Live data from Hacker News

Autonomous drone defeats human champions in racing first

tudelft.nl

101–110 of 342 posts

Re: Autonomous drone defeats human champions in racing first

#101
post #4

This is only a few days after the massive drone attack in Russia. Only a matter of time until we have drones smart enough to dodge bullets (or at least dodge out of where guns are pointing) while flying at breakneck speeds being controlled by AIs we don't fully understand. The tech industry is working hard to bring about the Terminator future.

OTOH there's no mass adoption of autonomous drones after 3+ years of real active war between two technologically advanced nations.

Remember when TB-2s and grenade bombers were the peak of drone technology in Ukraine? That was like 2 years ago, now the frontlines are draped in equal parts anti-drone netting and fiberoptic threads.

Re: Autonomous drone defeats human champions in racing first

#102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, and so far it's much easier to drive a van into a crowd of people. Nobody has tried to mandate tech in cars that detects and prevents such malicious behavior.

Can you drive a van into a group of people without even being physically present though ?

Yes. https://www.psu.edu/news/campus-life/story/hackers-who-remot...

Even without vulnerabilities like that, something like https://comma.ai/openpilot could very likely be used in the same way ArduPilot was used in the recent Ukrainian drone attacks.

Re: Autonomous drone defeats human champions in racing first

#105
post #5

Oh man, can anyone imagine a non-Terminator scenario for this? Update: I'm not saying people shouldn't develop this, we're never going to squash human curiosity. But when I see this kind of stuff, I'm deeply troubled by how bad actors (state and non-state) will use this. I hope our security services are working hard on countering these potential threats.

This will definitely be used in drone vs drone dogfight. Interceptors hunting spy, bombers, and kamikaze drones.

Re: Autonomous drone defeats human champions in racing first

#106
This technological breakthrough is truly amazing, especially the fact that the drone can fly on an actual race track independently, without relying on human control. It's really cool. But honestly, as AI gets better at doing what we can do, even better in some cases, it makes me a little uneasy. Will there come a day when we truly become redundant, with AI taking over the work?

Re: Autonomous drone defeats human champions in racing first

#108
post #2

Bright futures for these engineers in the defense industry.

bright futures in the darkest places.

Tell that to the Ukrainians who fight the brutal war Russia are waging:

https://www.twz.com/news-features/ukrainian-commanders-exclu...

Re: Autonomous drone defeats human champions in racing first

#109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OTOH there's no mass adoption of autonomous drones after 3+ years of real active war between two technologically advanced nations.

Maybe we should come back to this in a few years, I think this will have aged worse than the old dropbox comment. Governments are falling over themselves to: acquire drones, figure out how to defend against existing and future drones, and to figure out how to exploit them well. Given the recent attack against Russian bombers, I find it hard to take you seriously here. Hell, the US knows it can't compete with China on…

As if the US can compete with china on drone numbers or quality. If drones are the future of war, China will have an enormous advantage in a future war. Let's hope it never comes to that.

Re: Autonomous drone defeats human champions in racing first

#110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The child comments from yours are mentioning nuclear weapons as a parallel but there's one big difference between drone tech and nuclear weapons: plutonium is really hard to make. We might be able to put a pin in this tech from a policy perspective, but the cat is way out of the bag as far as the tech goes. A cell phone already has all of the sensors you need baked right into it (honestly, we can thank mobile devices…

A lunatic will be able to wipe out school children playing outside and have little chance of getting caught, for example. Nice.

Generally, if you are smart enough to fashion this without being caught, you are too smart to do something like that.

Plus, you got a cool and potentially lucrative hobby, designing exterminator machines. Why bother with children at that point?

There are much, much better targets to be had.

Your point on the dwindling barrier to implementation stands.

Post reply on HN