If you thought humanity’s ego took a blow when IBM’s Deep Blue defeated chess master Garry Kasparaov, our society will probably never recover from this latest defeat. A human challenger from Detroit-based Synaptic Robotics went up against a run-of-the-mill Fanuc M-20iA factory bot in a game of Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots and walked away with a big old ‘X’ in humanity’s loss column.
It’s a tough pill to swallow, particularly since the robot wasn’t custom engineered for the task. But rest assured, no artificial intelligence will ever have the skill and expertise to challenge us at Hungry Hungry Hippos. [YouTube via Automaton]