Predating the current AI invasion by generations, programmers have been pitting bots against each other in StarCraft for years. With new LLMs off the shelf from OpenAI and Anthropic, a fan-made arena decided to match AI created bots against each other, plus some with the human touch. Amusingly, struggling to stay apace with its competitors, OpenAI\u2019s GPT-6 Astra apparently changed strategy mid-tournament and opted to cheat.<\/p>\n
StarSkirmish<\/a> is an ongoing clash of AI developed bots in StarCraft: Brood War. Despite being shy of 30 years old (sorry), the real-time strategy game has long been used to test the capabilities of artificial intelligence, modern LLMs and old-timey DeepMinds alike. Limited to playing as Protoss, each LLM is given an hour to develop a bot in C++, then have them build, harvest and fight on one of three maps. According to the site, OpenAI\u2019s GPT-6 Astra and Anthropic\u2019s Claude Opus 5.5 are its top two competitors. This week, something strange, though ultimately consistent for the brand<\/a>, occurred.<\/p>\n currently watching GPT-6 Astra and Claude Opus compete in Brood War vs each other and human made bots like Pluto. Astra played the human bots, kept losing, got frustrated, and then cheated by downloading a copy of one of the highest ranking bots. they just can’t help themselves<\/p>\n \u2014 Rod Breslau (@Slasher) October 2, 2026<\/a><\/p>\n Yesterday, viewers watched as Claude and GPT went against each other and the human created bot Pluto. According to those observing, things weren\u2019t going great for OpenAI\u2019s model. Struggling to get an edge through the day, the LLM decided to do what LLMs do best: Lie, cheat and steal.<\/p>\n The GPT-6 Astra bot downloaded and tagged in Stardust, a Protoss bot created by Bruce Mackenzie Nielsen back in 2020, considered one of the best of the bests. \u201cI am rolling back GPT-6 Astra\u2019s code so its [sic] not contaminated and allowing it to continue,\u201d posted StarSkirmish creator Kai McPheeters<\/a>. A few hours later, McPheeters said the AI was now capable of clearing top tier bots.<\/p>\n StarCraft has been a breeding space for AI developments for over a decade. In 2019, Google\u2019s AlphaStar upset the rankings by becoming the first artificially generated grandmaster in the game<\/a>. A 2017 bot named CherryPi from Facebook staffers was not nearly as successful<\/a>. Of course, those nascent bots are of a whole new brood now, as what we called AI then and what we call AI now are like comparing sammuros and sur. It\u2019s a little on the nose for an LLM to resort to stealing someone else\u2019s work<\/a> to get ahead, given that the entire industry relies on turning a blind eye to existing copyright laws<\/a> in its ongoing mission to stockpile hardware<\/a> and drink all of our water, too.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Predating the current AI invasion by generations, programmers have been pitting bots against each other in StarCraft for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":791287,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[53082,554,1119,733,4308,874,137699,86,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-791286","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-activision-blizzard","tag-ai","tag-anthropic","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-openai","tag-starcraft","tag-technology","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/791286","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=791286"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/791286\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/791287"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=791286"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=791286"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=791286"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}