Artificial intelligence (AI) has eliminated the need for many aspects of life that were once deemed as essential. Creativity, inquisition, originality, development: not needed. Why bother investing the time, energy, effort and resources into anything arduous when it can be generated in seconds through the use of AI? It spurs the question what this means for personal individuality when our once unique outputs could all soon be developed by computers. A soccer tournament that took place in China last week set humanity in motion for what will be one further elimination: athleticism.

The athletic talent of Beijing were sadly sidelined last week when four teams of humanoid robots took to the soccer field to compete in matches against each other. No, this was not some return of Robot Wars where real people were in control of their technological creations; the robots were operated autonomously with AI-driven strategies that required neither human invention nor supervision. These athletes of the future had advanced visual sensors that enabled them to identity the ball and move with as much agile grace as their metal bodies could allow them.

The crowd went crazy when two robots locked heads with each other while the ball they desired rolled idly down the field. Who could forget the defensive prowess of one goalkeeper endlessly sidestepping to keep an opposing striker from reaching the ball sat in the goal area behind them? Spectators were left wondering what miracle they had witnessed when one robot commenced kickoff and then had second thoughts about pursuing the ball as it instead gently reached the opposition. The consensus for the player of the match was #2 of the burgundy team who – after pushing their teammate #3 out of the way – gradually increased their stamping around the ball until they eventually fell out of bounds and required a stretcher to be taken away. Yes, those loveable robots can only be so different from their human models: they still require urgent medical need after falling.

Technology in general and AI in particular have progressed to incredible levels recently and it is only a matter of time until robots actually possess the true ability to compete at a high level in sports. The question is though: is that what we want? Sure, these robots can be tuned to reach otherworldly levels of intelligence and make decisions in a split moment that humans are incapable of ever conceiving – but at what cost? So much of what makes sports is the encapsulation of the human experience into a single match, race or bout; in only a short amount of time, one can feel the incomparable heights of victory to the crushing lows of defeat. That is amplified by what we know of the individual athlete’s experience: someone representing their country, someone who was never supposed to be here, someone who vies to be the greatest or someone who is waiting for that moment to show all that they can do. It is the camaraderie, the collaboration and the composure. It is that feeling of never knowing what might happen but staying because you know that something will happen. Someone will always win and someone will always lose… but they felt that through the same range of emotional expression that we all have.

One day, the robots will be developed enough to compete against each other and one can watch not knowing that they are not real. Until then, we can watch the burgeoning of robotic athletics and realise that the future of AI athletic adoption is not something of the future; it is already happening.