> One of the core new elements of the drone’s AI is the use of a deep neural network that doesn’t send control commands to a traditional human controller, but directly to the motors.
I saw that too - I'm assuming it means they're indeed using the DNN for stabilization. This has been done several times over the years, but generally with results which only rival PID and don't surpass it, so that's quite interesting. What's odd is that the physical architecture of the drone doesn't really make sense for this, so there must be some tweaks beyond the "spec" model. Hopefully some papers come soon instead of press releases.
They reference ESA's research in "Guidance and Control Nets", and when looking at ESA's page for their "Advanced Concepts Team" [0] they in turn reference ETH Zürich's research in RL for drone control. Specifically [1] this paper from 2023: "Champion-level drone racing using deep reinforcement learning" [2]. They use a 2x128 MLP for the control policy.
I assume that they shave off milliseconds by doing so, and a gyroscope (or similar) sends back the position/angle of the drone. And like this does it bypass the 'limited' onboard computer and instead uses a much better/faster computer?
Reports downthread suggest that the NN is running directly on the drone, in the form of a Jetson. Which would give much better latency and quality of video.
> "no State or political subdivision thereof may enforce any law or regulation regulating artificial intelligence models, artificial intelligence systems, or automated decision systems during the 10 year period beginning on the date of the enactment of this Act."
This seems like a really good thing. I would have been more inclined to mock any heavy-handed attempts at regulating AI, anyway.
The states are supposed to be "laboratories of democracy". If people in some states want to regulate AI there, why shouldn't they be able to? And if it's too heavy-handed in practice, let the other states use their lack of such regulation as a carrot to lure companies in. Why do the feds need to be involved here at all?
I don't love heavy-handed approaches like this, but it does seem very in line with small government politics.
Essentially, this is saying that the executive can't create regulations that add regulations that limit what businesses can do (which would be relevant when the party in power of the executive changes)
The executive doesn't care what the law says. This law constrains the states. The opposite of what the GOP believes in almost every other things where the states are sufficiently -ist/-phobic.
They can run locally on-device: a win for cost, latency and privacy (privacy is pragmatic: it means you can use all the user's data as context without qualms). There's a reason Microsoft tried so hard to push for the neural processors a year or two ago. Avoiding the cost of the datacenter while offering good-enough inference (emphasis on good) is a massive win.
Is there actually any hard data out there comparing the NPU on the Google Tensor G4 vs the Apple A18? I wasn't able to quickly find anything concrete.
I mean Apple has been shipping mobile NPUs for longer than Google (Apple: since A11 in 2017, Google: since 2021), and are built on (ostensibly) a smaller silicon node that Google's (G4: Samsung SF4P vs A18: TSMC N3E). However, the G4 appears to have more RAM bandwidth (68.26 GB/s vs 60 GB/s on A18).
Google has been shipping custom NPUs since the Pixel 4 in 2019. Prior to that, Google phones just used off the shelf SOCs from Qualcomm, with 2018's Pixel 3 using the NPU in the Snapdragon 845. Android first shipped NNAPI in Android 8.1 in 2017, with acceleration on various mobile GPUs and DSPs, including the Pixel Visual Core on the Pixel 2. Google has shipped more on-device models so far, but neither company has a moat for on-device inference.
Yes, thank you; this is the strategy I was referring to. It will take some time for the models and chips to get there, but on-device inference will have massive advantages for privacy, speed and cost. Plus it will drive demand for hardware—at first, iPhones, but soon AirPods and glasses.
I always assumed you'd have to use different models. Even if only one of them is large, the others would inject enough difference of opinion to keep it useful.
Our legal system has always depended on vibes to mitigate technically correct unjust or catastrophic outcomes. It's broadly labelled "prosecutorial discretion", and operates at every level of the justice system.
Good vibes, or bad vibes? The technicalities of the law keep both in check. Vibes don't just allow us to "mitigate technically correct unjust...outcomes" - they also let people in power "mitigate technically correct just...outcomes" to achieve their own desired ends.
Prosecutorial discretion hasn’t meant much to me since the Bond got prosecuted for violating a chemical weapons treaty, and Yates got prosecuted for fish-shredding.
Sometimes the vibes are wrong, and things go haywire. This is why zero tolerance policies have to be instituted in schools. That doesnt mean the general idea is wrong. Strict adherence to written law will always fail justice. The world is too nuanced and too fractal to handle every edge case well.
I seem to recall that zero-tolerance policies caused the expulsion of multiple Boy Scouts who were merely obeying the requirement that they always have a multifunction pocket tool with them (such as a Victorinox knife), and these caused the Scouts to rescind the rule.
"Zero tolerance" policies are a generally a tool of the Sith.
I assume you believe it's important that the federal agents should raid every marijuana dispensary in the US and for the DOJ to prosecute dispensary owners and individuals who smoke and participate in weed consumption in each state. Is that correct? After all, technicalities matter.
They go where it's feasible to go. As long as regulation hamstrings industries, it'd be idiotic to build there. Ambitious people just want everyone else to get out of their way so they (I) can build stuff - and they'll go where there's less resistance.
Oh, there's a "tax credit" to make it easier? Sounds like more paperwork & friction. No thanks!
That's one reason Tech is such an attactor. Low barrier to entry.
Common notion, but based in ignorance. I've found that the left wing is more idealistic, but in the sense that they have chosen not to learn from history and rely on immediate emotional values. The right wing sees second order effects and acts on them.
Thus, you get the left calling the right heartless/immoral/racist, and the right calling the left idiots.
No, they gave a list of policy differences - and justified them with an emotional argument: "cruel". They said nothing about the pragmatic justification of them. Which is exactly my point: the left tends to operate on ideological emotional values.
They could have said things like 'reproductive rights leads to X goods for the populace' or 'prohibition was a net positive in Y ways' or 'minimum wage laws are shown to improve GDP by Z amt on average' - but they didn't. They used an emotional argument. Like I said they would.
They used examples where almost every reasonable American knows what the right and wrong side of history ended up being. He doesn’t need to teach us with detailed policy that slavers ended up on the wrong side of history — we all know.
> The right wing sees second order effects and acts on them.
It’s hard to take this one at good faith. The right wing is very publicly melting down the CDC for glue while the second order effects of a preventable measles epidemic spreads through the country. Is there a more targeted claim you want to make?
The right wing had a big problem with the role the CDC played in the authoritarianism of the COVID era. Now they're melting down a weapon of that authoritarianism. What's more important, preserving civil rights by preventing authoritarianism, or a single epidemic? Gotta think long term here.
I suspect that you merely dislike the authoritarian things the government is currently doing; I dislike that the government is authoritarian. We are not the same.
"Not to learn from history"? We're in the twilight zone now. It's the right wing that is currently enacting tariffs, scapegoating immigrants, pushing for appeasement in Ukraine, etc.
The Republican party traded logic for populism long ago.
You've clearly only paid attention to ragebait. Because "integrated members of our society" is exactly what the right wing is interested in. But this is not what happened in recent years. The entire reason for the deportations is because they are not becoming "integrated members of our society" - it instead became "all crime-like" in places it wasn't before, and the correlation with the alien imports is just too obvious. It happened too fast and too much, and now the correction is just as hard.
"They are simply sick" and you're...... proving my point.
They may not have been alluding to violence; perhaps something like democracy itself would be enough to take that lifestyle away from the middle class. If billionaires consolidate enough power & resources and push the tax burden onto the middle class which makes yearly vacations unaffordable
> One of the core new elements of the drone’s AI is the use of a deep neural network that doesn’t send control commands to a traditional human controller, but directly to the motors.
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