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Comment by dosh | Hacker News Reader

Bit off the subject, but think putting a computer on a race track (with driverless car, of course) might be a good AI exercise. Although the physical conditions are a bit extreme, it's a more controlled environment and would be easier to optimize.

Perhaps a Nürburgring test would be comparable to turing test?

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I actually thought that we could combine F1 races with driverless cars, for some really great entertainment. F1 races have huge restrictions on them to improve safety of the drivers. But what if there were absolutely no limits to the engines and such,but the cars had to drive themselves, with no external data? That would be super exciting - teams could start building cars as fast as physically possible,while at the same time their engineers would have to keep tweaking the AI to make sure the cars don't crash themselves. It would be great.

I'd love to see that. But I think one would have to understand a bit about AI to enjoy this, which is generally not the case. Most people would probably just think of it as a video game AI.

I respectfully disagree that an understanding of AI would be required to enjoy this. People enjoy lots of sports without understanding the full rule set, for example. They may "enjoy" the sport at a different level than what the more knowledgeable spectators are enjoying it, but I wouldn't say one is better than the other, or one person's enjoyment is any less valid.

And if you start giving each car spiffy names, maybe attach some "personalities" to each car, and I'd bet you'd be very successful indeed.

Already somewhat exists: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micromouse (small scale, robots have to discover the path, too, but those are minor variations. The major differences are that this is single-car at a time and the absence of weather; you won't find partly wet tracks here)

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