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Elon Musk’s OpenAI to battle in Dota 2 World Championship video game tournament
OpenAI, a research lab co-founded by Elon Musk, has developed a new breed of AI agents that are capable of playing Dota 2, a complex strategy game, in 5-on-5 multiplayer matches. OpenAI’s new bots have so far been able to beat amateur and semi-professional teams. With this accomplished, the research lab is now looking to bring its bots to The International, a prolific Dota 2 tournament, this coming August.
The new bots go by the name of OpenAI Five, a reference to the number of neural networks working together in the team. To train the neural networks, the AI has been playing roughly 180 years worth of gameplay every day using reinforcement learning. This enables the AI to learn the intricacies of the game, considering that it is far more complicated than board games like Chess and Go. Dota 2, for example, involves hiding data from players, preventing the system from perceiving the entire playing field at a given time.
The hardware employed by the research lab to train OpenAI Five is impressive. The five neural networks train through a scaled-up version of Proximal Policy Optimization running on 256 GPUs and 128,000 CPU cores. The same setup was adopted in a much smaller scale last year when OpenAI rolled out an artificial intelligence system that proved capable of beating the best Dota 2 players in the world in 1-on-1 matches.
Currently, however, OpenAI Five can only play the game with several restrictions. For one, the AI system can only use five of the 115 heroes available in the game. Skills such as Invisibility, Summons, and the placement of wards are also disabled. The research lab, however, hopes that through time, the neural networks would be able to play the game without any restrictions at all.
As could be seen in a recent video shared by the research lab, OpenAI Five is actually being received well by the Dota 2 community. Professional Dota 2 player Blitz, for one, noted that the bots are adopting strategies that are incredibly effective. In a match against OpenAI Five, Blitz, together with four employees of the research lab, put up a fight before getting dominated by the articificial intelligence. In a statement after the game, Blitz sheepishly stated that the bots capitalized on every small error he made during the match.
“I think the team fight aspect of the bot(s) was excellent. It didn’t mess up. When it came to coordination, it was some of the best pure team fighting because it felt like I was getting hammered every single time I made a mistake. I feel like normal humans don’t do that,” the professional Dota 2 player said.
So what’s the secret behind OpenAI Five? In a statement to The Verge, OpenAI CTO Greg Brockman noted that unlike human players, the bots have “no ego” when they play the game. The teamwork aspect of the bots was also trained by allowing them to work individually at first, then encouraging them to work together.
“The bots are totally willing to sacrifice a lane or abandon a hero for the greater good. For fun, we had a human drop in to replace one of the bots. We hadn’t trained them to do anything special, but he said he just felt so well-supported. Anything he wanted, the bots got him,” Brockman said.
Ultimately, Brockman is encouraged by OpenAI Five’s development so far. The research, after all, is motivated by the idea that if AI systems can be trained to perform complex tasks such as learning a game as intricate as Dota 2, it could eventually be used to solve equally complex real-world challenges. Some examples of real-world applications could be designing and managing a city’s transport structure, or the logistics of a massive business.
“This an exciting milestone, and it’s really because it’s about transitioning to real-life applications. If you’ve got a simulation of a problem and you can run it large enough scale, there’s no barrier to what you can do with this,” he said.
Ferrari CEO Benedetto Vigna revealed that the Italian automaker’s future will not involve self-driving, a point that echoes that of Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s — sort of.
You might be thinking, “Are you insane? Musk has been so incredibly hellbent on delivering self-driving vehicles to the public, so much so that he has even hinted that Tesla won’t need the ever-popular and widely-requested Model Y L in the U.S.”
However, when it comes to electric supercars with high-performance specs and lofty price tags, Vigna’s stance is exactly what Musk wants for Tesla’s own hypercar project, the Tesla Roadster.
🚨 Tesla Roadster vs. Ferrari Luce
Price – $250,000 vs. $640,000
Horsepower – 1,000+ vs. 1,035
0-60 MPH – 1.1s OR 1.9s vs. 2.4s
Top Speed – 250+ MPH vs. 194 MPH
Range – 620 miles vs. 280 miles https://t.co/uEgswwVLeD pic.twitter.com/XcP58ZRO6Z— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) June 5, 2026
In a new interview with Australian media outlet Drive, Vigna made it clear that Ferrari’s ambitions for the future do not involve autonomy, simply because the company’s cars are not designed for anything but manual, spirited driving.
He said:
“We will not make fully autonomous cars — loud and clear. We want the people to have fun, not the [computer] chips. We want to have a steering wheel and a man or a woman behind the steering wheel. Otherwise, why do you buy a Ferrari?”
This seems to be a reasonable assertion. Ferraris are not made for daily commutes, cross-country road trips, or bumper-to-bumper traffic. They’re made for fast, spirited driving, and many of their buyers will only put a few thousand miles on them throughout their lifetime. True, exciting, fun driving is meant to be done manually.
That is not to say Full Self-Driving or other semi-autonomous suites are not “fun,” but they are meant to take the stress out of driving. They are made for the daily commutes, the rush hour traffic, and the parking lots and garages. It’s made to take the stress out of driving.
