Look, I've been quite happy on my hiatus, but when I see a headline like this one:
Chinese robot beats Usain Bolt's 100-meter sprint world record in humanoid bot games, I kind of have to add my uninformed opinion to the cacophony of online discourse. Not because I'm interested in running, like as a thing, but because it suggests that somehow a robot beat a human's record. Which it didn't. Ok, it shaved 0.9 seconds off of Jamaican runner Usain Bolt's
2009 100 meter world record, but it's a robot so...did it?
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The technology exists to run a hundred meters
in under 9.58 seconds so Usain Bolt doesn't have to.
-the same people who lie about how AI doesn't replace artists |
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"Goddamnit..."
-Asimo |
It did not. Anyway, for some context, this happened at the second annual World Humanoid Robot Games in Beijing, a competition for--get this: humanoid robots. According to my extensive research, six hundred and sixty-six teams (of humans) have brought more than two thousand humanoid robots to compete in athletics? Is that even the right word? "Athletics" which historically for robots has meant not falling over, but now, evidently, refers to some kind of tech-bro-olympics.
Tech-bro-lympics in which the robots must be entirely AI driven and not controlled by humans. Let me repeat that: they want the robots to be autonomous.
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| What could possibly go wrong? |
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Pictured: X-Humanoid's robot, seen
here doing the thing it was built to do,
and somehow winning an award for it. |
So, couple of things. First, as mentioned earlier, the robot in question did not break Bolt's record. It can't, any more than a car can (ok, a
particualy fast car, but still) because a record is a human thing. The robot, designed and manufactured by the ridiculously named company called X-Humanoid, was designed and manufactured to run a hundred meter dash. Which it did. Bravo. Bolt on the other hand is human, and designed by millions of years of evolution to invent agriculture, art, and the MCU. This isn't a knock against robots, but it didn't break a record, its designers won a contest.
I just think that that's an important distinction. Like, AI doesn't create art, it generates content, or, more accurately, it assembles content from the plagiarized work of artists. Similarly, humanoid robots don't break records or win races. Their designers show off their accomplishments in exhibitions like the World Humanoid hootenanny or whatever, but that shouldn't take anything away from Usain Bolt.
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Next on Good Morning America: we'll get a preview of our inevitable extinction
from The World Humanoid Robot Games in Beijing, but first let's check in with
Chief Meteorologist Ginger Zee, to find out it we'll even make it that long. Ginger? |
