Robots can’t even carry enough energy to play a physical/sports game, even if their AI was perfect and cost zero energy itself. There’s no imminent tech that will change this. We have many years.
I’d love to be wrong about that, but I’m probably not.
Check out Robocup for superhuman speed miniature soccer games. But the games are small and short. The humanoid games are much less well developed.
Probably we differ here on the timespans, thats okay :-)
Personally I explicitly do not expect robots to actually have human-like shape but rather be optimized for the thing they do, which can change the energy requirements or otherwise things that might look "unfair" to humans. Usually this is one of the key reasons where different timelines come from in discussions, where people assume that a humanoid robot needs to be build that does the same movements like humans but somehow better/faster/... while I differ on that point.
That's moving the goalposts (pun intended :)): having a wheeled robot with an enclosed (ball protection!) basketball holder slide around the basketball court and extend the basketball holder up to the rim would certainly allow it to beat humans, but it wouldn't really be "playing basketball".
We engage in sports because they are fun and explore the limits of our physical and mental abilities (or well, go above our limits, as all the kinesio-tapes and supplements in pro sports indicate). Involving robots can only continue to be fun if robots work with roughly the same restrictions.
If we want to measure AIs against our mental abilities, it's only fair to pit them with controlling as much "machinery" and suboptimal movements as humans do in a particular sport: that versatility is what makes our intelligence so amazing and, well, "general".
but thats the same as in Chess, Go or even StarCraft: the AI is absolutly impossible to beat for human players unless it has explicit flaws built-in.
The general point I want to make is that it doesn't make sense trying to compare humans with AI (and somewhat soon) robots, because the will outperform everyone. Handycapping them is not a solution either. The "amazing versatility" of humans also will not persist for too long anymore I'd say, therefore the only way to have a real and fair comparison/pit is against other humans in the future.
Well, let's agree to disagree about versatility: I don't see non-specialized AI outperforming humans in a number of years (a human will easily beat chess AI at Go).
While I am somewhat impressed by the conversational acumen of recent LLMs, the fact they can produce outright garbage tells me we are as far away from synthesising multiple types of intelligences as ever: humans simply need far smaller input data set to start recognizing patterns and rules (as witnessed by kids learning to speak).
I am not yet convinced we'll live to see something like actual self-driving cars with as much capability as an average human driver: I believe augmented environments are needed (communicating roads, signals and cars) to get to self-driving cars.
The one thing they've got going for them is consistent focus, whereas practical ability in humans significantly depends on the mood, tiredness, level of multitasking...
I'll try to make the same point land a bit harder:
Robots will not compete any time 'somewhat soon' in many/most physical tasks, because their energy storage capability, motor efficiency, strength to weight ratio, and many other mechanical and sensing properties are not good at all compared with humans and other animals, and can't be fixed by software. Everyday intuition underestimates how large this gap is.
Brains are only part of the requirement for competence in the real world.
I feel like it is possible, but just not anything we will pursue. Nuclear reactors? Inductive charging in the floor? some kind of overhead electric like we use to power trains? I'm sure it's "possible", but probably not safe for humans to be around.
I’d love to be wrong about that, but I’m probably not.
Check out Robocup for superhuman speed miniature soccer games. But the games are small and short. The humanoid games are much less well developed.