[ExI] Driverless racecars

[Dave Sill]

On Sun, Feb 15, 2015 at 11:24 AM, Anders Sandberg <anders at aleph.se> wrote:

> Dave Sill <sparge at gmail.com> , 15/2/2015 4:43 PM:
>
>
> No doubt that idea has appeal, but the fundamental draw of athletics is
> the performance of the athletes. What can the best humans on the planet do?
>
>
> I remember debating human enhancement in sport a few years ago, when Soren
> Holm made roughly the same point: we watch sport because we like to see
> humans do awesome things. He was sceptical that we would enjoy seeing
> technological systems compete. Then I brought up monster truck rallys.
>

Oh, are you a fan? I'm not. I could, conceivably, enjoy *one* of these just
for the novelty of the experience. But tuning in regularly, becoming a fan
of one particular truck/team and rooting for it, tracking developments,
etc... Nope. And these trucks have human drivers.

I think what we want to see is *someone* excelling, but not necessarily in
> the form of a direct brain-muscle-motion connection: we are happy if it is
> remote as long as there are ingenuity and creativity going on.
>

I'm not saying that these exhibitions of robot skill are uninteresting or
not entertaining. I just think they're more in the novelty category:
one-off stunts that interest people because they've never been done before.
Watson on Jeopardy and Kasparov-Deep Blue were great, but nobody is rushing
to create regular events based on them because we already know who's going
to win. And computer vs. computer competitions haven't demonstrated any
mass appeal. Ever seen the World Computer Chess Championship on a major
network?


> The Kasparov-Deep Blue chess match was interesting even though one
> participant was mindless, and Kasparov did think one move was truly
> creative.
>

Proof that you can be a genius at one thing while ignorant about something
else.

Maybe a sufficiently complex resource allocation and drive system might be
> interesting to watch too - especially since we can change the rules for
> Formula Something to make it interesting. After all, Formula One changes
> rules and technical limitations constantly to keep it watchable.
>

 Formula One has plenty of human elements and the rules changes and
technical limitations only detract from it, IMO.

-Dave
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