MATCH POINT!
Moment Google robot beats humans at table tennis with ‘amazing’ moves – leaving viewers calling for AI Olympics
Several companies aim to have robots help humans in homes and warehouses.
GOOGLE'S AI company DeepMind has unveiled a paddle-wielding robot that can beat humans at table tennis in 13 out of 29 matches.
That's a rate of nearly half of all games.
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DeepMind has claimed it is the first time a robot has been taught to play a sport with people at a human level.
The robot, which only boasts an amateur-level table tennis ability, represents strides in making AI-powered robots more skilful.
It beat all beginner-level human opponents it faced and 55 per cent of those playing at amateur level.
Although it still can't challenge a pro-player.
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That being said, it could still be used as a human play-mate.
MIT Technology Review noted that the human players who played against the robot actually enjoyed the matches.
They said it was an engaging challenge that could help elevate their games as a practice partner.
Artificial Intelligence explained
Here's what you need to know
- Artificial intelligence, also known as AI, is a type of computer software
- Typically, a computer will do what you tell it to do
- But artificial intelligence simulates the human mind, and can make its own deductions, inferences or decisions
- A simple computer might let you set an alarm to wake you up
- But an AI system might scan your emails, work out that you’ve got a meeting tomorrow, and then set an alarm and plan a journey for you
- AI tech is often “trained” – which means it observes something (potentially even a human) then learns about a task over time
- For instance, an AI system can be fed thousands of photos of human faces, then generate photos of human faces all on its own
- Some experts have raised concerns that humans will eventually lose control of super-intelligent AI
- But the tech world is still divided over whether or not AI tech will eventually kill us all in a Terminator-style apocalypse
“Even a few months back, we projected that realistically the robot may not be able to win against people it had not played before," Pannag Sanketi, a senior staff software engineer at Google DeepMind who led the project, said.
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"The system certainly exceeded our expectations.
“The way the robot out-maneuvered even strong opponents was mind blowing.”
After watching the robots skills, onlookers have called for a robot Olympics, where the world's top humanoids, quadrupeds and mechanical arms go head-to-head.
"I would love to see a robot Olympics, where the best teams of engineers compete to build sport-robots and win a gold medal at the end," one person wrote on X (formerly Twitter).
While another dubbed DeepMind's robot a "future Olympian".
There are lots of use cases for robots.
Several companies aim to have robots help humans in homes and warehouses.
Or the new factory humanoid, dubbed Figure O2, that has been 'brought to life' by BMW to help build cars.
Google's robot, which is currently just a mechanical arm, uses a pair of cameras to follow the ball and motion capture technology to track its opponent's movements.
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It then feeds all the information it gains during matches into other simulations, so it can constantly improve its tactics - this way it can get better with each game, just like a human.
However, as shown in the video, the robot dropped the ball when it came to fast shots, as well as low balls and ones near the edge of the table.
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