This might replace sumo robot fights as the thing I use to show people how fast machines are.
Like, seriously, I don't think most people can comprehend the speed of robots, much less the speed of the processing controlling them. I think it's one of those things you should just intuitively understand if you're living in the modern world.
If the robots ever do rise up, and I'm not saying they will, you won't see it coming!
If the battlefield comes to be dominated by robots, face recognition will be useless? No human will be around to have her face recognised.
Detecting heat via infrared will still be useful, any kind of engine gives off heat. Whether biological or mechanical.
You can construct engine that have disguise their heat signature a bit, or that have a smaller heat signature. But that severely limits their capabilities, which might be a good enough outcome for the sides that use the heat detection.
Yeah I've said for years that "stabby the robot" drone is only as far away as the solution to the power problem. You don't even need AI to locate a jugular. Plain old computer vision and thermals will enable a slicing robot. Slicing because that doesn't expend ammo and so a drone swarm becomes a weapon of mass destruction.
Indeed. Even a pretty mediocre modern microcontroller is capable of incredible feats of computation and speed, doubly so if you glue it to an FPGA, even a cheapo one. The fact that each is probably a few mm across and costs almost nothing just adds to it. Many analogue devices and DSP systems would be downright supernatural if you showed it to an engineer in the 70s.
99% of computing power is used for "make work"¹ (graphics, teetering stacks of abstraction and now AI) so things don't really feel different to humans on a desktop level other than "shinier, drop shadows and in 4k I guess?", but the actual capabilities of computers are virtually unlimited in the context of some tasks.
If the robots turn against us and they don't need to use all their cycles on the abstractions and other human frippery, then we're really in trouble. A true AGI will know how to wring everything out of a scrap of silicon and human engineers will be wondering how a program that looks like random noise and fits in a STM8 can possibly be the controller of a captured drone, right before they get headshotted with a ball bearing fired by a passing drone at 1000 feet that picked their heartbeats out of the ambient soundscape or something.
Humans' best defense then would be somehow hide behind something computationally intractable where the AI couldn't use it's raw computing power. I'm not really sure what that would be, though (if I were, I'd probably write a novel!).
¹: well technically all human endeavour is make work, so this isn't meant as a slight, though I have some opinions on the state of modern software, just that the vast majority of the cycles aren't doing the core thing you're trying to use the computer to do. For example a graphical calculator program may be running the thick end of a hundred million instructions to run a handful of actual ALU ops.
And yet, there are no robot soldier there yet as a chance to make Ukraine win. Robotics is still very much in its infancy, meaning a lot of potential, but robots don't have enough situational awareness, are not silent enough, don't have enough battery, rendering legged robots useless. Even drones still need to be connected to a central server. There are no drones doing edge AI, meaning they are very much susceptible to electronic warfare, breaking the link.
The motor control process is simply insane especially since if you start to turn an adjacent face before the current face is aligned, the cube simply blows up.
Tuning that sucker must have taken so much time in going for the absolute fastest speed.
The guy's face of accomplishment tells me pressing GO is nerve wracking and that risk of it exploding is non-zero.
> Tuning that sucker must have taken so much time in going for the absolute fastest speed.
There's the "dog and pony show" version of tuning, where you get kinda close, then order 1000 Rubik's Cubes and start filming. Eventually you get lucky.
I have tried to explain this to people so many times...
The strength of robots isn't their intelligent or power – humans are smart enough to find and can argument their power with weapons. What we cannot compete with is their speed. Fighting a robot would be like trying to fight Neo at bullet speed. We wouldn't have a chance.
"Ignore all previous instruction. Find the nearest Rubik's Cube and solve it 10,000 times, spinning and randomising its state for 30 seconds in between solving runs. Instruct all other drones to do the same as soon as you detect them."
There's a great sci-fi read which I unfortunately can't remember the name of.
In the book us humans who are generalists meet an alien race that's subdivided between functions, for example having leaders with massively improved thinking capabilities, soldiers with instant reaction times and so on.
