Hey! Did you know that AI research is easy? Apparently it is. .

[jimrh]

Ref:

Research re-Proves Robots Are Hard

Lest anyone get frustrated with their robot, keep in mind what this senior vice president at Toyota Research Institute said: “You hear from 1,000 people that you know, home robots are really hard, but then you feel like you have to try for yourself and then you like, really, you make all the same mistakes that they did. I think I’m probably just as guilty as everybody else. It’s like, now our GPUs are better. Oh, we got machine learning and now you know we can do this. Oh, okay, maybe that was…

This post was inspired by some folks over on the MSFS forums complaining how MSFS 2020 hasn’t successfully implemented fully aware and believable AI general aviation aircraft, ATC, and other glaring failures. . . .

After watching folks like @cyclicalobsessive and @KeithW fighting with the simplest of these seemingly “easy” AI and mapping tasks, I’m afraid I lost my temper a little bit - and though I might end up getting banned over there, I really had enough of their whining and I let them have a couple of kopeks of my thinking:

Before you folks decide to continue bashing MS & Co. for their seeming AI failures, please let me suggest that you get yourself a reasonably competent robot, (The Modular Robotics/Dexter Industries GoPiGo is a great choice - https://gopigo.io, and it’s a lot less expensive than the nearest competition), and then go try some simple AI, like a “simple” autonomous robot that can wander around a room, learn where things are, and find it’s way back to its charging station.  Voice commands are optional.  Just some simple hardware like a LIDAR, maybe an Oak-D, Lite, and some “simple” ROS programming, that’s all.  Once you get that done, go on over to the Dexter Industries forums, and post about it there.  Note that I am not asking you to implement it in a globally large solution space, just your living room - with a few chairs getting moved around occasionally - and the occasional cat or two - nothing all that complicated, right?

Go ahead.  Try some SIMPLE AI for yourself.  Publish your results and then come back here to complain about MS’s failures.

The whole article is here:

Completely broken AI GA traffic makes this not worth playing for me

!!!

What say ye?

[cyclicalobsessive]

I thought I was the only general aviation simmer hoping for GA traffic. I used to think this was due to the majority interest in heavy metal simming, but after seeing that my “super computer” just barely has enough oomph to simulate my airplane, I realized even if my $60 software could simulate more planes around me, and realistic to the traffic air traffic control, I would have to spend thousands of dollars to use the features.

I loved your challenge. Somehow I doubt we’ll see new converts here though.

[jimrh]

An update:

Completely broken AI GA traffic makes this not worth playing for me

It’s all fun and games until you actually have to implement the beastie!

[KeithW]

Yeah, even “simple” AI isn’t all that simple under the covers. Like any other technology it will get better over time.
/K

[jimrh]

@cyclicalobsessive

I loved your challenge. Somehow I doubt we’ll see new converts here though.

It wasn’t a challenge per se, rather a “put up or shut up!”  If yer’ gonna bitch, do something constructive to justify the angst instead of wasting good oxygen.