This AI-Powered Drone Demolished Human Pilots in a Race
While the past few months have shown us that there’s still a lot that AI can’t do that humans can (like write news articles, for example), there are a few areas where the bots are starting to gain an edge on their flesh-and-blood counterparts.
Case in point: A team of engineers at the University of Zurich in Switzerland published a study Tuesday in the journal Nature where they developed an AI dubbed Swift that can fly drones capable of beating human pilots in head-to-head races. The hybrid learning system in which the bot was trained has the potential to be used in autonomous technologies like self-driving cars, personal robotics, and even autonomous planes.
“Our result marks the first time that a robot powered by AI has beaten a human champion in a real physical sport designed for and by humans," lead author Elia Kaufmann, an autonomy engineer at the University of Zurich, told The Daily Beast in an email. "This result is a milestone for robotics, machine intelligence, and beyond, which may inspire the deployment of hybrid learning-based solutions in other physical systems, such as autonomous vehicles, aircraft, and personal robots, across a broad range of applications."