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> 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 ditzing around with GPS denied, or communications lost, you can do that today.

I watched a demo video, in March where a company was sharing their remote instructed (note, not controlled) multiple format (spider, dog) robot swarm. The company claimed to be 35km away from where the drones dropped off the payloads, and the mission was engaged. Lightweight explosives were used to toss off a car.

This is our present.

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.

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

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.

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.

> 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.

We are less than 5 years from robot armies. I mean if you put a person behind a Unitree robot, we have robot armies now. Those things run pretty fast and are quite good at obstacle clearance. They also cost $20,000 per unit which is throwaway money by any metric. Full autonomy is real close though.

Remote controlled autonomous robots/drones can also be used for, say, elder care.

A nurse can log in to a HelperBot remotely, check up on the client, tidy up the house and maybe even give medication. Instead of having to drive around between clients, losing maybe hours a day just on transit, one person can manage more people per day.

...but the same system can be modified for KillerBot easily like we know from EVERY SCI-FI BOOK EVER.

We live in interesting times.

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.

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 rushing to keep their mark in the history, not necessarily positive...

To some extent it already has, Ukraine had a press release a few days ago stating they had attacked and taken a position using only robots and drones for the first time

https://www.businessinsider.com/ukraine-russia-position-take...

I don't think Russian army is very modern -- but maybe that's the reason of your quotation marks.

I kinda think that the competitions among the big dogs (US/Russia/China/etc.) would eventually green light ANY AI/Robots projects if they can justify tipping the scale somehow, and in the process completely destroys the last element of any political counter-weight. Because "fear gives men wings".

I would really hate to live in a dystopian world worse than what is described in the books/movies.

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!

[dead]

I used to love Mitch Hedberg. I still do, but I used to, too.

More details and videos at https://ace.ai.sony/

Yeah, the dang thing can reach all the way to the net while standing three feet behind the table

I do expect this to have a "novelty edge" over human opponents - which can be closed with practice, on the human end.

And, like many AIs, it can have "jagged capability" gaps, with inhuman failure modes living in them - which humans can learn to exploit, but the robot wouldn't adapt to their exploitation because it doesn't learn continuously. Happened with various types of ML AIs designed to fight humans.

Exactly. There are cues that an opponent provides when approaching a ball that help the player prepare for and limit the range of possible responses (this happens with most racket games). With these robots, the players only find out after the ball is already coming in their direction.

I wonder how much practice these players had against the machine in the weeks leading up to the actual game. That would be significant to ensure they are playing at their pro level.

Yes, you're dead on:

  Rui Takenaka, an elite-level player who has won and lost matches against Ace, said in comments provided by Sony AI: "When it came to my serve, if I used a serve with complex spin, Ace also returned the ball with complex spin, which made it difficult for me. But when I used a simple serve - what we call a knuckle serve - Ace returned a simpler ball. That made it easier for me to attack on the third shot, and I think that was the key reason why I was able to win."

You can predict the movement of the ball (speed, direction, spin) based on the movement of the bat relative to the ball. What the rest of the player's body is doing is irrelevant to predicting what the ball will do - but relevant to predicting where they will be when you make the return shot.

quite surprised to see SAC, considering the deepmind ping pong paper resorted to evolutionary strategies, iirc

> 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.

Would assume the top amateur players that don't play professionally.

Professionals play for money. Elites just do it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EH8kZDc7OLk

https://sonyresearch.github.io/ace_public/

Even club level players have access to tennis table 'robots'. They fire the ball at you and collect the return in a net. You can set the speed, position and spin. They are very basic compared to this robot, but useful for training.

Obligatory Stuff Made Here robot putter: https://youtu.be/2OfjZ3ORJfc?si=IHdZaLJE2TBg45HF

It's an amazing feat of engineering because it requires constant micro-adjustments, something that robots couldn't do a few years ago.

isn't this a technology forum?

I've always wished for something similar: autonomous car racing. No human drivers. No remote controls. Just program the cars before the race, and let them go. Maybe even load the cars with mild explosives so they go BOOM when they crash.

robot ping pong league

SpaceX Mechzilla chopstick catch of Starship booster is up there for difficulty.

careful what you wish for.

Plenty of people watch TCEC (Top Chess Engine Championship) livestreams. Even more watch a selection of games curated by professional analysts. Some of the games are really interesting and surface novel stuff.

Furthermore, I think we care most about the context surrounding the humans.

If a txt2vid model could generate a 100% perfect video of a soccer match, perfectly rendering each blade of grass, would anyone watch it? No, because we care about the team and the stories of the players. Not just the spectacle being shown.

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.

> Clankers play hockey against eachother at a Clanker Olympics

Well actually hockey in particular could be entertaining, depending on how they play.

The significance of ping pong is not beating humans but that it is a sport that depends on high precision, fast movement, and rapid responses. The aim of the game is to out maneuver the opponent and corner them such that they can't respond and adapt quickly enough. A robot beating a human means that it does this better, faster, and more precise. A few days ago, a bi pedal robot ran a a half marathon about eight or nine minutes faster than the fastest human can.

These are not the clumsy robots of a few years ago that could only do simple, pre-programmed tasks and had to work in fenced off areas because they had no awareness of anything around them (including fragile people) but self stabilizing, inhumanly fast running robots that can operate in any kind of environment and adapt to a wide variety of tasks. And then complete those tasks at very high precision and speed.

And humans have mastered radio waves for communication, washing machines for washing clothes, dishwashers for dishes etc etc.

However, the point here is not that it makes a sport redundant, but that a type of observation, calculation, and movement has been achieved.

I for one hope to see this tech in action from the customer side of a teppanyaki restaurant. It won't replace the humour of a good human teppanyaki chef but maybe I'll be able to afford it....

We’ve had chess computers better than humans for a long time now but nobody cares about that because it’s not about winning it’s about the humanity.