I'm curious to know if the AI can win with a 50-50 draft. It can be argued that the main reason the humans lost was because they didn't have a feel for the meta of this 18-hero version of Dota, while the bots did. What if you give the humans an equal chance at the game wrt the draft? That would have made for a much more interesting game than having the humans play a game they've never played before in their lives.
When they demo'd this over a year ago, they gave the human player a laundry list of instructions and the bot was still defeated once the keen human player used their intellect to analyze what was going on and 'break the bot'. The fact that the bot didn't recover or understand how it was being broken examples the true nature of what's going on : It's just a dumb bot w/ lots of training time. If intelligence were present, it too would understand like the human being what was going on and change things up. This is actual the crucial thing that needs to be demonstrated and targeted but you see .. This gets in the realm of the class of 'hard problems' that a number of these well funded and popularized groups aren't attacking.
As for Dota, indeed the broader game was designed and is constantly updated to be an intellectual challenge. Cheese strategies exists. When discovered, game rebalances are conducted to ensure players don't settle in on brute force exploits.
In just 5-10min of watching some of the matches, I already know a handful of characters that would 'break the bot' on this 5 bot ensemble. This is powered by human intellect (the truly significant part). The bots trained across time horizons greater than a human lifetime in this unorthodox and slanted arrangement. Human beings seasoned on a more well rounded and balance game are then thrown to the bots and showcased. I know who would be sold on this and its not your average Dota player.
Again, the fact that it is possible to 'break the bot' examples that the whole thing is a charade. I have no doubt they might have gained some experienced/understanding with engineering this solution but the actual result is lipstick on a 'backpropaganda' pig.
More fundamental deep research and less theatrics is in order.
I'd also advise becoming seasoned in the thinking behind a particular game if you're trying to test and develop an artificial form of intelligence to navigate it and beyond.
It seems likely that actual pros instead of a mismash of commentators and community stars would be able to win game 2 even with the draft favoring the AI.
For what is worth, those commentators are actually very good players. Every year they team up in the qualifiers for the world championship and they usually make it very far.
I'm an active player with enough hours logged to interpret the game. That being said, the observations should also be obvious to even the most novice player. I don't need a commercialized and obviously favorable and biased stream of commentary clouding a much more sound analytical capability. I'm pretty sure they're not going invite commentators that point out the obvious reality as to what is going on. Per the commentators, bot like behavior gets extra positive humanized characterization and is marked as intelligent. Whereas snowball-cheese is known as the lowest tier and least intelligent strategy in the game. There's even a set of memes in the community for people who attempt such strategies.
People need to start doing more critical analysis of their own and stop relying on commercialized and biased information and commentary when settling on an viewpoint. Watching others play only gets you so far in understanding. When you play and you see what I'm saying for yourself, you can skim through the provided clips and understand exactly what's going on.
The fact that this continues to get hyped up vs someone stating what's going on is plain sad.
This was my first reaction as well. It would have been more interesting if the AI5 bots drafted to minimized distance from 50/50 odds, not to maximize odds of winning. This puts more emphasis on the ability of the bots to play the actual game, not the draft "game."