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Call it the uncanny valley of automation safety. I am not disputing your assessment, but please don't discount liability. Planes can pretty much fly themselves

Call it the uncanny valley of automation safety. I am not disputing your assessment, but please don't discount liability. Planes can pretty much fly themselves today - there are no significant technology issues with the idea of "taxi away, take off, fly to destination, land, taxi to gate". all of this happens in what is perhaps the most regulated traffic environment on the planet. The issue is with creating the code that deals with "oh shit" scenarios. Whilst is is probably possible, and even feasible, to write code to cover every possible failure scenario, who is going to be left holding the can when this fails (all systems have a non-zero probability of failure)? Who will be held responsible? The outsourced company that coded the avionics/flight control software? The airplane manufacturer? The airline company? The poor fucker that wrote the failing logic tree that was supposed to deal with that specific failure scenario, but was forced to work overtime the 47th day in a row when that particular code was cut? It is a liability nightmare, and when you add up the cost of creating a software system that must never fail, the increased insurance premiums, the PR/marketing work to convince the unwashed masses that this is actually safer, and the whole rest of the circus required to make this a reality, you will find that pilot costs are not all that bad. Especially since pilots have significant downward pressure on real earnings these days anyway.

cletus 9y ago
> Planes can pretty much fly themselves today but > The issue is with creating the code that deals with "oh shit" scenarios. So they fly themselves except they don't? That's kind of my point: what makes anyone think truly driverless cars are going to happen anytime soon when a human is required to deal with these "oh shit" scenarios? What's more, I think the "oh shit" scenarios for cars are FAR more complicated. With planes someone else deals with scheduling for take off and landing. While in flight, the plane simply needs to not fly into other objects and maintain speed, direction and altitude. As for liability, I agree. It's a nightmare, particularly when the standard will probably be "did the software cause injury or death?" when the standard should be "what is the incidence of injury or death compared to a human driver?" I mean that'll be little comfort to the family of someone killed in an accident. We humans seem to have a weird tolerance humans negligently killing other humans.
- kevmo314 9y ago
  You could argue that in the "oh shit" scenarios for a car, the proper action is to always stop. Most human drivers will instinctively stomp on the brakes if they see anything they're not expecting, and this is pretty much what today's autonomous software does. Recovering from the "oh shit" scenario is the difficult part, but human pilots often can't recover, after all it makes little sense to try and fix an engine on fire while flying, instead opting to land.
  - ghaff 9y ago
    >the proper action is to always stop It's not. But it's a reasonable first reaction which is why we end up doing it. (That or swerving.) But as soon as we realize the thing that made us twitch is a squirrel or a plastic bag, our forebrain takes the foot off the brake or straightens the wheel.
    - kevmo314 9y ago
      So why is it unreasonable to think that a computer can do this? This, being take a reasonable first reaction to a situation, namely stop, then follow up with a proper action once more data is available.
      - ghaff 9y ago
        You don't stop though. You start to put your foot on the brake and then you take it off. Presumably, for a computer which doesn't really have different classes of reaction times in the same way, should never brake in the first place.
        kevmo314 9y ago
        I don't think that presumption is true, it's a high bar that doesn't really provide much benefit to achieve. If a computer decides to tap the brakes because it thinks an "oh shit" scenario is coming up, why is that suddenly a huge transgression?

cletus 9y ago

> Planes can pretty much fly themselves today but > The issue is with creating the code that deals with "oh shit" scenarios. So they fly themselves except they don't? That's kind of my point: what makes anyone think truly driverless cars are going to happen anytime soon when a human is required to deal with these "oh shit" scenarios? What's more, I think the "oh shit" scenarios for cars are FAR more complicated. With planes someone else deals with scheduling for take off and landing. While in flight, the plane simply needs to not fly into other objects and maintain speed, direction and altitude. As for liability, I agree. It's a nightmare, particularly when the standard will probably be "did the software cause injury or death?" when the standard should be "what is the incidence of injury or death compared to a human driver?" I mean that'll be little comfort to the family of someone killed in an accident. We humans seem to have a weird tolerance humans negligently killing other humans.

kevmo314 9y ago
You could argue that in the "oh shit" scenarios for a car, the proper action is to always stop. Most human drivers will instinctively stomp on the brakes if they see anything they're not expecting, and this is pretty much what today's autonomous software does. Recovering from the "oh shit" scenario is the difficult part, but human pilots often can't recover, after all it makes little sense to try and fix an engine on fire while flying, instead opting to land.
- ghaff 9y ago
  >the proper action is to always stop It's not. But it's a reasonable first reaction which is why we end up doing it. (That or swerving.) But as soon as we realize the thing that made us twitch is a squirrel or a plastic bag, our forebrain takes the foot off the brake or straightens the wheel.
  - kevmo314 9y ago
    So why is it unreasonable to think that a computer can do this? This, being take a reasonable first reaction to a situation, namely stop, then follow up with a proper action once more data is available.
    - ghaff 9y ago
      You don't stop though. You start to put your foot on the brake and then you take it off. Presumably, for a computer which doesn't really have different classes of reaction times in the same way, should never brake in the first place.
      - kevmo314 9y ago
        I don't think that presumption is true, it's a high bar that doesn't really provide much benefit to achieve. If a computer decides to tap the brakes because it thinks an "oh shit" scenario is coming up, why is that suddenly a huge transgression?