WATCH: A TikTok Influencer Fought a Robot in the Octagon. It Did Not Go Well.
Who knows where the future’s headed, but with AI suddenly rising to prominence, we may be on the brink of destroying everything. Or maybe things have just gotten so bleak that news of an AI apocalypse is actually good financial news. I don’t know where any of this is heading, but in the meantime, at least we can watch influencers flail about as they attempt to beat up robots.
TMZ recently reported on a spectacle in San Francisco billed as the world’s first human-versus-robot fight. The match featured TikTok personality Frankie LaPenna, who is, as far as I’m aware, an internet person of some renown, and that’s all I am confident enough to say about him, even after a Google search.
He stepped into the octagon to duke it out with a six-foot-tall, red-eyed humanoid android built by a robotics company called REK. The robot, seemingly designed to look like the iconic T-800 endoskeletons from the Terminator franchise, moves like a mannequin come to life, all stiff and jittery, until it decides to toss out a kick, at which point its movement becomes unstoppably powerful.
LaPenna got off to a hot start, landing a series of early blows before the robot got serious and treated him like the meatbag he is. The robot delivered a few kicks to the midsection before delivering a devastating front kick that sent LaPenna flying across the ring and slamming into the Plexiglas wall.
Of course, all of this was to promote something else entirely: a virtual reality game developed by our EK where people pilot androids in combat sports. Whenever a modern tech company tried to show off an android, always know that there’s likely a man behind the curtain puppeteering it, which was the case here. A guy offstage used a headset to control the robot; it used the machine’s brute strength to send LaPenna flying.
Of course, another thing to keep in mind is that LaPenna himself is something of an amateur stunt guy, so he knows how to sell any bumps he may incur. None of this was a military demonstration of a future war machine. It was a silly promotional event in San Francisco, the equivalent of a pro wrestling event or stunt boxing match.
It was what this was, essentially, all theater.
