The article presents the rising costs couched within the theme of all-to-powerful tech companies like Google and Facebook, which is really irrelevant: These costs are not high because of those companies, they are high because the research itself is incredibly resource intensive, and would be so whether or not large tech companies were also engaged in it. In fact, with Google and their development of specialized chips for this purpose, AI research is probably getting cheaper due to their involvement.
Next, this research will probably continue to get cheaper. The cost to do the Dota 2 research 5 years ago would have been much higher, and will probably be even less expensive 5 years from now.
Also, I think there's plenty of room for novel & useful at the bottom end where $millions in compute resources are not essential. Cracking AI Dota is certainly interesting, but it's hardly the only game in town, and developing optimized AI techniques specifically for resource-sparse environments would be a worthy project.
Next, this research will probably continue to get cheaper. The cost to do the Dota 2 research 5 years ago would have been much higher, and will probably be even less expensive 5 years from now.
Also, I think there's plenty of room for novel & useful at the bottom end where $millions in compute resources are not essential. Cracking AI Dota is certainly interesting, but it's hardly the only game in town, and developing optimized AI techniques specifically for resource-sparse environments would be a worthy project.