I think the right way to frame this is that AlphaStar has done the Starcraft 2 equivalent of mastering blitz chess. Blitz chess is easier for computers than slow chess because humans don’t cope well with time pressure. Starcraft 2 imposes fairly extreme time pressure by default; humans need to make multiple actions per second, which means they’re choosing between multi-action templates rather than optimizing each action separately. An interesting challenge for AI would be the Starcraft equivalent of slow chess: Starcraft played at 1/10th speed.
I think the right way to frame this is that AlphaStar has done the Starcraft 2 equivalent of mastering blitz chess. Blitz chess is easier for computers than slow chess because humans don’t cope well with time pressure. Starcraft 2 imposes fairly extreme time pressure by default; humans need to make multiple actions per second, which means they’re choosing between multi-action templates rather than optimizing each action separately. An interesting challenge for AI would be the Starcraft equivalent of slow chess: Starcraft played at 1/10th speed.