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Problem is downside risk: drones get hacked, or someone figures out how to make the drones fly into planes, or herd birds TOWARD planes. As a society we've bee
by mhneu 8y ago
Problem is downside risk:
drones get hacked, or someone figures out how to make the drones fly into planes, or herd birds TOWARD planes.
As a society we've been pretty cavalier about algorithmic control. Which can work well for a lot of things. But probably shouldn't be trusted (without a TON of validation and regulation, as we've done over decades with airliners) with controlling stuff that can injure people or damage societies.
- oh_sigh 8y agoYou can already do that with your own manually controlled drones(surprisingly, no one has done this yet). There is no need to hack the airports drones.
- RealityVoid 8y agoI think it's not surprising at all. After all, most people are sane individuals who are unwilling to pour time, money, effort and risk their life in order to simply cause suffering on other people. There simply isn't money in downing planes, so most people have no incentive to want to do it.
- oh_sigh 8y agoThe surprising was sarcasm ;)
- userbinator 8y agomanually controlled drones How about we just call them "remote-controlled aircraft"... which is what they were called before the whole "drone" fad came along (and "drone" itself used to imply at least some autonomous capability.)
- SmellyGeekBoy 8y agoIndeed. RC planes and helicopters have been around for a very long time. But all of a sudden they're potential weapons of mass murder because... They have a few extra propellers!?
- jobigoud 8y agoThere has benn one recorded accidental collision between a Phantom and a military helicopter (the drone exploded) and there is one guy that posted a video of a freestyle drone flying above incoming airliner on landing approach (which outraged the community).
- Kagerjay 8y agoCost of upkeep and maintenance (not to mention trained personel) is going to be very high if this isn't automated.
- cornellwright 8y agoGiven the number of times I've personally almost hit birds while flying small aircraft, I'll take the downside risk. Give the tower some sort of override to require the drone to land if it's doing more harm than good. There's lots of easier ways to hack our fragile ATC system than herding birds at airplanes that I'd worry about first.
- skybrian 8y agoIf we're discussing movie-plot scenarios, it seems like it would be much easier for an attacker to buy their own drone. And maybe figure out how to put explosives on it, too.
- sonnyblarney 8y agoI'm not a big fan of conspiracy ... but I fear this is going to be an all-to-likely scenario. Someone's gonna do it and it will change aviation for a while; restrictions, mega investment in new tech i.e. special radar, anti-drone kind of stuff. Won't be able to fly a drone anywhere remotely near an airport. And there are a lot of airports!
- mhneu 8y agoYes, agreed. What we've learned over the past few years that where algorithms exist, there are incentives to try to exploit them. Ad and PR firms: Google search algorithms, Twitter ranking algorithms. Political orgs: Youtube ranking algorithms, ad placement algorithms. Repressive govts: Facebook abuse reporting algorithms (done in Ukraine), Twitter hashtag algorithms, tweet ranking algorithms (bots pushing particular political tweets). Humans may be in some ways easier to influence, but once an algorithm gets big enough, it can be worth attacking if the impact would be huge.
- skybrian 8y agoI guess. But then you have to ask why IED's are apparently only used in certain war zones? Many technically possible attacks seem not to happen all that often.
- SmellyGeekBoy 8y agoIt's almost as if the risk of being killed by terrorists is blown out of all proportion to further some kind of political agenda. You're orders of magnitude more likely to get hit by a bus.
- acct1771 8y agoWhy would anyone be a fan of conspiracy? Or did you mean conspiracy theory? Huge difference.
- jdminhbg 8y ago> Problem is downside risk: drones get hacked, or someone figures out how to make the drones fly into planes, or herd birds TOWARD planes. All of these things are way harder than simply buying a drone yourself and doing illegal things with it.
- BurningFrog 8y agoExcept if the drone you hack has the "access code" to let it fly in sensitive areas.
- prawn 8y agoDrones by default have that "access code" now. There are guidelines/rules to generally keep us away from airports, but it's not a physical restriction for the device.