nature in an experiment i don't know yet why is it like so far like it sounds so simple they had no idea

but now the data's i find this not only refreshing but but at some level astounding nature welcome nature.

Welcome back to the nature podcast.

This week, the robot that could beat you at table tennis,

and the latest attempt to test the strength of Big G.

I'm Benjamin Thompson. When it comes to humans versus artificial intelligence, there's a long history of researchers designing

machines to beat humans at games. Things like chess,

backgammon, go, we've covered several of these kinds of stories on the pod before. But things

are getting a little more physical with the latest paper we're covering, the story of an AI-powered

robot that can beat elite players at table tennis.

Reporter Jeff Marsh spoke to Sony AI's Petardur to find out how and why.

If you look at the history of AI, scientists have often used games as benchmarks.

And in a way, games are very interesting because they allow us to directly compare the performance of an AI agent to a human's performance.

Okay, great.

Do you want to introduce yourself then?

Yes, very nice to meet you.

My name is Peter Dür, director of Sony AI in Zurich, and also the lead engineer of what we internally call Project Ace, which is a robot that can challenge human athletes.

And I'm a roboticist by trade, and so this is really a dream project for me. What is it that makes table tennis per se such a challenging

sport to compete in? So when a professional player hits a fast ball, it can reach velocities of 25, up to 30 meters per second.

They also impart a massive amount of spin on the ball.

So this lets players influence how the ball flies.

This also causes the ball to bounce differently on the table and then causes the ball to bounce differently from the opponent's racket.

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