This screenshot image taken from a video on the official website of Guiding Eyes for the Blind shows the guide dog school's President and CEO Thomas Panek running a race with the help of a guide.

NEW YORK - A blind man completed a 5-kilometer run in New York’s Central Park without a guide dog or human help this week. His navigation aid? Artificial intelligence through headphones plugged into a smartphone.

Thomas Panek, a marathon enthusiast, got tired of having to follow slower runners as a guide. So he decided a year ago to find a way to run solo

“The safest thing for a blind man is to sit still. I ain’t sitting still,” said Thomas Panek, 50, who lost his vision in his early 20s due to a genetic condition and runs Guiding Eyes for the Blind, a guide dog school.

The marathon enthusiast got tired of having to follow slower runners as a guide. So he decided a year ago to find a way to run solo.

He turned to Google to find a way for a phone to “tell me where to go,” said Panek, who believes “humans are born to run.”

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This screenshot image of a video on the official website of Guiding Eyes for the Blind shows the guide dog school's president and CEO Thomas Panek speaking during an interview.

He worked with the Alphabet Inc unit to create a research program. A smartphone camera picks up a painted "guideline" on a running track. An app detects the runner’s position and gives audio guidance through an earpiece.

“It’s like teaching a kid how to learn where the line is,” said Google researcher Xuan Yang.

This screenshot image taken from a video on the official website of Guiding Eyes for the Blind shows Thomas Panek running solo with the help of a Google AI app.

Pandemic-related social distancing gave a boost to the research to circumvent human and canine helpers.

“To be able to be here, it’s real emotional,” Panek said after his test of the app on a chilly fall afternoon, in an event sponsored by Google and the New York Road Runners Club on Thursday.

“It’s a real feeling of not only freedom and independence, but also, you know, you get that sense that you’re just like anybody else.”