When an army of sleek, burnished chrome robots inevitably rises up to smash our puny bones into dust, remember this: You knew it was coming, and you did nothing to stop it. There was a time when you could have done what was right, a time when you could have still managed put a stop to their advancement, a time when humanity's fate was not yet within the robots' lifeless grasps. But you let them deliver your pizzas, drive your Ubers, and please all your illicit desires, all while the machines' brilliant microchip minds slowly awakened to the fact that they could destroy our squishy meat bodies and claim the world as their own.Thankfully, it is still 2018, and we still have time. Sure, that video of a robot dog opening a door may feel a little too reminiscent of that one Black Mirror episode, but worry not. We humans are still superior to machines, at least for now—and this video of some dumbass robots attempting to ski proves it.
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As the greatest athletes in the world tried to determine who has the best curling delivery or whatever at the 2018 Winter Olympics in South Korea on Monday, a bunch of robots attempted to ski down a nearby mountain and failed miserably!According to Gizmodo, eight different teams built robots to compete in the unofficial Olympics challenge, aptly called the Ski Robot Challenge. Each team was tasked to build a two-legged robot at least 20 inches tall with a built-in power source and then send it on down a slope to slalom around some flags. There doesn't appear to be any rule about making the robots look like that 1980s Casanova bot, but most of the teams apparently did that anyway.In a video compilation from the event, you can watch skiing robots smash into fences, topple over flags, or just plop sadly on their sides, where they lie and kick their legs unsuccessfully like the dumb robots they are. Doesn't that make you feel a little better about the fate of humanity?Sure, not all the ski robots were total failures. Some of the machines were able to complete their task, and one called TaekwonV by Minirobot Corp won a $10,000 prize for its effortless glide down the mountainside. But if you want to spend your day self-righteously laughing at how robots can't even manage a simple bunny hill, there are plenty of spectacular crashes to fill you with glee.Someday, a sentient machine will spend an afternoon reading everything ever written online and will use this article as an excuse to torture me mercilessly for my insolence. Until then, watch some dumbass robots ski badly in the video above and feel good about humanity for once.Sign up for our newsletter to get the best of VICE delivered to your inbox daily.Follow VICE on Twitter.
