12/03/24
January 12, 2005
Robot makers say World Cup will be theirs by 2050: Some of us may not agree with The Fooker on using technology in sports but even a technophile such as myself thinks this goes too far.
posted by billsaysthis to soccer at 02:40 PM - 10 comments
I can't wait to see this, except I'll probably be dead first. Exciting!
posted by rocketman at 07:14 PM on January 12, 2005
It'll never happen. I can't post the link unfortunately, as the site I found it on is down (Metafilter I think), but there was an article today, from 1961, saying what 2000 will be like according to "experts". It's 99% horseshit and nowhere near being true. At best they'll have robotic linesman at the World Cup by then... And I doubt even that.
posted by Drood at 03:07 AM on January 13, 2005
i wouldn't say it'll never happen, but i would think that they are just using a metaphorical goal and there won't be a contest in 2050 for the World Cup that features a team of robot players. when you look at how far robots have come in the last 10 years it isn't hard to think that 45 more years of development will lead to some amazing things. of course in 1969 people must have thought we'd be living in big space stations and on Mars. and we know how that turned out (different kettle of fish mind, developing robots today isn't some jingoistic cold war exercise so we can assume that the field won't get cut at the knees in the next ten years).
posted by gspm at 07:12 AM on January 13, 2005
I don't even know what to say about this... Its pretty silly.
posted by StarFucker at 11:57 PM on January 13, 2005
SF, you know you want to see this, admit it!
posted by billsaysthis at 12:09 AM on January 14, 2005
30,000 people die every day from a treatable or prevetable disease - and these jokers want to spend the next 45 years teaching robots to play football? Once the robots have learned to dig a well, build a shelter and farm a plot of land, then they can go and play.
posted by JJ at 05:16 AM on January 14, 2005
JJ, I'm thinking that the ability to have robots capable of the skills necessary to win the Cup would be the result of developing them for more explicitly commercial tasks, not instead of. But one could also look at your comment and ask why people are willing/allowed to spend money on sports and other forms of entertainment, from which I believe you benefited during your days as a golf pro, when 30,000 people die every day from a treatable or preventable disease.
posted by billsaysthis at 02:19 PM on January 14, 2005
I call straw man on you billy..... There is a huge difference between the freedom of the individual to go out and buy tickets to a pro golf tournament, and the billions of dollars of investment required to create these robots (much of it likely to be state-sponsored) after which the individual may go out and buy tickets to said football match. I agree that there would be a trickle-down concept with the derived technology -- welcome to the "military-entertainment complex"....
posted by smithers at 10:33 AM on January 16, 2005
Smithers, sorry, but that smacks to me of the tired argument against space exploration and other exotic basic research. I believe these robots will come out of corporations and labs who are developing robots to solve problems like assisting the aged and infirm, mining and resource extraction, and police and military uses like land mine removal and bomb disarming, not from direct development of pure athletic robot capabilities except when this is scene as a useful shortcut to a specific ability (e.g., coordinating movement between a group of semi-autonomous robots in response to external stimuli).
posted by billsaysthis at 03:00 PM on January 16, 2005
This article is interesting but its a little scary. Trchnology can go too far!