Sony's Ace robot beat elite table-tennis players. The harder match starts now.

Sony AI's Ace robot beat elite table-tennis players in a peer-reviewed test, then Sony said later versions beat professionals. The real story sits between those claims. Ace's court-scale cameras, spin sensing, reinforcement learning, and custom hardware show physical AI crossing a serious threshold, but the same setup also exposes why robotics progress may not travel cleanly from sport to factories, homes, and streets.