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April 2026 became a landmark for robotics: Sony's AI-powered robot Ace defeated professional table tennis player Mia Kihara in a match conducted under the official rules of the International Table Tennis Federation (ITTF). Sony's developers call this a historic milestone — for the first time, a machine has achieved expert-level performance in a real competitive sport.

Five landmark AI victories over humans

Against the backdrop of the rapidly developing AI market, reports of robots defeating humans have become more frequent. However, it is these five breakthroughs from past years that laid the foundation for the entire industry:

• 1997: Deep Blue defeats Garry Kasparov in chess — the first victory over a world champion in a classic match.
• 2011: IBM Watson crushes the best players on Jeopardy! — demonstrating AI's ability to recognize complex speech patterns.
• 2016: AlphaGo defeats Lee Sedol 4:1 — overcoming the barrier in a game with an astronomical number of moves.
• 2017: Libratus wins over $1.7 million in poker — AI learned to bluff under conditions of incomplete information.
• 2019: OpenAI Five defeats world champions in Dota 2 — the program beat team OG live on air.

Machines dominate where algorithms are clearly measurable. But in the real world, with its chaos and uncertainty, humans are still holding the line.

Physical labor: humans pull ahead

In May 2026, Figure AI's humanoid robot F.03 lost to an ordinary intern named Aime in a package sorting competition. The contest lasted 10 hours and was broadcast live. Each participant had to scan a barcode, lift a box, and place it label-side down on a conveyor belt. The cycle repeated continuously.

In the end, Aime processed 12,924 packages, while the machine's result was 12,732 items. This means the human spent 2.79 seconds per object, and the robot 2.83 seconds. Notably, the employee had breaks for rest and lunch under California law, while the AI only pulled ahead in the fifth hour while the human was away.

To be fair, by the end of the experiment, the intern had developed blisters and his hand was very tired. The robot, however, can work non-stop, so the human's minimal lead over a short distance does not guarantee long-term efficiency. Currently, physical labor allows humans to stay ahead, but for office workers, the situation may change faster.

The economic argument: humans are cheaper than machines

There is an important economic aspect: employers widely acknowledge that hiring people is more profitable than maintaining AI. Corporate spending on technology is growing too quickly. For this reason, Microsoft is limiting internal licenses for Claude Code for staff due to token costs, and Uber exhausted its entire AI budget for 2026 in four months. Per-minute computing costs often eat up all the benefits of workforce optimization.

My conclusion: as long as AI remains an expensive and narrowly specialized tool, humans retain a competitive advantage in tasks requiring flexibility, endurance, and cost-effectiveness. However, the race continues, and the stakes are rising every year.