Artificial Intelligence Competing at The International 8 - What?

This is definitely a first in esports history; a follow-up to what occurred at The International 7 last year, where the event held 1-vs-1 battles between AI and the best Dota 2 player in the world. Back then, the results were rather ugly, as the AI crushed the players. This year, for The International 8, they are dialing things up by preparing a full five man Dota 2 team which is fully AI to go against the best Dota 2 players in the world. This is definitely one for the history books. 

The organization behind the instances in OpenAI, who have successfully developed AI for games such as Chess and Go, where the AI absorbs in-game information and learns to be as efficient as possible. After their first opportunity at last year's event, OpenAI has reportedly surged forward in their development process to allow the AI to easily swap between playstyles such as laning and farming - just like a human. They 5 AI team has managed to defeat a team of 5,500 MMR players; for those who know nothing of public competitive Dota 2, this is the top one percentile of all players in terms of skill level. 

It's a staggering achievement, but facing a professional team is yet to be done. To get to this point, the team at OpenAI make use of supercompuiters, with a total of 128,000 CPU cores that lets the FIVE squad 900 years of experience overall each day, by competing against itself non-stop and watching the footage. These statistics come from the team directly., you can check out their website here: https://blog.openai.com/openai-five/. I recommend you check it out to truly understand the complexity of it all.  

A known personality within the scene, Wiliam Blitz Lee the commentator, had this to say upon observing: 

The teamwork aspect of the bot was just overwhelming. It feels like five selfless players that know a good general strategy.

This may prove to be positive or negative development in the future, but for now, all we can do is relish in the technological advancement and see if the human team at TI8 can take them. The International 8 will try to continue the tradition of breaking the record for esports prize pools, and is the perfect stage for technological breakthrough.