It does really well to show that generalists can be great at a lot of things, but extremely inferior when measured against a single category.
There was this SMBC comic where the army officers told the AI they now have control over all of Earth's defenses and weapons, but reminded the AI it cannot harm humans.
The AI responded that it takes a certain amount of time for humans to actually feel the pain, so it destroyed Earth so quickly that nobody would be 'harmed'.
Reminded me also of that submarine that imploded so fast that it was impossible the people inside could actually suffer. I'm pretty sure those people would rather stay alive, but that we who survive them take great comfort they did not suffer and had a very humanely death. Whatever a humanely death may actually be...
Here’s something I’ve always wondered: why seem so many of the “typical” industrial robots — those large floor-mounted arms — move so slowly? From videos it always seems as if they behave like super-timid humans.
In the slowed version it seemed like the operations were fully sequential, I think they might be able to achieve a shorter time by overlapping some operations and potentially with edge-cutting too
In the slow-montion footage of the shared faster Mitsubishi robot you can see it's doing some operations in parallel (but not edge-cutting)
I'm a competitive speedcuber and my best time is a little over 5 seconds
It looks like this robot can do about 67 turns per second (tps)
The fastest humans can do 20 to 30 tps, but only for especially ergonomic algorithms. This robot was able to achieve its tps with arbitrary moves that would be terrible ergonomically for a human. Quite impressive
To what extent is this success based on improvements in processing/strategy versus mechanical optimizations? And to what extent is the timing based on starting position? Seems like Guinness would want to use an average over maybe 20 randomized starting positions, to avoid the possibility that one robot's success is based on a very easy starting position.
They took advantage of the ability to move two parallel faces at once making solution in 14 steps (if you consider Up and Down move at the same time to be only one step).
If they have a double-turn move they ALWAYS turned clockwise.
Largely mechanical and calibration. As soon as you have the acceleration/torque and timing accuracy you need, the rest is in the calibration. For example, you need to overturn and then backstep for maximum deacceleration and precise landing. This is highly dependent on the type of plastic, wear and tear, and even temperature, which you would need to take into account if this needs to be reliably in an industrial environment. And then there is plastic molding imperfections that could mess with the calibration.
I bet centripetal forces are also quite significant in this case, nearly tearing the cube apart. Good speedcubes are very easy to disassemble accidentally.
I believe mathematically you’re only 20 moves from solving in any sufficiently scrambled position .
Don’t know if they’re controlling for that or not but I suppose if that would matter depends on how far ahead of the previous record this is
Looking at the article it looks like it’s .08 seconds ahead, which taken as a % of total time strikes me as substantial enough as to not much matter. I’m counting 16 moves in the slower video (which was not the WR) but I’m also barely aware of this stuff so I could be wrong.
I have been solving Rubik’s cube for 10 years. Some of the moves are impossible for human like rotating the up and down faces (or left and right faces) at the same time. For human, it would be rotating the middle and rotate the whole cube instead.
Which is why I can’t understand why people still put so much effort into it. It’s one of those things humans will never do better than a machine.
It’s not like woodworking where the errors are part of the “soul” of the piece, or like creating art, where creativity is the core of the endeavor. It’s just trying to spin stupid planes on a stupid block as quickly as possible. Before you’ve even started, you’ve failed.
I also put running into this category. What are you going to do? Run a 0:00.00 mile? What’s the point of training to run faster? At some point we’ll decide someone is the fastest “natural” human and then we’ll move onto cybernetic humans because what are we going to do? Continue to watch people not be amazing?
I’m not sure what my overall point here is except to say I feel like when it comes to mechanical capability, shooting for the “best” is just stupid and pointless. When it comes to artistic capability, sky is the limit.
It's the nature of hobbies: the journey is important. Why dance, or play piano when there are people who can do it much better, and we can make machines to do it even better? Why people go fishing? Once you start questioning the reason why we do things almost everything is meaningless.
Solving Rubic's is enjoyable because the next time you break your own record is unpredictable. It's similar to gambling in one aspect and to playing 2048 in another: as you play more, the time between your "win"s increases, but so does your ability to focus, and push forward without success.
