I believe the AI still has a direct API to the game and in the 10 matches it won it was able to effectively "see" and issue commands to the entire map all the time.
In the last match they used a newer interface where the AI had the same restricted viewport as a human and had to decide where to move its camera to both see what's happening and make actions. The player and commentators both noticed that this resulted in more human like play, and the AI seemed less able to micro multiple armies stretching beyond the viewport like it had in earlier matches.
The deepmind people said the restricted viewport did slow down training, but in the end it was able to get to the same skill level as the previous ones in the end.
If the ai plays equally well with restricted viewport why were the majority of the games played with nonrestrictive? It seems reasonable to assume that deep mind will eventually best humans at sc2 but seems like Google wanted a nice headline and rushed it imo.
In the last match they used a newer interface where the AI had the same restricted viewport as a human and had to decide where to move its camera to both see what's happening and make actions. The player and commentators both noticed that this resulted in more human like play, and the AI seemed less able to micro multiple armies stretching beyond the viewport like it had in earlier matches.
The deepmind people said the restricted viewport did slow down training, but in the end it was able to get to the same skill level as the previous ones in the end.