that might have sounded outlandish, but now we're not so sure...