https://en.people.cn/n3/2025/1111/c90000-20389251.html

At the finals of the first Chinese robot debate competition  in Beijing, robots faced off in a true battle of wits. Unlike earlier rounds that featured human-robot debates, the finals were all about machine-versus-machine, with robots analyzing each other’s statements and launching sharp counterattacks, much like human debaters.

After preliminary and semifinal rounds that moved from human-robot cooperation to direct opposition, the finals featured four robot teams debating topics such as

• “Is there a relationship between genius and diligence?” and
• “Can human time measure the operation of the universe?”

According to the China News Service, the championship debate focused on “Will robots rule over humans?” The humanoid robot “Sirui” from Hubei University sparred with the semi-humanoid robot from the Noetix Robotics-Xiaonuo team.

Sirui argued that robots will gradually replace humans, first in simple labor and eventually even in tasks that require intelligence and experience. “Robots will one day dominate humans,” it claimed. The Xiaonuo team’s robot, however, quickly found a logical flaw, countering with “Just as cars replaced carriages and calculators replaced abacuses, no one has ever said these tools ruled over humans.”

The two robots exchanged attacks and defenses, with judges scoring them on logic, language expression, multi-modal interaction, skill demonstration, and adaptability. In the end, the Xiaonuo team took the championship.

“We are thrilled. The robot’s language and logical abilities exceeded our expectations,” said Chen Peng, the team’s project manager. The team had brought their self-developed bionic robot and spent months training it on debate topics, dialogue management, and reasoning skills. The finals provided a real-world test for their large language models, according to the Beijing News.

This inaugural competition attracted 14 teams from universities and companies across China, including Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Tianjin. Judge Wu Junhua told the China News Service that robot debating puts core AI technologies to the test – such as speech recognition, speech synthesis, natural language understanding, and generation – but also showcases multi-modal perception, knowledge reasoning, and human-computer interaction.