51–60 of 149 posts
This is really cool from a technology point of view but the main attraction of climbing for me is figuring out how to "solve" the climb. Trying to solve a crux with a buddy is half of the fun for me.
Climbing route setting (when done at a high level) is constantly in conversation with itself. Many climbers don't realize that there are trends or fads in movement styles that sweep across the industry. This has only picked up steam in an era of social media. Just like movie dorks will happily spend hours explaining how an individual shot in a movie is actually an insider reference to another movie, and as a result a…
Probably a deeply unpopular take here, but without knowing anything about climbing routes, I'm gonna say no. I'm not saying that they won't have excellent quality output that might even solve problems that human output can't, but the process of creating something is meaningful, even commercially. Surely this will be useful in some respects, but I just don't buy the idea that humanity is destined to passively consume automated algorithm-generated utility products-- especially creative ones-- no matter how smooth, cheap, and clever they might be.
Could this be used to grade routes? It would be cool if a photo or short video of a route could be used to better assist in grading climbing routes. Grading is a massively subjective thing, to some extent, so this could be super tricky.
I only watched the video, but without taking in account the texture of the holds, the grading aspect would be limited. One also learns to just recalibrate according to regions. E.g. climbing 11d at one gym, versus 12a at another.
Climbing route setting (when done at a high level) is constantly in conversation with itself. Many climbers don't realize that there are trends or fads in movement styles that sweep across the industry. This has only picked up steam in an era of social media. Just like movie dorks will happily spend hours explaining how an individual shot in a movie is actually an insider reference to another movie, and as a result a…
> I wonder if AI might actually be better than humans at sequencing these kinds of problems Probably a deeply unpopular take here, but without knowing anything about climbing routes, I'm gonna say no . I'm not saying that they won't have excellent quality output that might even solve problems that human output can't, but the process of creating something is meaningful, even commercially. Surely this will be useful in…
That's true, but why does it mean that the answer to the more or less objective question "will AI actually be better than humans at sequencing these kinds of problems?" (As stated it's not really objective, but one could easily come up with metrics like, say, total time to a correct solution, or time spent observing the route or other climbers, or ….) One can imagine other, related questions that are less objective (like "will it be a good idea to integrate this AI assistance into climbing competitions?"), but, to me, the answer to the (implicit) original question has nothing to do with whether or not the activity is meaningful, or with humans' destiny one way or the other.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I wonder if AI might actually be better than humans at sequencing these kinds of problems Probably a deeply unpopular take here, but without knowing anything about climbing routes, I'm gonna say no . I'm not saying that they won't have excellent quality output that might even solve problems that human output can't, but the process of creating something is meaningful, even commercially. Surely this will be useful in…
> the process of creating something is meaningful, even commercially. That's true, but why does it mean that the answer to the more or less objective question "will AI actually be better than humans at sequencing these kinds of problems?" (As stated it's not really objective, but one could easily come up with metrics like, say, total time to a correct solution, or time spent observing the route or other climbers, or…
This is really cool from a technology point of view but the main attraction of climbing for me is figuring out how to "solve" the climb. Trying to solve a crux with a buddy is half of the fun for me.
I have definitely discovered in my life that I learn probably 10x faster in situations where I can try something, and then immediately compare it with an expert solution. Rather than just trying and trying and trying on my own.
And once you're experienced in climbing (like you probably are), then of course you don't need to compare anymore. The joy is in the solving. But expert solutions are really helpful to get to the point where you can consider yourself experienced, so much more quickly.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> the process of creating something is meaningful, even commercially. That's true, but why does it mean that the answer to the more or less objective question "will AI actually be better than humans at sequencing these kinds of problems?" (As stated it's not really objective, but one could easily come up with metrics like, say, total time to a correct solution, or time spent observing the route or other climbers, or…
Sure, they may well be quantitatively better. If you were to create metrics to measure the number of mistakes or weird spots or overly annoying things, it's quite possible that the output from the algorithm could score better than human output, and the throughput would obviously be incomparable. But, whether or not something is qualitatively better is far more subjective-- it's influenced by our culture, our experien…
One of the most fun part of climbing is the problem-solving aspect of it. Figuring your way to get up the wall/boulder. Why would you want to get rid of that?
The point is to try to solve it yourself, then compare with an expert solution, and therefore learn how to improve.
If you're just blindly trying to problem-solve through trial and error without ever comparing against expert feedback, you're going to learn climbling extremely slowly...
It looks really interesting, but as an experienced climber I'm not sure if just watching a video of my avatar climbing would really help with skill acquisition. Also, this claims that the wall type or video quality doesn't matter, but I have a hard time understanding how the model would be able to understand that a small crimp could possibly be dual textured and therefore has only a few specific ways of approaching i…
So, in terms of solving complicated beta faster, I see real utility to this.
It is very interesting that since the AI climber is trained on actual climbers, it could, in principle, provide beta to climb consistent with your own style. If you train the bot exclusively on footage of yourself, it would return movement based on your style. If your style is finessy-all-backstep-all-the-time (aka The Edlinger), it can provide beta consistent with that. If your style is to square up and pull (otherwise known as The American), it can provide beta consistent with that instead.
Climbing route setting (when done at a high level) is constantly in conversation with itself. Many climbers don't realize that there are trends or fads in movement styles that sweep across the industry. This has only picked up steam in an era of social media. Just like movie dorks will happily spend hours explaining how an individual shot in a movie is actually an insider reference to another movie, and as a result a…
> I wonder if AI might actually be better than humans at sequencing these kinds of problems Probably a deeply unpopular take here, but without knowing anything about climbing routes, I'm gonna say no . I'm not saying that they won't have excellent quality output that might even solve problems that human output can't, but the process of creating something is meaningful, even commercially. Surely this will be useful in…
Embedded in your comment is the idea that AI might create boulder problems or routes in climbing gyms, and the human (or eventually robot) just follows that plan in bolting the holds to the wall. I expect that for a long time, AI generated climbing routes would rarely be good, but would consistently be physiologically impossible, feature uninteresting movement, or be too easy.
Its easy enough to shotgun holds up onto the wall based on some imagined sequence, the real skill of route setting is to (as the GP pointed out) figure out what's physically possible and also fun and challenging.