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.
Yes. People thought computers would kill chess, but despite current chess engines being able to trounce every human in existence, chess is more popular than ever.
That said “regular” chess is deeply in crisis, with less computer-assisted formats coming up to challenge it.