Man v/s machine: A bot from Elon Musk's startup defeats the world's best gamers

A robot speaks to attendees at the Oberthur Technologies stand at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain March 1, 2017. REUTERS/Paul Hanna - RTS110JB

A surprise segment introduced during this year’s The International—a Dota 2 tournament saw the triumph of a bot over a human for the first time.

A bot from Elon Musk backed startup Open AI defeated world’s best players of the game in one-on-one battle multiple times. Elon Musk celebrated the bot's victory in a tweet.

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

One of the players and crowd favourite in the tournament, Danylo ‘Dendi’ Ishutin, a professional, lost the game twice and forfeited any future games scheduled with the bot.

Astonished, he later said that the bot "feels a little like a human, but a little like something else".

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Dota 2 is a complex and very popular game usually played between two teams of five players each. The objective of each team is to seize and destroy other team’s base. The game has 113 playable heroes to choose from and lots of potions and items which can enhance the abilities of each player. However, for this contest, the game was heavily simplified, which did not go down well with few of the fans.

They simplified the hell out of DOTA2 to let it win. Wouldn't say its was even playing Dota. Impressive yes but not a 5v5 real win — Stephen Hoff (@NewsHoff) August 12, 2017

OpenAI is a non-profit venture from the entrepreneur with an objective to prevent the Artificial Intelligence to destroy the world. The startup is planning to come again in the next year’s event with bots which can play the full-scale five-on-five game.