NVIDIA’s Drive Labs: Getting A Better Sense Of What AI Can Do

One of the most interesting video series on the web is NVIDIA’s Drive Labs.  What makes it interesting is that they showcase week after week how their AI is maturing, what it is capable of, and you gain a sense of just how smart the system is becoming.  

We are soon to be up to our collective armpits in AI technology, and these systems operate very differently than systems of the past and very differently than we do.  It is important, if you are both planning on developing on an AI platform, or deploy it, that you keep track of these advancements, so you know both what is, and what is not, possible.  

One of the most interesting places to do this is NVIDIA Drive Labs where you can get a sense of just where the cutting edge of AI is today.  Granted the implementation of the AI is autonomous driving, but NVIDIA’s technology is also at the heart of a broad cross-section of AI implementations, and this also gives you a sense of just how powerful the core system is becoming.  

State Of The Art

The latest video out of the NVIDIA Drive Labs showcases the incredible amount of unstructured data the system can sense, analyze, and how it makes decisions from these things.   You’ll notice that the system is seeing things all around the car, categorizing them, and based on this analysis forming an opinion on what the vehicle should do next.     

Unlike a human driver, it is reading all the signs, looking at all the obstacles, and looking at all the lanes on the road to determine, real-time, what the safest way forward should be.  This massive real-time data analysis process is well beyond what even a human can do as we often miss signs, don’t see things where we aren’t looking, and thus can often form conclusions that lead to accidents.  

This capability of digitizing and analyzing the world around the AI is one of the huge powers of current generation AIs, and they can perceive the entire world around them and categorize what they see at a speed that is almost impossible to imagine.  

Opens The Door To Imagination

But if the system can do this in a vehicle, imagine what it could do to other real-world problems currently being done by more limited systems and human operators.  Implementations like Smart Cities where traffic has to be regulated automatically across a wide geographic area during periods of bad weather. Also, there is the monitoring waste and water delivery, so one doesn’t contaminate the other and so that people continue to get healthy water. Looking at massive numbers of security cameras and identifying emerging threats while assuring only the appropriate level of force is used against them are all implementations that this increasingly massive capability of seeing and categorizing the real world time are examples of potential future implementations of this impressive technology.  

You can also see how an AI like this could be applied to home and business automation modifying both to provide fo the comfort of their respective occupants, providing management and owners with recommendations on necessary improvements, and keeping everyone safe with unmatched security.  

These examples are all just the tip of the iceberg making NVIDIA Drive Labs one of the better places to watch the cutting edge of AI advancement.  

Wrapping Up:  

There aren’t a lot of places you can go to see, near real-time, the incredible advancements with AI.  One of the best is NVIDIA Drive Labs where you can, week after week, see these systems which will define our future, advance to their final forms.  While much of this is for autonomous cars, this same technology could also be used to enhance systems ranging from security to Smart Cities and buildings.  

In short, one of the best places to see our AI future is on the web, and it is called NVIDIA Drive Labs, check it out.  At the very least it will clearly show how the coming wave of Smart Cars will be able to drive significantly better than you now do.