This Robot Wins At Rock-Paper-Scissors Every Single Time

In the coming robot war, the only advantage we humans will have against the machines is our irrationality. They won't expect us to smuggle the nuke into their underground server farm at the cost of our own lives. They won't expect us to throw paper again after throwing it three times in a row. That advantage has been lost.

Quisling researchers at a Japanese university have created this rock-paper-scissors-playing robot, and it wins 100 percent of the time. There's no way around it. The Janken robot (named after the Japanese word for the game, and not an onomatopoeia for the sound of a cold metal hand yanking out your spinal cord through the hollow above your clavicles) doesn't need game theory to figure out your planned throw—it knows what you're going to throw almost as soon as you do.

Using high-speed recognition software, it throws the hand shape to beat yours within 20 milliseconds—0.02 seconds—of you putting it down. That's indiscernible to humans, and appears simultaneous.

So, back to the drawing board, human resistance leaders. Perhaps the machines can still be beaten...with love.

[ BBC]