Autonomous drone defeats human champions in racing first • Hacker News Board

Re: Autonomous drone defeats human champions in racing first

#181

Post by pjc50 » Thu, Jun 05, 2025, 12:54 PM UTC

dylan604 wrote: post #22

CamperBob2 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only question is whether motors or propellers will be banned for private sale first. (After drones themselves, of course.)

Why? Just request a Waymo, and then put your suitcase nuke in the backseat and watch it be delivered by AI. There's all sorts of ways to kill with AI without needing drones

Ironically the hard part of that is still more "suitcase nuke" than "last mile delivery".

I'm mildly suprised that the US hasn't seen a breakout of car bombs since Oklahoma City or WTC. It seems that the tradition force of using guns for the frequent mass casualty suicide terrorism events is too strong.

Re: Autonomous drone defeats human champions in racing first

#182

Post by pjc50 » Thu, Jun 05, 2025, 12:56 PM UTC

HenryBemis wrote: post #47

generalizations wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From near the bottom: > One of the core new elements of the drone’s AI is the use of a deep neural network that doesn’t send control commands to a traditional human controller, but directly to the motors.

I assume that they shave off milliseconds by doing so, and a gyroscope (or similar) sends back the position/angle of the drone. And like this does it bypass the 'limited' onboard computer and instead uses a much better/faster computer?

Reports downthread suggest that the NN is running directly on the drone, in the form of a Jetson. Which would give much better latency and quality of video.

Re: Autonomous drone defeats human champions in racing first

#183

Post by somenameforme » Thu, Jun 05, 2025, 12:57 PM UTC

mschuster91 wrote: post #155

somenameforme wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a war of attrition (actually any war or even battle for that matter) the war is generally won by the enemy's morale breaking, not by literally running out of soldiers. When one side is losing and they know they're losing (or they see the conflict as not worth dying for), most people would prefer to save their own lives rather than die for nothing. So you get desertion, refusal to enlist, rapid surrender, and so on…

> This is why Afghanistan, in terms of outcomes, is essentially the strongest military nation in the world. They've defeated both the US and the USSR in spite of being orders of magnitude behind in every single measure of military strength - except for morale. The problem is, in Afghanistan the Western nations didn't do much else than depose the Taliban that took around two years and provide education abilities for w…

A war doesn't end when a government is deposed, it ends when resistance ceases (which is generally because morale breaks). Up until, and including, the final day of US withdrawal in Afghanistan the Taliban were fiercely resisting. US troops rarely left their little green zones because they would have been killed, same as in Iraq. The media stopped meaningful coverage of the war relatively quickly, which I think led people to believe that meaningful resistance wrapped up relatively quickly, but that's not the case at all. The Taliban ended up killing at least 75,000 soldiers/security forces and wounding what was likely some large multiple of that.

All of the things you're discussing are not things that the US simply didn't bother to try to solve, but we were ultimately powerless to do so. Americans would never tolerate US soldiers dying by the tens to hundreds of thousands as would have happened if we actually tried to enforce order on foot. So we were left with proxy soldiers, contractors, and a money printing machine. But that simply wasn't enough to defeat the Taliban, let alone carry out the grand changes you mention.

Re: Autonomous drone defeats human champions in racing first

#184

Post by pjc50 » Thu, Jun 05, 2025, 12:59 PM UTC

AngryData wrote: post #59

atonse wrote: 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.

Im more worried about these type of things causing us to blast each other and ourselves back to the 1920s or so during conflicts when small explosive EMPs start being viewed as less damaging than drones and robots. A fast explosive on the back of a neodynium magnet and a few coils of copper can make a hell of an EMP blast. The only reason we don't use them now is due to all the collateral damage, but if drone bombs r…

> A fast explosive on the back of a neodynium magnet and a few coils of copper can make a hell of an EMP blast.

I'm having a hard time believing this is effective.

> The only reason we don't use them now is due to all the collateral damage

Russians don't care about collateral damage and there doesn't seem to be any evidence of them using such weapons?

Re: Autonomous drone defeats human champions in racing first

#185

Post by dylan604 » Thu, Jun 05, 2025, 1:07 PM UTC

pjc50 wrote: post #181

dylan604 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? Just request a Waymo, and then put your suitcase nuke in the backseat and watch it be delivered by AI. There's all sorts of ways to kill with AI without needing drones

Ironically the hard part of that is still more "suitcase nuke" than "last mile delivery". I'm mildly suprised that the US hasn't seen a breakout of car bombs since Oklahoma City or WTC. It seems that the tradition force of using guns for the frequent mass casualty suicide terrorism events is too strong.

Guns are easy to get, they’re portable, they’re easy to use, and they are stable and safe to operate. Bombs are pretty much none of those things. Bombs are not sold at your local Walmart or sporting goods store, they don have weekend bomb shows at your local convention centers, they require some skill to make, the raw ingredients are tracked at point of sale, and to have the same casualty count tends to require a large amount. It doesn’t take much reasoning to understand why guns are the goto choice

Re: Autonomous drone defeats human champions in racing first

#186

Post by mschuster91 » Thu, Jun 05, 2025, 1:12 PM UTC

somenameforme wrote: post #183

mschuster91 wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is why Afghanistan, in terms of outcomes, is essentially the strongest military nation in the world. They've defeated both the US and the USSR in spite of being orders of magnitude behind in every single measure of military strength - except for morale. The problem is, in Afghanistan the Western nations didn't do much else than depose the Taliban that took around two years and provide education abilities for w…

A war doesn't end when a government is deposed, it ends when resistance ceases (which is generally because morale breaks). Up until, and including, the final day of US withdrawal in Afghanistan the Taliban were fiercely resisting. US troops rarely left their little green zones because they would have been killed, same as in Iraq. The media stopped meaningful coverage of the war relatively quickly, which I think led p…

> All of the things you're discussing are not things that the US simply didn't bother to try to solve, but we were ultimately powerless to do so.