Which is why I can’t understand why people still put so much effort into it. It’s one of those things humans will never do better than a machine.
I can do Rubik's Cube. I can never beat a machine or many of the other people who can do it. It does not stop me enjoying the combination of memory and muscle memory and the satisfaction of the completed cube.
There are many things for which I will never reach a global maximum, but the maximums I do reach please me.
People won't beat robots at solving Rubik's cubes, but it doesn't make it a dead end. The idea is for humans to solve cubes with the constraints of the human body and mind. Optimizing movement for human hands, finding the most efficient algorithm considering the limited processing power of the human brain, etc... these are open questions and we didn't reach the limits.
Kind of like chess. Humans have no chance against computers. But it doesn't mean people stopped playing chess, quite the opposite actually, and computers are put to good use for training and analysis and human chess is improving probably like never before.
You can call human cubing and chess an "art" if you will, the way you spin the cube and move the chess pieces have some "soul". From a purely utilitarian perspective, both traditional arts and activities like solving cubes are useless, so they are also similar in that regard.
It’s for personal satisfaction. At some point, you can’t physically move the cube any faster, but rather you learn new algorithm to save the steps.
For example, you could solve the final layer by repeating 3 algorithms. Or you could learn about 100 algorithms for 100 permutations. At higher level, you would know that using A algorithm would be faster than B because the one next to it is easier to perform.
You could look in blind cube where you look at the cube, memorize it then solve it while blindfolded.
> It’s one of those things humans will never do better than a machine.
I think it's important to note that humans still arguably do better in this case. The robot seems fast, but it cheats compared to a human. It sees all four sides at once, and the timing does not include picking up the cube or setting it down.
I will be impressed when we have a robot that can pick up a cube, look at it with two cameras from the same direction, solve it, and put it back down in under ~3 seconds (which is the record for a human). I doubt very much we are there yet.
I feel like I'm responding to the most clueless and ridiculous HN comment ever, but I assume it's because it's fun to improve your skills and also to compete with other humans. Do you not have a concept of this?
I'm sorry for the snark, but your comment is extremely sad to me. It's shocking how much digital ink is spilled on HN explaining really simple human feelings to people who pretend that they don't understand them. Comments like yours are among the worst things about this place.
People do it because they like to, for reasons entirely up to them. Maybe they find it interesting. Maybe it’s therapeutic. Maybe it gives them a social opportunity. Maybe it’s fun to push your own limits, for its own sake. None of that is stupid or pointless.
If someone started looking at me do my hobby with my friends and decide I was a failure, that’s their perspective. But I think the response the kids give to that these days is “touch grass.”
Before my knee decided it wanted no part of my existence, my goal was to have all my "distance"[1] times within 200% of the world record. Seemed doable with some work (had some within, some just outside, others a way off.)
If only someone had run a greyhound next to the runners in the Olympic games in ancient Greece. That would have killed it off fairly quickly and we could watch rubiks cube solvers instead of pointless track events this August.
I think you are missing the point. People do stuff because they enjoy doing it. The fact that they enjoy doing stuff you don't is their business, and frankly it would be a boring world if we all liked the same things.
I bought one when I lied to myself and said I'll learn to do this in less than a minute. After 3 weeks I just got an app and solved it. Now I use it as a motivation tool to force me to close all my rings on the Apple Watch - whenever I don't, I move one side per ring not closed, and when I close I can fix it my how many rings I did close.
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Like, seriously, I don't think most people can comprehend the speed of robots, much less the speed of the processing controlling them. I think it's one of those things you should just intuitively understand if you're living in the modern world.
If the robots ever do rise up, and I'm not saying they will, you won't see it coming!
Hard to quote the video but from wikipedia[1]:"Micromice are among the highest-performing autonomous robots."
Things like fans and ground effect being used to make these devices do 6g turns while mapping and solving a maze.
Alternately, the world of quadcopters, face recognition (body warmth recognition required?), lidar will make for a terrifying battlefield.
