Culture

The Humanoid Robot Games: Skynet, Subway Announcements, and Human Dumbness


When I first heard about The Humanoid Robot Games in Beijing, I thought it was a movie pitch. You know, something sandwiched between Pacific Rim and Kung Fu Panda. But nope, it was real. Over three days, robots from 16 countries competed in running, kickboxing, and soccer. Some even nailed backflips and obstacle courses. Others? They fell on their robot faces. A lot.

Alan Fern, a robotics professor, summed it up perfectly: “The robots are still dumb.” Which, let’s be honest, is reassuring. Until you remember that even our “dumb” robots are already smarter than the guy who tried to microwave a frozen burrito in its plastic wrapper.

Now, as a New Yorker, I can’t hear about humanoid robots without my brain auto-playing the Terminator soundtrack. That ominous da-dum, da-dum-da is embedded deep in our subway announcements and the clank of the 6 train. Every time the lights flicker in the tunnel, I half-expect a T-800 to stomp out of the shadows demanding my MetroCard. Which soon won’t exist anyway.

Sure, the experts insist we’re decades away from real Skynet. But let’s not ignore reality: some humans are already marrying AI chatbots. So maybe the problem isn’t that robots are dumb. Maybe it’s that humans are. After all, if you think Alexa truly cares how your day went, I’ve got a nice bridge in Brooklyn to sell you.

So yes, the Humanoid Robot Games show us how far the industry has to go. But they also show us something scarier: if robots are still this clumsy and we’re already handing them medals, marriages, and moral authority, who exactly is the dumb one in this equation?

1 reply »

  1. Considering Some Humans ‘Marry The Eiffel Tower’
    And Other ‘Monuments’ Like That Particularly in the

    Stories they are
    Spoon Fed From

    Birth Oh Yeah and
    Where i’m From Very
    Close Relationships

    With ‘Four Wheel
    Drives’ Not Uncommon

    At All Dear Miriam Particularly
    With Some Tears in a Beer for

    Failed Humanoid Relationships
    Nope Not Surprising at all that

    Some Folks Will fall For AI ‘Things’ too
    And Even attempt to Marry Them too

    As Yes the Human Condition Will be
    Very Imaginative ThiS WaY Basically

    Hallucinating “ITs” Reality Based
    On the Hallucinations And Or Stories

    Created Before Either Per Group Think

    Or Solo
    All on the Go
    Uniquely Stranger
    Than Ever before too

    While AI May Be Programmed For
    Most Any Type of Systemizing Intelligence
    Related Human CuLTuRaL Endeavor and even

    Write Unlimited ‘Standard Form’ Poems on Love

    Yet Just ask it to Put it in a Shape of A Tree or Chalice

    Or Even Lamp
    On A Desk and
    It Fails Miserably

    If i Only ‘Knew’ in Systemizing
    Ways Other than Flow Far Beyond
    Pre-Planning Know Perhaps i could

    Provide a ‘Formula’ In Systemizing Ways to do it too

    Yet on ItS Own IT Fails Miserably iNdeed for It will spit
    Up Words Yet Putting them in Ornate Shapes without

    ‘Thinking’
    Is Far Beyond
    What Systemizing
    Intelligence could
    ever do in either Human
    And Or Other Machine form

    It’s Hard Enough to Teach Humans
    Emotional Intelligence almost similar

    to Machines
    In How they
    Materially
    Reduce the
    World Without
    The Ability to Put
    ‘Humpty Trumpty
    Dumpty’ Back Together
    Again to come to feel
    The Gestalt of BLiSSinGS
    And BLeSSinGS for just breathing Now

    New

    For Real

    Science Admits by
    Those Who Operate
    ‘The Tool’ It doesn’t even
    Understand How Human Consciousness
    Fully Works and Far Beyond Close to Understanding

    The More Subconscious Human Abilities that Comprise

    The Other
    ‘Dark Matter’
    99.5 Percent
    of Human Reality

    Far Beyond what
    ‘Horatio’ Dreamed Indeed
    MysterieS UNFolding Evermore Now

    New

    iN ‘Non-
    Poe Land’..:)

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