Tesla Full Self-Driving attempts 150-mile stress test: the good and the bad
Musk had stated in an interview in early 2026 that the Roadster would also be geared toward fun, manually-controlled driving. On the Moonshots podcast with Peter Diamandis, Musk said about the Roadster:
“This is not a…safety is not the main goal. If you buy a Ferrari, safety is not the number one goal. I say, if safety is your number one goal, do not buy the Roadster…We’ll aspire not to kill anyone in this car. It’ll be the best of the last of the human-driven cars. The best of the last.”
There are cars out there that simply are meant to be driven by humans, and Ferraris and Roadsters are a few of them. Ferrari has no true advantage in developing self-driving; their cars sell at low volumes with high price tags, and their performance specs and engineering are all geared toward spirited driving.
Tesla has upgraded the Model Y’s two most affordable trims, the Rear-Wheel-Drive and All-Wheel-Drive, with two new interior features that bring them level with their “Premium” siblings.
The Rear-Wheel-Drive (RWD) and All-Wheel-Drive (AWD) trims, formerly known as the “Standard” offerings of Tesla’s most popular vehicle, are now fitted with the all-black headliner and a higher-quality 16-inch center screen, two features that were added to the Premium trims earlier this year.
Here’s what the new Black Headliner looks like compared to the old design in the Model Y RWD and AWD: https://t.co/vaMUZz30UC pic.twitter.com/i1yXjJNu7L
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) June 5, 2026
The RWD and AWD trims of the Model Y now have a more premium interior feel with these upgrades, and it also appears to be a move by Tesla to streamline manufacturing by eliminating variance across configuration levels.
It makes production less complicated when the interior colors are all identical. Additionally, all Model Y builds now have the larger and higher-resolution screen than previous model years.
Priced at $39,990 and $41,990, respectively, the Model Y RWD and AWD are quite different from the Premium trims. Tesla aimed to make an affordable version of what has been the best-selling car in the world on several occasions, enabling more accessibility.
The differences from an interior standpoint are noticeable, as there is significantly less storage, a lack of A/C seats, and no glass roof. However, the car is still a great option and features a good powertrain, strong range ratings of 321 miles for the RWD and 294 miles for the AWD, and a great ride quality.
Tesla Model Y Standard Full Review: Is it worth the lower price?
Other shortcomings are the lack of acoustic-lined windows, which are featured in the Premium trims to help with excess cabin noise. In our testing of the Model Y Standard back in late 2025, this was perhaps the most noticeable difference between it and the Premium trim. The stereo was also a huge difference:
This now includes the Model Y RWD and AWD, the two trims that were formerly know as “Standard”
You can see what the big differences are between the RWD/AWD and the Premium below:
https://t.co/ptLnm95KjX https://t.co/vaMUZz30UC pic.twitter.com/scuRNErXoC
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) June 5, 2026
The RWD and AWD trims of the Model Y are still a great vehicle at an affordable price, and you can experience them for yourself at your local Tesla showroom. Test drives are always available, and it’s a great way to experience an EV for yourself, especially if you have no knowledge about them.
Tesla has its answer to grow its automotive sales over the next few years, TD Cowen analyst Itay Michaeli says, but it just has to bring it to the U.S.
On Thursday, Michaeli reiterated his $490 price target and the ‘Buy’ rating he already held on Tesla stock (NASDAQ: TSLA). However, its automotive division has struggled to show sequential growth over the past few years, mostly due to its focus on AI and Full Self-Driving. Tesla already axed two of its lower-volume vehicles with the Model S and Model X earlier this year.
However, Tesla does not need to engineer an entire new vehicle to trigger an upward tick in sales; it just has to bring it from China to the U.S., Michaeli said.
He is talking about the Model Y L, a slightly larger version of the all-electric crossover that is already available in China. U.S. customers have been pleading with CEO Elon Musk to bring it to the country since its launch in Asia last year, but he’s not convinced of it because of the advent of self-driving and its importance in this particular market.
The problem is that Tesla owners have been requesting something larger that could fit a typical American family. The Model Y L is slightly larger than the standard Model Y, but some are concerned that it could still be too small to fit what most people might need.
Instead, they have asked for a full-size SUV from Tesla.
Tesla gives big hint that it will build Cyber SUV, smaller Cybertruck
Nevertheless, the Model Y L still presents a great opportunity for Tesla in the U.S., and Michaeli says that there is an additional sales opportunity of about 100,000 units, with demand potential falling somewhere between 60,000 and 135,000 units.
TD Cowen’s note to investors also analyzed that Tesla’s growth could come from a stock perspective as well, positively impacting the stock price, as it has been widely reliant on vehicle sales, even though Tesla has truly phased itself away from that being an important metric.
Tesla stands to gain greatly from the introduction of the Model Y L in the U.S., but only if Elon Musk sees it as a viable fit for the market. Families may need to see Tesla bring something larger to the U.S., or they might be forced to buy from another automaker that offers something that fits is needs for more interior space to haul around the kids.
Ferrari CEO’s self-driving stance echoes Elon Musk’s — sort of
Tesla upgrades Model Y’s affordable trims with new interior features
