As epic confrontations between man and machine go, it is up there with the historic encounter between Garry Kasparov and Deep Blue.
This time, however, the two opponents pitted against each other were not the world chess champion and an IBM supercomputer, but a Times journalist and a robot called Berti.
And we were not engaged in a battle of wits over the chess board; we were playing rock-paper-scissors. Still, you have to start somewhere.
Berti is on show this week at the Science Museum in London, where he is engaging passers-by in conversation as well as taking on select opponents at rock-paper-scissors (or RPS, as old hands like Berti like to call it).
He is doing his three-day stint in South Kensington to demonstrate the latest advances in robot technology, in particular how robot designers are improving the way they move their hands about so that their gestures look human.
“Gesturing is an important part of human conversation,” said Paul Bremner, the PhD student controlling Berti. “But making a robot exactly human-like is really hard.”
Berti, it has to be said, was not looking particularly human yesterday. He looks like a cross between the robot in the Will Smith sci-fi thriller I, Robot and Arnie at the end of the firstTerminator movie, the bit when he is showing all his wiring. Not a good look in a murderous cyborg, but forgivable in a robot prototype. Vocally he was not that much better.
His speaking voice was a slow, soporific baritone, as if someone had put the sat-nav on at the wrong speed.
But if I thought his voice was boring, that was as nothing compared with his conversation. Berti, who is the product of a collaboration between the Bristol Robotics Laboratory and a Bath-based company called Elumotion, has two conversational gambits. “The time available is limited” is one; “I don't know, what do you think?” is the other. It is not exactly the Algonquin Round Table.
Rock-paper-scissors seemed the best way of passing the time with my metal friend. He can move his hand up and down, he can count to three and, by clenching and unclenching his bony black fingers in an arthritic manner, can do rock (slowly), paper (sort of) and scissors (just about).
If his opponent is wearing a piece of kit called a data glove, he can even work out who has won. I must admit I was feeling confident. I had studied the best RPS manuals, pored over thousands of hours of matchplay footage, and undergone an extensive training programme with a couple of local RPS pros (also known as my children). RPS-wise, I was match-fit.
Down came our fists; rock me, scissors Berti. “You win,” droned Berti. 1-0 to mankind. Round two; paper me, rock Berti. 2-0. In one round, I played scissors and Berti played paper. “Draw,” said Berti, and for a moment I almost believed him, until I realised that I had of course won (again).
Could Berti be cheating? Or at the very least indulging in a bit of gamesmanship in an attempt to get even with his human opponent?
Apparently not — he is just not that good at reading the data glove, and thought I had gone paper. I know this, because if I played too fast and brought my hand down a couple of seconds before Berti, it made no difference to what he was going to play.
If he had decided to go paper, he certainly wasn't going to change his mind just because I had played scissors. Poor Berti — he just isn't frightfully bright.
In the end, I decided to put an end to his humiliation and brought the match to an end with the score at 5-2. It was a fitting revenge for Kasparov's defeat when he faced Deep Blue the second time around in 1997.
“Goodbye, Berti,” I said as I left; and was it my imagination, or did I really hear a droning voice say, as I turned away, “I'll be back”?
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