This week I watched a video about a robot playing Ping Pong against a former number one world ranking player. A robotics company in china built a robotic arm that stands 901 mm tall that has been deemed the fastest robot on the planet. To test this claim the robotics company, KUKA, brought in table tennis legend Timo Boll to challenge the machine. The game only lasts about three minutes, but they were probably the most intense three minutes in the history of table tennis. To start the robot gains a heavy lead on Timo by winning six points. Then Timo makes a comeback. After a neck and neck race to ten Timo wins by one point. I think this was an interesting experiment to conduct, seeing if the robot was faster than a human, but it raising an interesting question. What does a robot that can move faster than a human mean for the future? I don’t mean this in a terminator “take over the world” kind of way but economically speaking people are already loosing jobs to machines so why should people continue to improve them. For instance the ping pong robot itself was probably built by machines. I think there should come a point where we stop improving designs on machines meant to build more machines but instead improve designs on objects meant to improve humanity. Imagine if all the brainpower used to build the robot that was being used to play ping pong was used to build a safer car, or create a more efficient airplane, or perhaps more effective medical equipment? Keep in mind I know the ping pong robot has more practical uses than just playing a game but time spent on creating something to take jobs should have been spent on improving the quality of life for humans in my opinion.