Bots do it better
But teenage success in darts and Tetris shows that doesn't really matter
Two teens have taken the world by storm — and fought for the rights of fleshbags the world over.
Thank you, teenagers.
The first is a fella called Willis Gibson. This 13 year old became the first living, breathing, pooping person to beat Tetris on the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES).
Yes, it turns out you can actually beat Tetris — even if it’s by breaking the game.
The second teenager made from meat causing waves in recent weeks is Luke Littler, a 16-year-old darts player and kebab enthusiast who became the youngest person ever to reach the world championship final.
So what’s the connection between these two individuals? Age, of course, but that’s not the whole story.
To me, it’s the fact that despite their success, machines can do it better.
Yes, Gibson was the first human to break Tetris, yet artificial intelligence managed this feat years ago.
A similar thing can be levelled at Luke Littler’s dart success. A cursory glance online shows robots that could wipe the floor with human competitors:
The more you think on this, the clearer it becomes that robots have slowly overtaken human capabilities at most things, from bowling to chess and everything in-between.
It’s even expanded to the creative industry. With ChatGPT and generative AI, computers can now write and draw better than the majority of people.
But you know the wonderful thing? It doesn’t matter one single bit.
There’s been this idea floating around ever since Deep Blue beat Kasparov that once machines get ‘better’ at doing things than humans that action is now irrelevant.
We, in a sense, become pointless.
Well, our interest in the exploits of Littler and Gibson smush that right into robots’ smug faces.
Watching a robot throw darts stirs few emotions. The most impressive part is the fact that someone created that hardware, that they overcame their faults and made something flawless, not that it’s good at throwing pointy things at a board.
Artificial intelligence beating Tetris says nothing about our lives, the steel it takes to thrive in a stressful situation, or the toil of seeing perfected skills in full flow.
The exploits of machines mean little to us.
These two teenagers have given me fresh hope. Robots aren’t going to replace or reduce us. Instead, they’ll complement us. Adopt the things we don’t want to do and give us time for the tasks we love.
Well, as long as Big Tech doesn’t get robots to do our jobs and fire us all and keep all the money, but they wouldn’t do that, would they?
"The exploits of machines mean little to us." Yessss.