‘New York Times’ builds Rock-Paper-Scissors robot

Will Brinson

Screen shot 2011 03 07 at 11.41.52 AM 640x331 New York Times builds Rock Paper Scissors robotRock/Paper/Scissors is the only way to settle anything.

Do you and your wife have trouble deciding who’s going to take out the trash? RPS.

Did you stupidly buy a television with your roommate and suddenly need to figure out who’s keeping it? RPS.

Is your boss trying to fire you but you don’t want to leave because you have two kids, a mortgage and an unhealthy and expensive addiction to buying everything that gets written about at OMGPosters? ROCK-PAPER-SCISSORS HIS ASS.

Or perhaps you’re sitting at your desk and just want to kill the rest of your day by finding out what it’s like to play Rock-Paper-Scissors against a robot. (You are not alone, good sir.)

Well, the New York Times has solved that problem for all of us, by creating a Watson-like robot that will play you in RPS all freaking day long.

That’s right, it’s like Watson but for people who aren’t as smart and prefer screaming at their computers as they’re beaten into the ground in a game that becomes almost entirely chance once you take the second human element out of it.

Of course, that doesn’t ALWAYS happen — as you can see above, I beat the tar out of that stupid computer. Relatively speaking anyway, since he doesn’t suffer from the cruel torture of emotions like I do.

The key, I found, is to actually think one step ahead of yourself. Which is to say that if you’re thinking scissors, the computer is probably thinking you’re thinking scissors. And he’s going to go rock. So go paper.

If you’ve won twice with scissors in a row (or, hell, just thrown them twice in a row), the computer probably doesn’t believe a silly human would throw it a third time, and therefore will go paper to eliminate a chance of being beat. Drop scissors on his face again.

And finally, don’t get emotional. That’s how you lose Rock-Paper-Scissors in real life, and it’s how you’ll get crushed by a robotic Terminator-like arm on the Internet too.

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