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This is nonsense. Sure the robot is better at making consistently the same strength throws. This ignores brushing and making throws that depend on brushing. Wat
by snarf21 6y ago
This is nonsense. Sure the robot is better at making consistently the same strength throws. This ignores brushing and making throws that depend on brushing. Watch the men's Canadian Championships this weekend (Brier) or the womens' that finished last weekend (Scotties). Watch them curl a stone 8 feet around others with brushing. This is like saying they can make a robot that hits 100% of fairways in golf. That doesn't make it better at golf than the top players.
- bisRepetita 6y agoOK, this is not perfect/equal. Does it make it "nonsense"? If something is not equal or perfect from the get-go is "nonsense", then I am not sure how we innovate. Let's come back here in a few years. Robots may brush. We may talk about how innovation iterates, regardless of nay-sayer.
- rapind 6y agoI would agree with GP that having “beats” in the title when omitting that a key part of the game (sweeping) wasn’t included kinda makes it nonsense. It’s still neat though for sure. Next up “robot beats F1 drivers” (on straightaway).
- bisRepetita 6y ago>It’s still neat though for sure. Exactly. I've stopped getting riled up about a catchy misleading headline. Life's too short. The interesting part is afer that.
- tgb 6y agoThe video seems to show it "beating" the team without either using brooms, but both still playing a game. I.e. they all have stones in play at once and therefore there is theoretically strategy not just accuracy. Am I wrong? I don't know anything about curling. It seems fair to call this "beating" - just not fair to call it curling.
- rapind 6y agoTechnically sure, the robot won 3 out of 4 matches against world class curlers at something sort of like, but not really curling. The implications from the title is that it beats them at curling. You certainly wouldn’t expect the article to be about a robot beating world class curlers at chess. If sweeping wasn’t such an important part of the game (literally changing shots, which world class curlers would rely on as part of their throw technique) then the article would be fine.
- SamBam 6y agoI agree that the title is very poor. "Robot AI beats world-class curling competitors at throwing accuracy" would be better. It's still an impressive feat.
- jvanderbot 6y ago"Humans become better at curling thanks to robotic assistance" They're not foes. They're tools baselined against human performance.
- EGreg 6y agoUp next Jeopardy bot has faster fingers than human competitors
- Apes 6y agoEven saying the "AI" beats the curling competitors at throwing accuracy isn't correct. The AI has access to a highly precise mechanisms for controlling the power it throws with. Would the AI actually be any better than the players if the players had access to a similarly high precision devices for controlling throwing power that the AI is using?
- throw_away 6y agoOh, and I suppose Pitchomat 5000 was just a modified howitzer?
- jussij 6y agoThe article states that the robot took on top ranked curling players and won 3 of 4 games. So it looks like it won without the need for brushing.
- meetups323 6y agoThe opponents also were not allowed to brush. So it's not curling, it's ice shuffleboard. Which is still impressive, but not curling.
- jonplackett 6y agoIsn’t brushing mostly just to help correct slightly imperfect throws though? This thing can just put whatever speed/spin on it needs to achieve the same effect. I don’t think that’s great AI though, just very accurate lobbing.
- RandallBrown 6y agoThe name of the sport implies that it's more than just correcting imperfect throws. I think the brushing can curve the stone more than just adding some spin. Also, you can brush so other stones move further after collisions. However, I don't see why a "perfect" thrower couldn't beat a world class athlete if they're accurate enough.
- snarf21 6y agoI'd encourage you to watch the finals of last years Brier. The brushing can do A LOT. Actually, brushing is so impactful that they have had to put limits on the brush composition in recent years because the materials have become so good that it barely mattered how close your shot was. People were moving the stone an incredible distance. Now the throw is much more important and sweeping can help but it can't move a stone 10 feet. [https://www.tsn.ca/broom-wars-a-thing-of-the-past-after-new-sweeping-regulations-1.568460 https://www.tsn.ca/broom-wars-a-thing-of-the-past-after-new-...]
- exporectomy 6y agoYes. Buried deep in the paper "The matches allow only the thrower and skip player without sweepers". So the video showing sweeping was misinformation. Also, the "top" teams it was playing against were two women's teams and a handicap team, so they won't have been the actual top - probably just chosen so they can use the term "top-ranked". If they'd called it a "wheelchair curling robot", it would have been accurate. A positive point though is that South korea has nearly the top ranked women and wheelchair curling teams in the world. So they didn't just choose some shitty country's national players to call them "world-class".
- onethought 6y agoSimilar to the Deepmind boasts in Starcraft II... they beat highly ranked European players but not the top ranked Korean Players, and also they only played specific races (a key component in matchups). Let me remove all the stuff humans are good at, and then boast how superior AI is to humans.
- Retric 6y agoDeepmind ended up consistently beating everyone including the world champion in SCII with near human view and input limitations. The initial press release was early in the process before letting it play on the SCII ladder. However, it kept getting better.
- onethought 6y agoGood to know. That's awesome they got that far!
- lmilcin 6y agoThis also irritates me. Humans have built in limitations other than limited intelligence. For example, we have limited ability to remember stuff, our memory is not flawless, we can't perceive time or forces or distances with almost unlimited precision. Claiming something is more intelligent than humans because it can use something else as leverage to accomplish the task is nonsense. I am not better at calculating stuff in memory than you just because if I am allowed to use calculator and unlimited memory to beat you. AI is not more intelligent at playing Starcraft because it can perfectly know what every single unit is doing at any point in time and can project exact resource goals into the future.