Oh, look, potholes and AI.
https://takes.jamesomalley.co.uk/p/ai-pothole-tech-is-good
(Some of you have taken so much psychic damage from LLM-hype that your brain short-circuits whenever you see the letters AI.)
@Edent I think there's a slight disconnect though, isn't there? ML can be used to *identify* potholes, but identifying isn't the same as tackling. At least part of the negative response the other day was pointing out that even when councils know about potholes they don't always get fixed, because they're generally lacking in money and road maintenance is lower down the list of priorities.
I take the point that hypothetically investing in something like this can save money in the longer term. But when there are multiple councils that have been on the verge of bankruptcy in the last couple of years, I don't know if a long-term investment is the best approach.
@benjamineskola did you read the piece?
They *are* using it to tackle them by doing preventative maintenance.
And, as the article says, multiple councils *are* using this now.
@Edent @benjamineskola I remain skeptical of the cost/benefit of this - the savings generated by firing "highway safety inspectors" seem unlikely to pay for lots of "preventative maintenance" (ignoring the millions of miles of already decrepit roads that need fixing anyway), especially once you factor in the contract costs for the outsourced software needed to run the video analysis. IMO, it's a nice idea for a rich country, but a bad place to start for a poor country like the UK