How could an AI take down the world's best StarCraft players?

Earlier this year, researchers at Google DeepMind defeated the world's best Go player with the help of their latest artificial intelligence, AlphaGo. 

It was an unexpected victory that shocked the DeepMind team as much as it did viewers, and one that raised another question: how would an AI fare on the digital battlefields of professional gaming? 

AlphaGo creator Demis Hassabis, who you might remember as the dev responsible for co-designing and programming Bullfrog's Theme Park alongside Peter Molyneux, might be about to give us an answer. 

Back in 2011, Hassabis made it clear he'd like to pit a pro StarCraft player against one of DeepMind's uber-competitive AIs, and it was a message Google repeated after AlphaGo's latest win. 

So, could an AI actually beat the world's best and brightest StarCraft players? 

According to the Wall Street Journal -- which picked the brains of leading AI experts -- maybe; but only if we can teach an AI to lie convincingly. 

"When the AI finds that the only way to win is to show strength, it will do that,” said University of Alberta computer scientist, David Churchill, speaking to the WSJ. "If you want to call that bluffing, then the AI is capable of bluffing, but there’s no machismo behind it.

“In the past we have seen the human world champions of checkers, chess, and Go say that they will not be defeated by computers, and each time they were wrong,” he says. "It would be foolish to assume that StarCraft, even though it is a much more complex game, is any different.”

The players themselves, however, remain skeptical, and 22 year old StarCraft pro, Eugene Kim, has suggested it would be amazing to see an AI even try and bluff its way to victory, let alone succeed. 

As for Blizzard, custodians of the classic strategy franchise, they're as keen as the rest of us to find out what would happen. 

In fact, company co-founder Michael Morhaime has already been in touch with Google about setting up what would be the ultimate man vs. machine grudge match, while Facebook and Microsoft are also working behind-the-scenes on unspecified StarCraft AI projects. 

“We would love to be a milestone on that advance of artificial intelligence, said Morhaime. "From chess to Go and then us."

Read the full story over on the Wall Street Journal.