Last Week in AI #20

DeepMind’s AI Outcompetes 99% of StarCraft II Human Players

Alphabet’s Alphastar AI reached a major milestone back in January when it beat professional players at the highly-complex Starcraft II game. Now, the system has managed to outrank 99.8% of all active players , demonstrating a much improved ability to strategize and act in such a complex environment with imperfect information.

Read more at: MIT Tech Review

AI to Help Patent Filing

The US patent office receives a staggering amount of applications each year, more than 640,000 during last year alone. This provides a unique opportunity for an AI system to aid in the patent filing process, slashing costs, speeding up the process and cutting down on mundane administrative tasks.

Read more at: The Wall Street Journal

Experts Provide Ethical Guidelines to Pentagon’s Use of AI

Last Thursday, a group of experts from the Defense Innovation Board - helmed by Google’s former CEO Eric Schmidt - provided a set of ethical guidelines for the Pentagon’s use of AI. It’s worth noting that despite the Pentagon’s request for these principles, they did not make a commitment to adopt them.

Read more at: WIRED