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by jaekash 2197 days ago
> This accomplishment is truly remarkable in that it shows that we can develop systems that teach themselves to do non-trivial tasks from a blank slate, and eventually become better than humans at doing the task.

"non-trivial" is a bit of a red herring here. Playing go is pretty trivial compared to something like walking or scratching your face. Winning go may be non-trivial compared to those in some ways but it is very trivial in comparison in other ways.
2 comments
nl 2197 days ago
This is... wrong?

Scratching a face is a matter of fine motor control. [1] is an example from 2011 which did this, as well as face shaving.

Walking is slightly tricky because it's such a dynamic system, but is now human level[2], and there was never really any question that it would be possible.

On the other hand, the state of the art in Go systems before Alpha Go (the one trained off games, not Alpha Zero) couldn't beat competent amateurs. No one had really considered the learn-from-zero-knowledge approach of Alpha Zero even for easier games like chess.

[1] https://www.engadget.com/2011-07-14-robots-for-humanity-help...

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_sBBaNYex3E

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PeterisP 2197 days ago
Playing go at that level is non-trivial compared to walking because (a) most humans can walk, but not even the best human go masters can play go at that level; (b) we had algorithms that allow bipedal robots to walk long before we had algorithms for playing go at that level.
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simiones 2197 days ago
Do we have algorithms that allow bipedal robots to walk at human level? Or run at, let's say, 10th grade standard student level?
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PeterisP 2197 days ago
Bipedal walking and running on uneven terrain has been demonstrated years ago - Boston Dynamics has a lot of nice videos; e.g. here's a four year old video on walking https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVlhMGQgDkY , here's two year old videos on running https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vjSohj-Iclc and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LikxFZZO2sk - perhaps it's debatable if it's "full human level" but it seems sufficient to me for most purposes. IMHO any improvements to that would be mostly for sensors (seeing what terrain is there even in poor conditions e.g. fog/rain/snow) and modelling environment (understanding which objects might break or slide if you step on them), not walking/running as such.

The main problem for bipedal robots that makes them still impractical is the hardware expense (wheels are simpler and cheaper) and the power supply required, so for most use cases it's more efficient to use something other than a bipedal robot and there's limited business application and future revenue in scaling up research demos of bipedal walking to practicality, so most people who are working on walking algorithms are doing so in simulated virtual environments (where we have algorithms that can learn walking and running "from scratch" through experimentation) and not building very expensive hardware.

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username90 2197 days ago
> it seems sufficient to me for most purposes.

Current self driving car technology is sufficient for most purposes, except to actually drive on roads. So for those walking robots, can they run or even walk through a crowd without hitting people? A normal 15 year old human can do it, and that is the level you need to be to release it among people.

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tokai 2197 days ago
I'll be impressed when they can finish an orienteering course.
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simiones 2197 days ago
I was aware of the Boston Dynamics robots, but it always seemed to me that they move very slowly compared to walking/running humans. I suppose that may just be a precaution on their part, the jumping and gymnastics are certainly impressive otherwise.
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nl 2197 days ago
Yes.

Here's Boston Dynamic's robot doing Parkour and gymnastics: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_sBBaNYex3E

It's not national level gymnastics but it's better co-ordinated than most humans.

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simiones 2197 days ago
I was aware of the Boston Dynamics robots, but it always seemed to me that they move very slowly compared to walking/running humans. I suppose that may just be a precaution on their part, the jumping and gymnastics are certainly impressive otherwise.
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qayxc 2197 days ago
It's not even AI - all the moves are a pre-programmed sequence. That's something Hollywood puppeteers could do 40 years ago...
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nl 2197 days ago
This is both correct and incorrect.

Boston Dynamics use control-systems style robotic control. This is different to ML-style control where the system learns to perform tasks.

But that's different to "pre-programmed sequence". They don't program the individual servo movements for each movement - instead they give it the motions to perform and the control-systems balance the robot automatically.

(This is what the OP implied by the word "algorithms" anyway right?)

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