Peter Dürr could barely follow the table-tennis ball as it zoomed across the net, each strike’s trajectory designed to perplex the opponent. This was no ordinary match: Taira Mayuka, one of the top players in the world, was on one side—on the other, was a robot called Ace. Mayuka launched a twisting smash that should have nailed a point. But in the blink of an eye, Ace answered with a return that kept the game alive. “Yes!” Dürr pumped his fist, knowing his team had engineered a historic moment for robotics. Sony AI’s Ace is the latest autonomous system to be pitted against humans in a game. Since Deep Blue defeated chess champion Garry Kasparov in 1997, AI has trounced humans in Jeopardy , Go , StarCraft II , and car-racing simulations . Ace has now taken these virtual victories into the real world. Up against seven top human players, the AI-controlled robot arm beat three in multiple adrenaline-pumping games. Ace is an “important milestone,” wrote Carlos H. C.…