In the foreseeable future, is it likely that artificial intelligence will participate in the Olympics alongside humans?
Take electric vehicles, the most widely applied AI technology today, as an example. Compared by equal weight, a 70-kilogram athlete can easily run a 42-kilometer marathon, but a 70-kilogram lithium iron phosphate battery, even fully charged, holds less than 8 kilowatt-hours of electricity, which might not be enough to complete a marathon. We can't just stop halfway to charge for two hours before continuing the race.
Moreover, this is just the weight of the battery alone, without accounting for the weight of other components.
Long-distance running is about endurance, and sprinting is about explosive power. Unless AI is allowed to use wheels, if strictly defined by the norms of "running," the fastest running robots currently have not yet reached the level of an ordinary person's running ability, let alone that of Olympic athletes.
This is even more true for events like hurdles, which humans can easily complete. The situation for swimming is similar. For long-distance endurance events, the current battery life level makes it impossible to compete with humans. For short-distance events, without high-speed propellers, there's no chance. Swimming itself has style restrictions for humans; you can't use freestyle for the breaststroke event. Propellers certainly don't conform to any standardized swimming style.
However, in strength events like weightlifting, machines indeed have a significant advantage. Humans can at most lift a barbell several times their body weight, while hydraulic machines can easily lift dozens or even hundreds of times more. Another event where AI outperforms humans is shooting; humans have no chance against machines in this regard.
For other skill-based events, such as gymnastics, diving, and synchronized swimming, which involve human aesthetics, unless AI is made into inflatable dolls based on star templates, the impression points for aesthetics would already be lost, no need to compare skills. For skill-based games like table tennis, it should be difficult for machines to score against humans. As for team sports like soccer or basketball, Robot Messi, Robot Curry? I don't think they will appear in the foreseeable future. I often have the illusion that Curry's three-pointers should be more accurate than a robot's. In summary, the human machine is not only precise but also has a high energy utilization rate and unbeatable endurance.
Initially, it won on the African savannah by outrunning all other competitors. Today, human intelligent mechanical civilization still has endurance as its weakest link, and it is difficult to fundamentally change this in the foreseeable future. Not to mention the performance, it would be great if one day we could invent a mechanical unit of the same weight as a human to complete a marathon smoothly.
And As for the current Olympic events, I don't think AI will participate directly, although artificial intelligence is now widely used and will cover more areas in the future. They are unlikely to directly participate in top human sports events like the Olympics. At most, they will play a role in assisting training, data analysis, and robot competitions. For example, at the 2024 Paris Olympics, AI technology has been applied to improve the accuracy of referees, event security, and operational efficiency. At the same time, it has also replaced satellite broadcasting through cloud technology, providing a richer and more efficient viewing experience for global audiences.
After all, the Olympics are designed as competitions for humans, emphasizing the physical abilities, skills, and mental strength of human athletes. Obviously, these unique qualities of humans are not possessed by artificial intelligence.
Another important point is that the Olympics are participated in by so many countries and are so popular because they focus on fair competition.
All athletes must compete under the same conditions, but AI or robots have different capabilities and limitations; they may possess speed, strength, or endurance beyond human physiological limits, which would make the competition unfair.
Therefore, even if technology advances in the future, it is more likely that artificial intelligence will participate in new forms of competitions designed specifically for them.
Such as robot soccer, robot racing, etc., rather than directly competing with human athletes.