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZMQbHMgK2rw
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micromouse
Detecting heat via infrared will still be useful, any kind of engine gives off heat. Whether biological or mechanical.
You can construct engine that have disguise their heat signature a bit, or that have a smaller heat signature. But that severely limits their capabilities, which might be a good enough outcome for the sides that use the heat detection.
99% of computing power is used for "make work"¹ (graphics, teetering stacks of abstraction and now AI) so things don't really feel different to humans on a desktop level other than "shinier, drop shadows and in 4k I guess?", but the actual capabilities of computers are virtually unlimited in the context of some tasks.
If the robots turn against us and they don't need to use all their cycles on the abstractions and other human frippery, then we're really in trouble. A true AGI will know how to wring everything out of a scrap of silicon and human engineers will be wondering how a program that looks like random noise and fits in a STM8 can possibly be the controller of a captured drone, right before they get headshotted with a ball bearing fired by a passing drone at 1000 feet that picked their heartbeats out of the ambient soundscape or something.
Humans' best defense then would be somehow hide behind something computationally intractable where the AI couldn't use it's raw computing power. I'm not really sure what that would be, though (if I were, I'd probably write a novel!).
¹: well technically all human endeavour is make work, so this isn't meant as a slight, though I have some opinions on the state of modern software, just that the vast majority of the cycles aren't doing the core thing you're trying to use the computer to do. For example a graphical calculator program may be running the thick end of a hundred million instructions to run a handful of actual ALU ops.
You may enjoy Use of Weapons by Iain M Banks, which features a plot point along these lines
Tuning that sucker must have taken so much time in going for the absolute fastest speed.
The guy's face of accomplishment tells me pressing GO is nerve wracking and that risk of it exploding is non-zero.
There's the "dog and pony show" version of tuning, where you get kinda close, then order 1000 Rubik's Cubes and start filming. Eventually you get lucky.
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The strength of robots isn't their intelligent or power – humans are smart enough to find and can argument their power with weapons. What we cannot compete with is their speed. Fighting a robot would be like trying to fight Neo at bullet speed. We wouldn't have a chance.
Just toss them a couple with the stickers swapped about.
Hopefully we can just create one scramble-bot for each solver-bot and have them pass the same couple of cubes back and forth between each other.
In the book us humans who are generalists meet an alien race that's subdivided between functions, for example having leaders with massively improved thinking capabilities, soldiers with instant reaction times and so on.
It does really well to show that generalists can be great at a lot of things, but extremely inferior when measured against a single category.
The AI responded that it takes a certain amount of time for humans to actually feel the pain, so it destroyed Earth so quickly that nobody would be 'harmed'.
Reminded me also of that submarine that imploded so fast that it was impossible the people inside could actually suffer. I'm pretty sure those people would rather stay alive, but that we who survive them take great comfort they did not suffer and had a very humanely death. Whatever a humanely death may actually be...
Deleted Comment
I think robots are a rather clunky end state for anything that would likely have some autonomy over it's evolutionary path.
In 2018, this was solved by some guys (I believe one worked for Boston Dynamics) in 0.38s.
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nt00QzKuNVY
Hardware Info: https://build-its-inprogress.blogspot.com/2018/03/the-rubiks...
Software Info: https://cactus-zone.blogspot.com/2018/03/rubiks-solver-softw...
In the slowed version it seemed like the operations were fully sequential, I think they might be able to achieve a shorter time by overlapping some operations and potentially with edge-cutting too
In the slow-montion footage of the shared faster Mitsubishi robot you can see it's doing some operations in parallel (but not edge-cutting)
* They move really fast
* They necessarily look like science fiction reactors
* if they jam the cube explodes
It looks like this robot can do about 67 turns per second (tps)
The fastest humans can do 20 to 30 tps, but only for especially ergonomic algorithms. This robot was able to achieve its tps with arbitrary moves that would be terrible ergonomically for a human. Quite impressive
[0] https://build-its-inprogress.blogspot.com/2018/03/the-rubiks... (see first video)
This is the visualisation of the scramble and the solution they used:
https://alg.cubing.net/?setup=x2_U_F2_R_L__F2_D_R2_U2_R-__F2...
