You're overstating the issue here. Deepmind wasn't forced to control units using the standard control groups. My understanding is they could directly issue commands to arbitrary group of units. If you watch the replays, the APM/EPM is not too abusive. The main advantage is that it doesn't pay the cost of context-switching so it's very strong at multi-pronged attacks. It still didn't seem smart in the replays I saw on Youtube. Basically it's very good at developing mid-game timing attacks that humans tend to struggle with (not because of APM, but because it's easy to make mistakes when so much is going across the whole map).
YeGoblynQueenne|6 years ago
It's a complicated matter because it's (claimed to be) the first system that's doing so well in Starcraft II so it's hard to believe it just has a mechanical advantage. But on the other hand, Google is in a position to throw a lot more resources on training their system than most others, so maybe it's just a combination of having a ton of compute coupled with a slight advantage in how you can control your units.
If that is the case we haven't really learned anything new from Google's achievement: we already know that a powerful computer can do some things faster than a human (e.g. arithmetic). We also know that there are things that humans can do a lot faster and better than computers (e.g. learn human language). The question is if Google's system is getting better at something that computers are known to be not very good at, in this case, strategy, I guess. That would be something new.
Personally I'm still in my default position which is skeptical.