The AI research unit OpenAI has developed an AI capable of beating the world’s best Dota 2 players, prompting Elon Musk to send out a warning that we should be more frightened of AI than North Korea.

Elon Musk is one smart cookie, so when he says something, I tend to believe him, and over the weekend, the Tesla and SpaceX owner, told the world, via Twitter, that we should be more concerned about Artificial Intelligence (AI) safety, than any threat from North Korea.

Musk made the claim, after the non-profit AI research outfit he backs, OpenAI, created a bot that took the world’s best Dota 2 players to the cleaners at the recent Dota 2 The International World Championships.

Amongst those beaten by the OpenAI bot were the top pro gamer Danylo Ashutin, and Musk’s reaction was as morose as you can get, sending out a tweet of a photo of a concerned woman with the words, In The End, The Machines Will Win (the photo was an old Australian government anti-pokie campaign photo).

If you’re not concerned about AI safety, you should be. Vastly more risk than North Korea. pic.twitter.com/2z0tiid0lc

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 12, 2017

But it’s not all doom and gloom.

The pro players who faced the bot said they learned a lot and would like to use the bot as a future training tool. Co-founder and CTO of OpenAI, Greg Brockman, said the bot improves by continually playing against a copy of itself.

The next stage is for the OpenAI team to create a five AI bot Dota 2 team to take on the world’s best Dota 2 teams. Beyond that, Brockman foresees a future where humans and AI compete together in professional competition.

It maybe the first time that an AI has defeated an esports pro, but it’s not the first time an AI has beaten the very best in a complicated game. In the mid-90s, IBM’s chess AI, Deep Blue, beat the world champion, Garry Kasparov. Today, Kasparov is one of the men pushing for competitive AI/human teams in chess.

In May, Google’s AI AlphaGo beat the one of South Korea’s top Go players, Ke Jie. Jie later told the press that he was able to improve his game by learning from the AI.

And at the turn of the year, Carnegie Mellon University’s AI Libratus beat four of the world’s top poker players in Heads-Up No-Limit Hold’em. I do not doubt that in the future we will see teams of AI/humans competing together in both online and live formats of the game.

During Raising for Effective Giving’s (REG) recent H1-2017 earnings report, close to $90,000 of the $700,000 raised by poker players were donated to the Machine Intelligence Research Institute (MIRI), a non-profit organisation that researches safety issues related to advancements in AI.

Team Liquid Wins The International

And talking about The International, Team Liquid was crowned the new World Champions, after a clean sweep (3-0) against Newbee in the final.

The European based esports team picked up a cheque for $10,806,301, the largest in esports history. The total prize pool was $24 million, another world record, thanks to the Dota 2 fans who purchase in-play items with a percentage going towards the record prize pool.

Final Standings

1. Team Liquid – $10,862,6822
2. Newbee – $3,950,066
3. LGD.Forever Young – $2,592,231
4. LGD Gaming – $1,728,154