AIs don’t understand simple physics like a ball rolling down a hill

By Chris Stokel-Walker

Artificial intelligence struggles to comprehend how objects interact with each other as they roll, collide, drop and drape, flunking a set of benchmark tests designed to see how intelligent it really is.

The so-called Physion benchmark was designed by Daniel Bear at Stanford University in California and his colleagues. It uses eight scenarios to showcase physical phenomena most humans understand innately.

AIs were given the opening moments of the scenarios, computer-generated in 3D, featuring objects that were designed …