back to article First they came for chess, then Go... and now, oh for crying out loud, AI systems can beat us at curling

Machines have been able to beat human players at chess for years and now they have trounced their creators at "chess on ice," as curling practitioners sometimes refer to their sport. Curling involves sliding hefty polished stones on a sheet of ice toward a target area, sometimes with spin so the stone curls. It's similar to …

  1. amanfromMars 1 Silver badge

    The Phantom Devil Comes Out to Play for Saints and Sinners :-) in CHAOS*

    Pornography is a Prime Adopter and ACTive Virtual Adapter of Curly Systems for Immaculate Drivers. The Success of a Most Accommodating and Enthusiastic Carnal ReProgramMING launches One into and onto Heavenly Directions for Earthly Applications Future Building with Advanced IntelAIgents.

    A little something for the MOD to mull over. And constitute as a Verified CyberIntelAIgent Assault Impacting Future Leading AI Assets. And in the Ricochets, CHAOS in AI Commanding Control of the Perfect See of Visions for Media Presenting Novel Programs with AI Realising Events for Production.

    Novel Program Producers would should be able to Effortlessly Connect and Attend to Perfect Nuts and Impressive Bolts from the Blue, in those very particular and magically peculiar branch directions for AIMasterly Live Operational Virtual Development Productions :-).

    As a Weapon, can IT Destroy All. And in next to no time too if Short Fused. Take Care in those Fields, there be Daemons and Devils Dreaming of Nothing Good Dwelling there in Prisons of their Own Making. And now to contemplate the Matter and Manner of Performance for Quantum Communications Leaping into Virtually Advanced IntelAIgent Operating Systems with Curly Accessories Assistants for Passion Perfecting Assistants in an Immensely Complex Simply True Events for Media Productions with IntelAIgent Instruction Sets Exercising Drivers with Directions to/for AIMaster ProgramMING Haunts/Jaunts. Who dares win wins there always and endlessly ..... and that's a result with its own unique problem drivers to assuage and accommodate with a Pen Ultimate, Alternative Source for Alternate Supply Chain Infrastructures .....with XSSXXXXOSkeletons into the Generous Feeding and Grateful Seeding of Almighty Exciting and Thoroughly Addictive Needs that Almightily Excite Further with Heavenly Deliveries of Mutually Exhausting Satisfactions for Raging Rapacious Passion Quellings/Beta LOVE Model Testing.

    If you can find anything else better than that to occupy your minds, then please share to present everywhere ASAP. It must be better than just good and great to dislodge that crown and jewel of a gem of a Greater IntelAIgent Games Play ........ with Novel Future Event Planners Edition Leverage with Virgin Source Controls in Command of Vital Non-Typical Thinking Critical for Virile Viral Body Tinkering/Modification/Alteration/Complete Removal via Precision Surgical Strike Excision.

    * Clouds Hosting Advanced Operating Systems

    Dated and signed ....... 2009261541

    That's better. Much better out than in with all of that tidy little lot. :-) It's certainly more than just a heck of a hell-raising jot, that's for sure. ;-)

    1. jake Silver badge

      Re: The Phantom Devil Comes Out to Play for Saints and Sinners :-) in CHAOS*

      "Dated and signed ....... 2009261541"

      A little under 13 years from now ... Should Martians reveal they have time travel over a silly grant money eating, shuffle-board on ice playing robot?

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: @jake - The Phantom Devil Comes Out to Play for Saints and Sinners :-) in CHAOS*

        but unbeatable, and one may try 2,42 make yourself know the meaning of the w0rd "Impossible", With Funds, or Without Them....

        unbeatable, with such a Plethora Of Friends

        Pink Floyd - Us And Them

        https://youtu.be/deU_uwlNpOo

        be sure (you are)

    2. Tail Up

      Re: The Phantom... ...in CHAOS*

      WRK.IN.PROC

      (-:

      Activation:

      https://youtu.be/_13HIbvIjnU

      Depeche Mode - Martyr Of Love

      TY

    3. amanfromMars 1 Silver badge

      Re: The Phantom Devil Comes Out to Play for Saints and Sinners :-) in CHAOS*

      Do downvoters not recognise the bigger pictures for implementation following the Integrated Review of Security, Defence, Development and Foreign Policy they are presented with and which be silently running there, and which are all relatively freely available to both state actors/government funded public facing bodies and non-state actor agents/self actuated, privately activated pirate operations alike for both current and future realisations via virtual means and internetworking memes utilising all manner of really deep and dark shadowy webs and brighter SMARTR media savvy teams?

      And what would El Regers say, pausing here for a moment whilst passing by on their merry ways, knowing it is more than just Advanced IntelAIgent Evidence of a NEUKlearer HyperRadioProACTive IT calling for a review, and peers for their views, with the following earlier whole-of-government call for evidence being answered extremely comprehensively and reassuringly fundamentally, or frighteningly so if one be of an inherently nervous disposition because it be so easily viable ........

      What are the key opportunities, challenges, threats and vulnerabilities facing the UK now? (Submissions focusing on rapidly evolving areas such as science, technology, data, cyber, and space are particularly welcome.) ....... https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/909008/Integrated_Review_call_for_evidence.pdf

      It's surely well worth an innovative punt and suitably generous generative driver funding .... and as naturally would be accorded by MRDA rules too. :-)

      As an invisible export earner would it be a real tricky, right royal doozy for more than just owners, methinks.

      1. Pat Att

        Re: The Phantom Devil Comes Out to Play for Saints and Sinners :-) in CHAOS*

        Couldn't have put it better myself.

