Re: Is it okay to remove half of FlightGear wiki to make it easier to process by AI?

I've used AI to bounce some ideas off of or to have it check some physics of ideas I have for me.

I've also used it for things like check this code and see if I made any syntax errors.

But I found that it is not at all the right thing to do to make something itself as it usually ends up making bad and or unmaintainable code. There's a reason there's so much technical debt these days due to people using AI to generate broken and messed up code which now has tons of bugs and no one knows how to fix it.

The thing has some uses but people need to stop treating it like it's actually intelligent and can actually do serious stuff.

For example somebody has made software that designs PCBs using AI and I can tell you as someone who works in electrical engineering but no serious company and no serious engineers use any of that crap.

Kind Regards,

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Josh Davidson
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From: David Hudach <[email protected]>
Sent: Sunday, 09 August 2026 13:23:04
To: FlightGear developers discussions <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: [Flightgear-devel] Is it okay to remove half of FlightGear wiki to make it easier to process by AI?

Me thinks and hopes we are going through growing pains. I’m not thrilled with it. When auto-spell check first started to happen, I viewed it as “dumbing down” tools. But I think we started to incorporate them as the tools that they are. I hope that is the case here, that “AI” is a tool, not a replacement to learning. I like asking, “what is the C syntax for a given function” and getting technical information instantly.  It means I am working on something and am essentially consulting a “man” page. But I am not thrilled with the “write this app” approach. Learning should be an integral part of the process, not an afterthought. Hopefully this growing pain phase will just be a phase and this “AI” facade will be seen for what it really is, a tool for human intelligence, not a replacement. As long as I see kids ultimately getting smarter, I’m happy. I’m sure many years ago people were upset that the abacus was no longer needed. But … it wasn’t. If it’s all an evolution, great. But sometimes when we are in these times it’s difficult to see the forest for the trees. But at the same time, we do need rules. And in these cases, humans should have the last word. AI is ok for dispensing pure information, after all, it’s really a sophisticated database. But it should not replace what we mean.

Just my 2 cents.
Dave

On Sun, Aug 9, 2026 at 1:25 PM Curtis Olson <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
On Sun, Aug 9, 2026 at 11:35 AM Josh Davidson <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
"I believe we are now in the AI era, and integrating AI usage is necessary. If FG doesn't adopt AI, it will inevitably be overtaken by other open-source flight simulators."

What a joke.

LOL, made me wonder what general purpose flight simulator code the AI would be trained on ....

I don't mind using AI as a research assistant.  How do I make the button green with rounded corners, or remind me the numpy function that does the thing, or help me understand why this error message ... but designing the architecture and writing the critical core code is all the fun stuff.  I don't know about anyone else but for me the best and most fun toys I've ever played with are the ones I built myself or contributed to ... and building them was the funnest part.  Legos?  Electronics kits?  Model airplanes?  FlightGear!  There's nothing better than seeing a thing you built (or you and the team you are on for bigger projects) flying gloriously.  Well, that, and learning how to do something new and cool.

AI is a great crutch to get through school and get you through all your projects ... probably get you all A's ... until you get to your first job interview and can't say anything useful about all the things on your resume.  "Nice guy, but couldn't go even one level deep on any of his past projects.  Shame, they sounded like cool projects, I was hoping to learn more about them ..."

Curt.
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Curtis Olson
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