Re:AI fighter pilot wins in combat simulation
by VLM on Tuesday June 28, 2016 @01:26PM
(#11995643)
"That's really all modern pilots need to do."
Recorded conversations between ground support pilots and forward air controllers would disagree. Lots of very fast paced observation, pattern matching, orientation and tough judgment calls.
If we ever fight a competent air adversary I would imagine the AWACS to pilot conversations would be fascinating.
Learning to fly a plane is like learning to throw a baseball. It takes hours at most. Of course learning to beat a pro player at their entire game not just one activity, so as to get their job, is a little harder. An interesting observation of human judgment WRT the ratio of people who think they can go pro vs the people who have the skills to go pro is not terribly inspiring WRT AI pilots, they'll be lots of coders with bravado and not much action. And learning how to lead a team to a world series win isn't even definable at this time. But yeah, toss that ball over there when I say to do it, that's a solved problem. Likewise successfully accomplishing a combat mission is a lot more complicated than "and this is how to keep the wings level and that button makes things go boom". A really smart autopilot is going to help yet isn't the only thing necessary.
Note that its possible to send a man to do a cruise missiles job, or even a plain old missile's job. That doesn't imply a cruise missile can do everything a man can do, it just means the man was mismanaged to not take full advantage of his abilities.
Recorded conversations between ground support pilots and forward air controllers would disagree. Lots of very fast paced observation, pattern matching, orientation and tough judgment calls.
If we ever fight a competent air adversary I would imagine the AWACS to pilot conversations would be fascinating.
Learning to fly a plane is like learning to throw a baseball. It takes hours at most. Of course learning to beat a pro player at their entire game not just one activity, so as to get their job, is a little harder. An interesting observation of human judgment WRT the ratio of people who think they can go pro vs the people who have the skills to go pro is not terribly inspiring WRT AI pilots, they'll be lots of coders with bravado and not much action. And learning how to lead a team to a world series win isn't even definable at this time. But yeah, toss that ball over there when I say to do it, that's a solved problem. Likewise successfully accomplishing a combat mission is a lot more complicated than "and this is how to keep the wings level and that button makes things go boom". A really smart autopilot is going to help yet isn't the only thing necessary.
Note that its possible to send a man to do a cruise missiles job, or even a plain old missile's job. That doesn't imply a cruise missile can do everything a man can do, it just means the man was mismanaged to not take full advantage of his abilities.