    4. amanfromMars 1 Silver badge

      Re: The Phantom Devil Comes Out to Play for Saints and Sinners :-) in CHAOS*

      I wonder if anything in the above uncovering/discoveries shared in the extended trails of The Phantom Devil Comes Out to Play for Saints and Sinners :-) in CHAOS* would be of immediate beneficial assistance to anyone worthy of being appointed to Chairs as was revealed and terribly denied in this Guardian story about possible government parachutists/media stool pigeons?

      It is certainly, without doubt, everything which they will be confronted with, and have to be prepared and more than just able and happy to deny is relevant to future global performance, if home government teams are not to be in overall command of strategic events with absolute control firing on all cylinders and calling all of the really important shots.

    5. Alan Brown Silver badge

      Re: The Phantom Devil Comes Out to Play for Saints and Sinners :-) in CHAOS*

      ghods, I was expecting that date to be 1999 and it to be Robert McNamara

  2. Jan 0

    Hmm

    I'd be a lot more impressed if the robot used a long linkage like the other players' arm, hand and stick, with sensors only on the "chair" and no higher or wider than the other players heads.

    It's a nice single purpose machine, but the seated players impressed me far, far more!

    Let the robots master things we don't like doing, like drain cleaning or weeding.

    1. Version 1.0 Silver badge

      Re: Hmm

      Let the robots master things we don't like doing, like drain cleaning or weeding.

      More likely, if we keep working on this, in a couple of hundred years the robots will be running the country and employing people to clean the drains, do the weeding, and charge their batteries.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Facepalm

        Re: Hmm

        It's already here. In robotic factories, humans are only on the floor to do what robots can't (yet) do well.

        1. jake Silver badge

          Re: Hmm

          Things like replace themselves, mutate themselves, repair themselves, program themselves, power themselves, think for themselves, plan for their own future ... just little stuff like that.

      2. Danny 2

        Re: Hmm

        I see my future career is sweeping for our robotic curling overlords. Honestly that gives me hope, it's the one sport Scots still excel at.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Hmm

          You mean Scotland are no longer World Elephant Polo champions (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/4073353.stm)

          1. Danny 2

            Re: Hmm

            I'm afraid not. And elephant curling was a bloodbath, they are not good on ice.

            1. Alan Brown Silver badge

              Re: Hmm

              They're even worse on ice when you unleash the flaming pigs

              1. jake Silver badge

                Re: Hmm

                If your pigs are flaming, you're cooking them too fast. Low and slow is the way to go.

                Did I ever post my favorite recipe for elephant stew in this forum?

    2. jake Silver badge

      Re: Hmm

      I'll be impressed when one can fly my car, dig the spuds, do the dishes, fetch me the snail-mail and a beer, and change the sprog's nappies ... all in one unit.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Hmm

        In the military you call it a batman...

    3. spold Silver badge

      Re: Hmm

      Yeah I'm not letting one of those things anywhere near my hair!

      1. Version 1.0 Silver badge

        Re: Hmm

        "Yeah I'm not letting one of those things anywhere near my hair!"

        The risk is illustrated in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang - https://youtu.be/3lgluqEiQow

      2. Steve K
        Coat

        Re: Hmm

        Yes - I hope that they have PermSize set appropriately

  3. jake Silver badge

    I'm reminded of the bowling robot ...

    ... that debuted bright and early one morning at Palo Alto Bowl back in the late 1980s. Powered by a small stack of Sun pizza boxen, it took on a team from Stanford University. And lost miserably, seemingly incapable of knocking over a single pin. It turned out that at the request of the local league team, the over-night maintenance guy had reverse-oiled the lanes for a tournament against rivals El Camino Bowl, a tiny detail that the robot wasn't programmed to compensate for. The human players, on the other hand, took it in stride ...

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      @Jake meh! Re: I'm reminded of the bowling robot ...

      Bowling... pffft! So last decade. ;-P

      Did you see how they got it to throw a curve... ( spinning the stone)

      Now I'd love to see it against the Canadians.

  4. The commentard formerly known as Mister_C Silver badge

    I know it's an old meme, but...

    If your PC beats you at chess, the return match needs to be kickboxing

    1. gerryg

      Re: I know it's an old meme, but...

      Having done Curling, Kickboxing is next

      1. Strahd Ivarius Silver badge

        Re: I know it's an old meme, but...

        what about chess-boxing?

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Optional - CrossChurned(2)

    https://youtu.be/OL8Wqe-QWM8

  6. John Brown (no body) Silver badge
    Terminator

    AI systems can beat us at curling

    Next, it'll be football.

    GIVE ME THE BALL. YOU HAVE 20 SECONDS TO COMPLY

    Commentator: That Ed-209 was a good buy for the Tottenham Terminators.

  7. swm

    I'm impressed

    I am very impressed with both the humans and the robot. My parents used to curl and I have tried it. It is not as easy as it looks. The strategy is complex especially with all of the uncertainties.

    1. Danny 2

      Re: I'm impressed

      My first salary bought games I couldn't afford as a child. Crossfire and Rebound - not as easy as they look. My second salary went on tools for electronics - not as easy as it looks.

      Drinking whisky is as easy at it looks, but that's about all. In fact even that takes practice and training.

      Keep on with the curling and one day you'll reach a bonspiel.

  8. David Pearce

    Any sports requiring muscle control

    Robots should always be able to beat a human in any activity just requiring precise muscle control. Darts, target shooting etc

    More complex examples like snooker require more strategy as well, which AI will struggle with

  9. Ken 16 Silver badge
    Paris Hilton

    Why?

    Why curling, why robots, why bother?

    1. You aint sin me, roit
      Coat

      Re: Why?

      Probably for the social scene.

      Robots need to let off steam.

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