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Personally, I think the million dollar prize is just a way to justify it to your spouse / boss / whoever holds the carrots and sticks in your life. It's an app
by caffeine 17y ago
Personally, I think the million dollar prize is just a way to justify it to your spouse / boss / whoever holds the carrots and sticks in your life. It's an appeasement tactic so that those who love tinkering with this stuff can do so guilt-free, because it "might" lead to That Ultimate Approved Outcome.
Same with the X-Prize, and the Darpa grand challenge. Those teams spent way more on their entries than the challenge money brought back. Throwing in a few million just legitimizes the fun that everybody's having; it's not actually the motivator. I mean seriously; you think Red doesn't build robots when Darpa doesn't have prizes?
- llimllib 17y ago> you think Red doesn't build robots when Darpa doesn't have prizes? I assume Red is some dude who builds robots. I apologize for not knowing who you're referring to. But anyway! I'll assume he's a Darpa grand challenge winner and some awesome robotics dude. I don't think he would have gained as much as he has, technologically, without the competition that most certainly wanted to win the Darpa challenge. These competitions don't change the dominant players in the game; what they do is move the margin, and force the dominant players to be that much better, because they want to remain dominant. My theory is that $1 million -> prestige -> more entrants in DGC -> better tech than would have been created otherwise. Thoughts?