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I don't think it's ridiculous. Planes can fly themselves now, but when people are aboard, we still have a person in charge of the plane. It's partly a cultural
by snowwrestler 8y ago
I don't think it's ridiculous. Planes can fly themselves now, but when people are aboard, we still have a person in charge of the plane.
It's partly a cultural thing--we trust people to have a conservative sense of self-preservation and obligation to the "souls aboard" that we know computers lack.
And, we know that despite the computer's superior speed of mathematical computation, it remains a somewhat inflexible "thinker" that only does what it is told to do by a human. We have no way to rigorously account for all possible scenarios the plane might face, the we can rigorously account for the performance of the materials and fuel of the airplane.
- travisjungroth 8y agoAirliners cannot fly themselves, unless you accept a narrow definition of “fly”. Sure, they can fly an approach. Try can’t make a go/no-go decision, accept and follow a take-off clearance, pick a cruising altitude, follow speed restrictions, do a VFR approach, and park themselves.
- snowwrestler 8y agoTrue for airliners, but I believe we do currently have planes that can fly themselves autonomously from take-off to landing, that we usually call drones.
- travisjungroth 8y agoMost things that people now call drones have pilots on the ground. Fully autonomous drones are very rare.