Robots beat human records at Beijing half-marathon

The winning runner at a Beijing half-marathon for humanoid robots finished the race today in 50 minutes and 26 seconds — significantly faster than the human world record of 57 minutes recently set by Jacob Kiplimo. Comparing human and robot running times may seem unfair; one social media user observed, “my car can outrun a cheetah too.” Still, the winning time is a massive improvement over last year’s race, when the fastest robot finished in two hours and 40 minutes. (Back then, I scoffed that this “would not be an impressive time for a human.”)