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Ping-pong robot beats top-level human players

reuters.com

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

#261

Post by phtrivier »

kjkjadksj wrote: post #249
munksbeer wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

One outcome is to just sacrifice your human population as meat shield or bait. Only thing you need to maintain your control on your corner of the world is the robots, not meatbag humans with all the liability inherent to that.

This. I'm pretty sure any sufficiently autonomous / AI driven / remote control battalion will embed some "volontary" humans, so that "nuking the robots from orbit" is at least politically unpopular.

Though, given what we've used bombs and drones to do to unarmed civilians in the last century, that might done make military planner budge...

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

#262

Post by tshaddox »

Vegenoid wrote: post #242
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!

I do not understand why people who get serious about it want so badly for it to be called table tennis. Ping pong is a way more fun name, and table tennis just seems to make it out to be a smaller, inferior version of tennis.

In the context of competitive events, it probably makes sense to use "table tennis," simply because there is one notable event that uses "ping pong" to refer specifically to different set of rules and equipment (the World Championship of Ping Pong).

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

#263

Post by phtrivier »

hatthew wrote: post #70
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, will years of playing RTS give South Korea an edge ? Not sure if this is serious, but RTS skills are different from real-world battlefield skills. Macro is completely different, and while micro skills might be slightly transferrable, computers are so much better that no human will ever be microing real units on a real battlefield.

This was tongue in cheek, yes.

That being said, "the Russian army will be driven to a virtual stalemate by a former comedian leading a decentralized group of startups remote-controlling handmade Wall-E clones equiped with machine guns, while the former real tv anchor leading the US army helps the Russian side to distract people from the pedophile ring he did _not_ take part in" would have sound very tongue on cheek, too.

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

#264

Post by nilslindemann »

bluecheese452 wrote: post #226
nilslindemann wrote: post #138

I find Sony's work valuable. In my opinion, the primary purpose of AI is still, first and foremost, to relieve us of the physical labor we don't want to do. The next step to be taken is to create a universal basic income. Evolution will then unfold, as creative people will be able to dedicate their whole life undisturbed to the problems they deem important. Here a video where one can actually see the robot in action:…

I agree with you. The people developing AI don’t agree.

I am not sure. When the market demands robots, there will be people who develop robots.

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

#265

Post by nilslindemann »

munksbeer wrote: post #155
nilslindemann wrote: post #138

I find Sony's work valuable. In my opinion, the primary purpose of AI is still, first and foremost, to relieve us of the physical labor we don't want to do. The next step to be taken is to create a universal basic income. Evolution will then unfold, as creative people will be able to dedicate their whole life undisturbed to the problems they deem important. Here a video where one can actually see the robot in action:…

> In my opinion, the primary purpose of AI is still, first and foremost, to relieve us of the physical labor we don't want to do. Why only physical labour? There might be a lot of admin or thought labour (non physical) that we don't want to do either.

Yes, that too. Point being that AI is not supposed to think for us but to work for us.

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

#266

Post by nilslindemann »

BeetleB wrote: post #238
nilslindemann wrote: post #138

I find Sony's work valuable. In my opinion, the primary purpose of AI is still, first and foremost, to relieve us of the physical labor we don't want to do. The next step to be taken is to create a universal basic income. Evolution will then unfold, as creative people will be able to dedicate their whole life undisturbed to the problems they deem important. Here a video where one can actually see the robot in action:…

> the primary purpose of AI is still, first and foremost, to relieve us of the physical labor we don't want to do. That's for robots, not AI. There's a difference.

But the robot needs to have an AI brain to be able to do more than just very specialized work.

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

#267

Post by phtrivier »

Markoff wrote: post #134
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…

Ah geez, again this China invading Taiwan nonsense, China ain't USA, Israel or Russia attacking sovereign countries, they just use money to take over, they will do exactly same with Taiwan. Eventually Taiwanese people will figure out that siding with agressive country run by crazy old men is worse option than siding with China. China has all time in the world not being run by crazies with 5 year election terms rushin…

I suppose the Tibetan people would have a different opinion. But it's true that China has not fought as many war as the US, UK or France in the past decades.

Which is actually part of the enigma : if China decided to use a window of opportunity to invade a neighbor (and they have claims on Taiwan, they keep telling the world they have claims on Taiwan, and they keep preparing their navy to invade Taiwan, so it's not entirely unreasonable to expect that country would be Taiwan), would they have an inexperienced army making rookie mistakes and miscalculations, or would they catch everyone of guard with a a crazily autonomous army of robots that don't care about the weather or war crimes ?

I would not ask the same question about any other country in the world, but, if Russia and the US surprised us by failing at what they were supposed to be great at, and Ukraine surprised us by being good at one no one expected, I expect a surprise from china, but I don't know which one !!!

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

#268

Post by nilslindemann »

tgv wrote: post #198
nilslindemann wrote: post #138

I find Sony's work valuable. In my opinion, the primary purpose of AI is still, first and foremost, to relieve us of the physical labor we don't want to do. The next step to be taken is to create a universal basic income. Evolution will then unfold, as creative people will be able to dedicate their whole life undisturbed to the problems they deem important. Here a video where one can actually see the robot in action:…

UBI is a phantom. If (when?) AI takes over and everyone is put on UBI, the problems we'll deem important will be finding enough food to survive.

Does UBI not mean that one does _not_ have to worry about finding enough food to survive?

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

#269

Post by fhub »

rustyhancock wrote: post #168
fhub wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not marching, but Ukraine uses continuous track machine gun robots seemingly very effectively. They aren’t suicide ones. https://archive.is/dpNsN

They are an interesting prospect but their use isn't quite as claimed. They are extremely vulnerable to the same drones humans are. It's more along the lines of this is a patch were not expecting active fighting this robot can act as a deterrent and surveillance. Cheaper and simpler than a loitering IRS drone. But more concentrated in domain. I believe for a while Samsung developed similar drones for the demilitarise…

This article shows them being used for offense.

https://edition.cnn.com/2026/04/20/europe/robots-ukraine-bat...

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

#270

Post by dyauspitr »

throwatdem12311 wrote: post #243
dyauspitr wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I absolutely think people will watch humanoid robots fight to the “death”. I also think they will watch them do incredible parkour, run the 100m in 5 secs, do 1000 mile marathons, etc. with the important caveat being that they are humanoid shaped.

maybe once or twice then the novelty will wear off like it always does

Battlebots has been going on for 25 years. F1 even longer. Monster trucks, nascar, FPV racing etc. They will keep us interested.
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