AI seems to be getting smarter and more efficient by the day. It can already beat even the world's best human players in games like Go, Chess, and DOTA 2, but it seems taking on mere humans isn't enough for one AI.
DeepMind's AlphaZero has grown tired of flesh opponents and decided to shift its focus to the (metaphorical) destruction of other AIs. It's been pitted against some of the world's top machine learning models across several different board games, and it has managed to come out on top consistently.
Specifically, AlphaZero has conquered DeepMind's other top board game-playing AI, AlphaGo Zero, in addition to world-champion chess AI Stockfish, and "elmo," an AI Shogi champion. Amazingly, AlphaZero was trained in a mostly hands-off manner with "no human intervention," according to Cnet.
Indeed, the only information given to the AI were the basic rules of each game. Beyond that, AlphaZero was left to its own devices, playing against itself until it was competent enough to come out on top against tougher opponents. Furthermore, AlphaZero was reportedly using tricks and strategies that had never been seen before by humans.
This is an impressive achievement for DeepMind, and it shows the exponential increases in sophistication that AI is capable of over time. Only time will tell whether or not AlphaZero can transition to more complex games (such as DOTA 2 or Starcraft II), though.