I disagree with this assessment.

Had the Western forces provided actual, proven economic opportunities for the people, the supply of "resistance" fighters would have dwindled. People don't become terrorists or insurgents just because, they follow that path because they do not see a gainful alternative to this life. (Side note, we're seeing this also in Palestine where Hamas and Fatah both draw a steady supply of recruits from the desperate)

Afghanistan has untold billions of dollars worth of all kinds of natural resources [1]. But no attempt was made, not even on paper, to exploit these natural resources. IMHO, even a single pilot project would have been a good start - a mine that pays a decent amount of money to the workers and the profits going to the national government as well as local authorities. Basically, show to the wide population that something good came around from all the suffering in the end, provide an alternative from the Taliban propaganda that at least promised salvation in the afterlife for killing infidels.

But no, we ignored this opportunity, which meant that other than "women can go to schools" we did not have any talking points available to counter the Taliban propaganda of "they're killing us with impunity and the puppet government is looting". That is how we truly lost, and what China and a bunch of oil sheiks will now enjoy.

[1] https://globalinitiative.net/analysis/why-is-afghanistan-par...

Re: Autonomous drone defeats human champions in racing first

#187

Post by 542354234235 » Thu, Jun 05, 2025, 1:38 PM UTC

graemep wrote: post #136

impossiblefork wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. Here in Sweden we instituted mandatory military service we did so because we wanted to ensure that there was no military class that if they decide to can take over. We knew the cost, and the cost is worth it. In normal times the cost is simply to do ones mandatory military service. This protects against coups, ensures your power in society and prevents groups of officers and soldiers etc. from taking over.

This is similar to the argument behind the American constitutional right to own guns. In both cases I very much doubt that people lacking the training, organisation and weaponry of the professional military will be able to beat them in contemporary circumstances. I realise military service means people have some training, but as much as the professionals? What about air cover, heavy weaponry, communications? What abo…

An insurgency doesn’t report to a battlefield to be slaughtered by the professional army. To see what a large-scale American resistance would look like, Vietnam, Iraq, or Afghanistan are instructive.

Re: Autonomous drone defeats human champions in racing first

#188

Post by tialaramex » Thu, Jun 05, 2025, 1:43 PM UTC

shinycode wrote: post #124

Leo-thorne wrote: post #100

I’ve seen AI beat humans in simulations before, but doing it on a real track with the same hardware is honestly kind of amazing. What surprised me the most is they didn’t use any traditional flight controller. They just let the neural network handle the flying. I’m really curious how this would perform in messier, less controlled environments.

A side note, will we still attend and watch Formula 1 races it AI would drive cars (maybe near perfection) ?

Human sports remain interesting when the humans are notably worse at whatever they do than a machine purpose built for it, or indeed wildlife that specialised for this.

Usain Bolt was the fastest human sprinter in the world, but compared to a good motorcycle over paved road he's obviously not very fast, and likewise compared to an emu. Nevertheless, Bolt's 100m performance drew big crowds, even though people also watch Motorcycle racing and (I think?) Emu racing.

It's like speed running, the categories are arbitrary and self-selecting. Why the Modern Pentathlon? Why not. Why Super Mario Warpless? Why not. If everybody wanted to do Super Mario, only the odd numbered levels and also you must kill all the enemies, that's what the run is, our choices are arbitrary and we value whatever we like.

Re: Autonomous drone defeats human champions in racing first

#189

Post by 542354234235 » Thu, Jun 05, 2025, 1:46 PM UTC

bravoetch wrote: post #90

bamboozled wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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.

Vehicles are registered and licensed to tie them to specific owners. You are required to provide a identification/drivers license when renting a vehicle. The largest, most dangerous vehicles like semi-trucks have additional restrictions on licensing and access. There is a pretty robust system in place to reduce unattributable crimes using vehicles.

Re: Autonomous drone defeats human champions in racing first

#190

Post by 542354234235 » Thu, Jun 05, 2025, 2:01 PM UTC

stackedinserter wrote: post #8

jandrese wrote: 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.

An interesting paper just published about the current state of AI in Ukrainian and Russian drones on the battlefield [1].

"Promises of an immediate AI/ML drone revolution are premature as of June 2025, given that both Russian and Ukrainian forces will need to allocate more time, testing, and investment to deploy these drones on the frontlines en masse. Russia and Ukraine will continue improving their ML and machine vision capabilities while training and testing AI capabilities. Russia and Ukraine will then need to tackle the issue of scaling the production of the new AI/ML drones that will require additional time and resources to facilitate. Russia and Ukraine may start to use some AI/ML drones to carry out specific tasks in the meantime, such as striking certain types of targets like armored equipment or aircraft, before learning to fully operate on the battlefield. AI/ML drones are also unlikely to fully replace the need for the mass of tactical FPV drones over the coming months because the latter are cheaper to produce and adapt to the current battlefield conditions at the current state of technology."

[1] https://understandingwar.org/backgrounder/battlefield-ai-rev...