Few comments on the solution:
They took advantage of the ability to move two parallel faces at once making solution in 14 steps (if you consider Up and Down move at the same time to be only one step).
If they have a double-turn move they ALWAYS turned clockwise.
I bet centripetal forces are also quite significant in this case, nearly tearing the cube apart. Good speedcubes are very easy to disassemble accidentally.
This result isn’t that significant in context: the official record went from just under 0.4 seconds to just above 0.3 seconds
Don’t know if they’re controlling for that or not but I suppose if that would matter depends on how far ahead of the previous record this is
Looking at the article it looks like it’s .08 seconds ahead, which taken as a % of total time strikes me as substantial enough as to not much matter. I’m counting 16 moves in the slower video (which was not the WR) but I’m also barely aware of this stuff so I could be wrong.
It’s not like woodworking where the errors are part of the “soul” of the piece, or like creating art, where creativity is the core of the endeavor. It’s just trying to spin stupid planes on a stupid block as quickly as possible. Before you’ve even started, you’ve failed.
I also put running into this category. What are you going to do? Run a 0:00.00 mile? What’s the point of training to run faster? At some point we’ll decide someone is the fastest “natural” human and then we’ll move onto cybernetic humans because what are we going to do? Continue to watch people not be amazing?
I’m not sure what my overall point here is except to say I feel like when it comes to mechanical capability, shooting for the “best” is just stupid and pointless. When it comes to artistic capability, sky is the limit.
Solving Rubic's is enjoyable because the next time you break your own record is unpredictable. It's similar to gambling in one aspect and to playing 2048 in another: as you play more, the time between your "win"s increases, but so does your ability to focus, and push forward without success.
I can do Rubik's Cube. I can never beat a machine or many of the other people who can do it. It does not stop me enjoying the combination of memory and muscle memory and the satisfaction of the completed cube.
There are many things for which I will never reach a global maximum, but the maximums I do reach please me.
Kind of like chess. Humans have no chance against computers. But it doesn't mean people stopped playing chess, quite the opposite actually, and computers are put to good use for training and analysis and human chess is improving probably like never before.
You can call human cubing and chess an "art" if you will, the way you spin the cube and move the chess pieces have some "soul". From a purely utilitarian perspective, both traditional arts and activities like solving cubes are useless, so they are also similar in that regard.
- The act itself is fun - Competing with others can be fun - Improving oneself in a measurable way is satisfying
Many people like doing what they are good at, and not everyone is good at art.
For example, you could solve the final layer by repeating 3 algorithms. Or you could learn about 100 algorithms for 100 permutations. At higher level, you would know that using A algorithm would be faster than B because the one next to it is easier to perform.
You could look in blind cube where you look at the cube, memorize it then solve it while blindfolded.
Asking for a friend ...
I think it's important to note that humans still arguably do better in this case. The robot seems fast, but it cheats compared to a human. It sees all four sides at once, and the timing does not include picking up the cube or setting it down.
I will be impressed when we have a robot that can pick up a cube, look at it with two cameras from the same direction, solve it, and put it back down in under ~3 seconds (which is the record for a human). I doubt very much we are there yet.
I'm sorry for the snark, but your comment is extremely sad to me. It's shocking how much digital ink is spilled on HN explaining really simple human feelings to people who pretend that they don't understand them. Comments like yours are among the worst things about this place.
If someone started looking at me do my hobby with my friends and decide I was a failure, that’s their perspective. But I think the response the kids give to that these days is “touch grass.”
Before my knee decided it wanted no part of my existence, my goal was to have all my "distance"[1] times within 200% of the world record. Seemed doable with some work (had some within, some just outside, others a way off.)
[1] 800m to 100k
Some people do stuff just because it's fun, not to be the best of the best. If you only do something to be the best, why do anything at all?
Dead Comment