Hold onto your hats here because Sebastian Sawe just ran a 1:59:30 marathon in London, which itself is set to break the world record for the number of finishers.
Less heralded was Honor's world-record breaking efforts earlier this month in the Beijing half-marathon, and here's the thing: it finished in 50 minutes whilst just a year previous the fastest robot did so in 160 minutes.
Honor researches and manufactures phones, whose components are responsible as much as any for the robot's success. And here is one reason the world is advancing at a dizzying pace, for innovation stands on the shoulders of prior product. Thus it was that computing was developed from components incorporated in telephony and television, stemming in turn from telegraphy.
The difference with smartphones was that (a) the world's population already ran to billions and (b) everyone wanted one, for they represent the epitome of the human need to communicate... which itself made us the primate of all primates.
What is significant here is that we expect artificial intelligence to rein supreme in a digital world, but we're not quite ready for it to do so in a physical world ~ the joke always being that should Daleks invade the planet then all we'd have to do is climb the stairs.
In fact when Honor achieved this remarkable feat (assuming it is not AI generated like all else nowadays) with a gait that in itself was reminiscent of the great Michael Johnson... few people were cognisant of it; tho' when Roger Bannister broke a four-minute mile the nation celebrated.
In fact I posted Honor's achievement to a running group where it got zero feedback, whilst anyone achieving practically anything that improves on a prior performance is liked to within an inch of their life.
Why is this? I think it's for the same reason that people are applauded for achieving great age: a recognition that someone not unlike you achieved something against all odds, as it's not so much a wonderful life as a fairly shit one much of the time.
Robots don't wake up one day to hear their days are numbered by cancer. They do not have bills they cannot pay. They don't have Keir Starmer as prime minister. They don't have a partner who gets the house.
But reflect here if you would on that team of individuals ~ and those who preceded them in human entrepreneurial endeavour ~ to consider how they made a world-beating robot, whilst being not that different to you or I.
Ed. Someone in the background is not watching a once-in-a-lifetime event so much as holding up the phone to do so... whilst the robot can't hold the trophy, as it has no hands.
