Man Versus Machine: A World Record Fallacy

The Chinese Communist Party propaganda machine — machine being a keyword here — is flooding the world of the weakminded (aka the internet, such as in this piece from Fox News) with the “news” that a humanoid robot has “shattered” Usain Bolt’s 100-metre dash world record at the World Humanoid Robot Games in Beijing. I saw the headlines, repeatedly, on my office computer’s news feed this week. The other day, the video of this supposedly significant event was being shown on a television newscast at my bank here in Korea. Furthermore, I see that the toys at the World Humanoid Robot Games have now “broken” the 400-metre world record too. Apparently, we are all supposed to be fascinated, agog, and/or frightened at this information.

But we have already had machines that can move faster than Usain Bolt for decades: cars, buses, trains, airplanes, manned and unmanned rockets, ballistic missiles, space shuttles, and more recently electronic drones. For all I know, there may be electronic vacuum cleaners that could beat Usain Bolt’s world record sprint time.

I repeat for emphasis: there are millions of machines that can beat Usain Bolt’s world record time. His time, not his record. His record, to be linguistically and morally accurate, is the fastest time that any human has run a hundred metres in competition. There are certainly machines that can move that distance faster than Bolt’s time. Of course there are. So what? Should we be impressed by this? Admire it? Change the track-and-field record books to show all the machines, in the correct order, that can provably cover a hundred metres faster than any human who has ever lived?

For that matter, what about the many mammals and birds that can beat Bolt’s record time? Do you ever hear anyone saying that Secretariat is the true world record holder in the mile run? Of course not, although he certainly ran that distance faster than any human is ever likely to do. But the comparison would be absurd, for we do not judge human running speed by the standard of horses. What would be the purpose? What about projectiles thrown or otherwise propelled by humans, for that matter — baseballs, tennis balls, and the like — that can surely beat than Usain Bolt’s time over a hundred metres? Are you ever tempted to object to the existing record books on the grounds that any home run hit by Willie Mays surely travelled that distance faster than any sprint champion’s best time? Again, the comparison would be nonsensical, irrational, so it never even occurs to us to suggest it. Why is a fast-moving robot any different, anything new, in this regard?

And if there comes a time, which I am sure there will, when a robot is designed to be able to “run” a hundred metres in five seconds, or two seconds, or one second, what difference would this make to anything that matters from the point of view of human achievement, which is what sports competitions are supposed to be about, and the reason why those competitions have excited and inspired humans throughout the history of civilization? What appeals to us, or at least did appeal to humans of all past eras, was the fact that a human being — someone like us, but more excellent — could run “the fastest time.” Human excellence in all fields, from the most ethereal wisdom to the bluntest physical strength, matters to us because such excellence sets a standard for the rest of us, displaying the fruits of the virtues (intellectual, moral, or material) and thus demonstrating what we fellow humans, in principle, may aspire to, or at least what we ought to look up to and honour in respectful humility. Those who care about Usain Bolt’s 100-metre dash record care because they are in awe of what a man, a mere flesh and bone human being like the rest of us, could push his body to do. 

Is it interesting, or even for certain people inspiring, that humans can also produce machines that can move at superhuman speeds? Obviously it is, for some people. But does it make the machines “better than us” in any sense, or show them to have surpassed our own achievements, “broken our records”? Of course not, for the machines are merely our products, far inferior and less capable than the lowliest slave, and nothing to be admired in themselves. Suddenly, however, when the machines happen to be designed to approximate the outward shape of the human body — the outward shape alone, but none of the body’s miraculous life, feeling, and attention — we are told we are supposed to care, or even be enthralled, to see them “breaking Usain Bolt’s world record.”

Phooey. They have broken no one’s record, and never could, for — to state my point a different way — these robots were merely designed and programmed (by humans) to do this, whereas Usain Bolt, like all our human standard setters, had to learn how to design and program himself, as it were, i.e., to put himself through years of exhausting work, psychological strain, and self-denial, to achieve his peak performance, as the excellent in every field of human endeavour must do. That is why our standard setters, the “record holders,” matter to us. Their humanity itself is what makes their achievements relevant. They are tantalizingly, marvellously just like us, even while somehow being almost inconceivably better than we had previously thought humanly possible.