Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ping-pong robot beats top-level human players

reuters.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 280 posts

Re: Ping-pong robot beats top-level human players

#121

Post by TheScaryOne »

cik wrote: post #112
phtrivier wrote: post #20

My biggest fear at the moment is robot armies and police forces. Case in point : we're all expecting China needs to invade Taiwan soon, or they will run out of soldiers because of the one child policies of the 70s/80s. Meanwhile, Ukraine is holding up against a "modern" army with quickly assembled drones. So it all seems a bit like "they'll never put tanks through the Ardennes", sort of ? Where and when will the firs…

> If war is mostly played out from a disrance I left a company because they pivoted to exactly this. There are so many companies in this space today, testing what they call "physical AI autonomy" today, and we have to recognize that this is our today. There are entire marketplace options for buying the pretrained, supported, private models, or the datasets if you have your own goals. If you're interested purely in di…

I can't wait for the Faro Plague and the robot dinosaurs.

Re: Ping-pong robot beats top-level human players

#122

Post by vasco »

fragmede wrote: post #118
4gotunameagain wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Two drones. One to blast the door open, the next goes through. Still more cost effective than a humanoid robot, even in the presence of hundreds of doors.

That breaks the building. If you want to destroy the whole thing, conventional weapons has that covered. Drones can't get through nets and doors. Though, have you considered packs of robot dogs with machine guns and one arm/hand? Cheaper than a fully bipedal humanoid robot.

One thing exists and is known to work and be cheap. The other it's you musing about what will be possible. So they need to be judged differently. No land robot can move through a war environment in any effective way at the moment and also "open doors" etc. They are too slow. Not drones.

Re: Ping-pong robot beats top-level human players

#123

Post by ReptileMan »

4gotunameagain wrote: post #110
james_marks wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ping Pong is what you play for fun in the basement. The competitive sport is Table Tennis.

This is like software developers who write javascript wanting to be called engineers, isn't it

Vibe code

Re: Ping-pong robot beats top-level human players

#124

Post by vasco »

LanceJones wrote: post #98
Morromist wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China had more births in 2025 than all of europe and russia combined so I don't think they're going to run out of soldiers.

But also more deaths. It's the delta that's important.

Old people don't go to war, how is that important. All that matters is who has the most 20 year olds they don't care about killing.

Re: Ping-pong robot beats top-level human players

#125

Post by kruffalon »

SecretDreams wrote: post #79
kibwen wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Marching humanoid terminator robots will never be as cheap as a drone. Autonomous suicide drone swarms are what should terrify you.

> Marching humanoid terminator robots will never be as cheap as a drone. Autonomous suicide drone swarms are what should terrify you. If money or economics were relevant in these decisions, most wars would probably not play out in the first place. Tesla probably wouldn't be worth 1.2T. And we certainly wouldn't see AI buildouts happening at their current rates. Economics and costs only matter for normal humans, small…

> If money or economics were relevant in these decisions, most wars would probably not play out in the first place.

I don't understand what you mean here.

Aren't wars fought over natural resources or the political power over natural resources.

Obviously people sometimes miscalculate but in principle I mean.

Re: Ping-pong robot beats top-level human players

#126

Post by [deleted] »

phtrivier wrote: post #20

My biggest fear at the moment is robot armies and police forces. Case in point : we're all expecting China needs to invade Taiwan soon, or they will run out of soldiers because of the one child policies of the 70s/80s. Meanwhile, Ukraine is holding up against a "modern" army with quickly assembled drones. So it all seems a bit like "they'll never put tanks through the Ardennes", sort of ? Where and when will the firs…

[deleted]

Re: Ping-pong robot beats top-level human players

#127

Post by [deleted] »

dyauspitr wrote: post #102
phtrivier wrote: post #20

My biggest fear at the moment is robot armies and police forces. Case in point : we're all expecting China needs to invade Taiwan soon, or they will run out of soldiers because of the one child policies of the 70s/80s. Meanwhile, Ukraine is holding up against a "modern" army with quickly assembled drones. So it all seems a bit like "they'll never put tanks through the Ardennes", sort of ? Where and when will the firs…

Russia is not a “modern” army. They are literally using low tech drones from Iran against Ukraine because they can’t come up with their own.

[deleted]

Re: Ping-pong robot beats top-level human players

#128

Post by fc417fc802 »

throwatdem12311 wrote: post #87

I don’t care about robots being better than humans at human achievement. Would anyone ever watch Clankers play hockey against eachother at a Clanker Olympics? The idea is absurd, I want to see humans competing because they are humans not just because they are good.

I would absolutely watch a clanker olympics if it was tightly regulated, involving fully autonomous bipedal robots that fit within a strict physical envelope putting on inhuman displays of athleticism. I'd be particularly interested in gladiatorial competitions since on top of super human athleticism blood sports have otherwise fallen out of favor due to the human cost.

Are you seriously telling me you wouldn't enjoy watching mechas going at it with greatswords? As a bonus (as suggested regarding cars by another commenter) mount explosive charges to weak points that must be defended.

Re: Ping-pong robot beats top-level human players

#129

Post by thenthenthen »

segmondy wrote: post #72
hermitcrab wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a human player (of a not-high standard) I cannot see the spin of the ball directly. I can only infer it from the movement of my opponents bat. So I would wonder that a camera could pick it up in real time. Also IT'S TABLE TENNIS, NOT PING PONG!

It's ping pong.

It is ping pang if you use standard pinyin. Also, all these fancy cameras, I wonder if they considered using sound as well? I am a super noob fE player but sound hints are pretty telling of the speed and where and how the ball was hit

Re: Ping-pong robot beats top-level human players

#130

Post by zhouzhao »

hermitcrab wrote: post #3
dmurray wrote: post #2

A year ago this [0] table tennis robot backed by Google DeepMind was discussed on HN. It plays much worse and the HN discussion is anchored around whether it's OK to call it "human-level" or if the authors should have clarified that they meant a human who doesn't actually play table tennis. But it was accepted as being SOTA at that time. What happened since then? This looks like the kind of level of advance we see in…

As a human player (of a not-high standard) I cannot see the spin of the ball directly. I can only infer it from the movement of my opponents bat. So I would wonder that a camera could pick it up in real time. Also IT'S TABLE TENNIS, NOT PING PONG!

It's pīngpāng.
Post reply on HN