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Ping-pong robot beats top-level human players

reuters.com

141–150 of 280 posts

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

#141
post #85

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. 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…

It matters quite a bit. If your drone costs $1000, you can build a thousand times more of them than if a drone costs $1M. As the saying goes, quantity has a quality all its own. This is a lesson the US has yet to learn, and its military drones are really expensive. Ukraine learned it by necessity, and now it's building millions of drones annually.

[dead]

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

#142

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…

Silly Devil's Advocate argument:

What if there are no human soldiers or fighters at all? No-one needs to die in a war again, but wars are won by the side with the stronger tech.

What are the possible outcomes of this? Technologically superior countries start a race to acquire more territory, so large blocks expand and absorb other countries? More wars? Fewer wars? More suffering? Less suffering?

Disclaimer: I'm not imagining this is really possible. As long as some humans from group A don't want to be under the rule of group B, humans will resist and fight. But it is just a thought experiement.

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

#143

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…

Silly Devil's Advocate argument: What if there are no human soldiers or fighters at all? No-one needs to die in a war again, but wars are won by the side with the stronger tech. What are the possible outcomes of this? Technologically superior countries start a race to acquire more territory, so large blocks expand and absorb other countries? More wars? Fewer wars? More suffering? Less suffering? Disclaimer: I'm not i…

I mean if a technological superior country start a race for more territory, we will have another world war and nuclear weapons fired. No robots matter in that scenario.

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

#144

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…

Silly Devil's Advocate argument: What if there are no human soldiers or fighters at all? No-one needs to die in a war again, but wars are won by the side with the stronger tech. What are the possible outcomes of this? Technologically superior countries start a race to acquire more territory, so large blocks expand and absorb other countries? More wars? Fewer wars? More suffering? Less suffering? Disclaimer: I'm not i…

Philip K Dick wrote a short story similar to this, "The Defenders".

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

#145

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…

Silly Devil's Advocate argument: What if there are no human soldiers or fighters at all? No-one needs to die in a war again, but wars are won by the side with the stronger tech. What are the possible outcomes of this? Technologically superior countries start a race to acquire more territory, so large blocks expand and absorb other countries? More wars? Fewer wars? More suffering? Less suffering? Disclaimer: I'm not i…

All war tends toward total war, so that will never happen no. The incentive to break any such agreements is too strong.

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

#146
post #112

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…

Friendly fire is going to get crazy. Can’t trust an LLM on its own for more than a few iterations..

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

#147

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!

To be honest, if Chinese folks are fine with calling it "ping pong" (乒乓), I'm fine, too. (Also, you sorta can infer the spin from the ball arc or even if you catch a glimpse of the rotating label)

>even if you catch a glimpse of the rotating label

Some people say they can see the spin from the rotating logo. I can't.

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

#148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> have you considered packs of robot dogs with machine guns I don't have it to hand but already a few years ago a defense contractor had attached quite a heavy rifle on some sort of articulable mount to the top of something that looked exactly like Boston Dynamic's Spot. I'm not sure how much ammo it was capable of carrying or what it's range was but it's definitely a concerning development. I think I might become an…

I'll carry an ammo belt of little EMP devices.

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

#149

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…

Not sure China actually needs to invade Taiwan - it just needs to be patient. cf Hong Kong.

Totally agree with you about the dangers of autonomous killing machines - I think the two key problems here are.

1. Reduces the political cost of going to war. Though as Iran has shown, there are other ways to exert political pressure even if the other military can hit you with almost impunity.

2. This is really a follow on from the first - low cost ( in all meanings of the word ) weapons makes asymmetric warfare available to all - and this won't be limited to governments.

On the positive side one of the potential outcomes of 2. is that countries and the world will need to operate on the principle of consent, as force will be nigh on impossible.

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

#150

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…

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