"There's no denying it—our kind started substituting brains for brawn long ago, and it shows: We can't begin to compete with animals when it comes to the raw ingredients of athletic prowess. Yet being the absurdly self-enthralled species we are, we crowd into arenas and stadiums to marvel at our pathetic physical abilities as if they were something special. But there is one exception to our general paltriness: We're the right honorable kings and queens of the planet when it comes to long-distance running."
Actually sled dogs way outpace humans at long distance running. Like they can do a marathon a day for a week straight, while pulling a sled.
Humans are second place tho I think.
Which may seem like a snide point (and a ripoff of Steve Jobs) but seriously it hints at where things could go with AI.
But an albatros would cover much more ground much more efficiently than us.
I suspect this stems from the fact that each game imposes its own set of artificial restrictions. Of course you don't ride a horse in a footrace; that's not the game. Just as you don't confer with your team of experts in a Go game. A game is only given meaning by the artificial restrictions it defines.
Within the bounds of the rules of the footrace, the game is still competitive for humans; currently this is somewhat tautologically so. (Though I think we will have a similar conversation to this when human cyborgs can out-compete unmodified humans [1]). The fact that there are things faster than a human outside of the bounds of the game is irrelevant.
In Go, within the bounds of the rules of the game, humanity cannot compete at the highest level any more. I see that as a big difference.
[1]: http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2009-11/seriously-d...
