11 ms·

Artificial Intelligence in the Cockpit

90 points by ur-whale 5y ago

the-dude 5y ago
> we have built a system that uses nothing but visual input, just like the human pilot in that almost-uninstrumented aircraft from 80 years ago, to see where you are without GPS or radio or inertial navigation see where you can fly without ADS-B or RADAR or ATC see where you can land without ILS or PAPI Isn't this the 'Tesla' approach?
- cjrp 5y ago
  Seems like a weird selling point "we're as good as the pilots from 80 years ago!"
- triplelll 5y ago
  Teslas don't land or fly. In what sense do you mean?
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - throw0101a 5y ago
    In the sense of (possibly) overselling what the system is capable of doing.
    - DoingIsLearning 5y ago
      I think it was meant in the sense that it has (mostly) a single source of information. A big part of safety critical systems is having redundancy and often voting systems, or sensor fusion. So having a single source of information means that you can potentially go down with a single-fault condition. (e.g. If your vision system is in the visible spectrum, things like sun glare, snow, bird poops on your lense/windshield, one of your cameras fails and you lose stereo vision etc)
  - hoseja 5y ago
    Trying to achieve self-driving with only optical cameras.
- mannykannot 5y ago
  When I read that second claim, "see where you can fly without ADS-B or RADAR or ATC", my first thought was "Really? this system is reading sectional charts?" as there are quite a few places where you cannot fly without some of the technologies they are doing without, and those regions are not marked out on the ground. The choice to focus on purely visual systems seems an odd one, given that aviation did not really get going until it advanced beyond that stage. Even by 80 years ago, instrument flying with radio navigation in conditions that did not permit visual flying was a routine practice, and this, together with the increasing number of aircraft in the sky, necessitated the development of air traffic control. While one can very plausibly argue that we are approaching the point where ATC as we know it could be largely dismantled (not, by the way, through the use of AI), that will not be achieved by reverting to purely visual methods, which can only function safely in fair weather with good visibility, and also only where the traffic density and speed are low.
  - jcims 5y ago
    It kind of sounds like they are targeting general aviation, where VFR still has a pretty strong presence. If they can create a bolt on autopilot that can also take off and land that might be marketable.
    - kayodelycaon 5y ago
      An autopilot that fails as soon as you end up in a low-visibility situation sounds like a really, really bad idea, especially with pilots who don't know how to fly by instruments. We have better technology than that now.
      - jcims 5y ago
        Totally agree, we know what happens when pilots lose visual reference and don't trust their instruments. I think I'm biasing my opinion on finding it impossible to believe they won't incorporate basic things like an IMU (or three) into the product so that simple flight coordination is impossible when there is a loss of vision data. Strictly speaking that wouldn't be vision only though, so who knows.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- numpad0 5y ago
  I believe Tesla’s problems basically stem from irresponsible decisions made on dubious technical basis. They’re not always architecturally wrong.
dr_dshiv 5y ago
Autopilot was invented in 1914. It is clearly a form of artificial intelligence. That AI doesn't require computers should be a conceptual shock-- one that can help us better understand what AI really is.
- throw0101a 5y ago
  I'm not sure a feedback loop is "clearly" AI: * https://www.electronics-tutorials.ws/systems/negative-feedback.html https://www.electronics-tutorials.ws/systems/negative-feedba... * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feedback https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feedback There are no heuristics involved: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heuristic_evaluation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heuristic_evaluation * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heuristic_(computer_science) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heuristic_(computer_science)
  - bencoder 5y ago
    Seems like an example of the AI effect: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI_effect although I think when autopilot was invented, the concept of "AI" didn't exist, so maybe not a perfect example
  - dr_dshiv 5y ago
    Autopilot is clearly AI. If I didn’t mention 1914, you wouldn’t doubt it. A feedback loop — namely between a system and its measure of its own performance— is central to the idea of AI. At least according to Peter Norvig, the director of research at Google, who defines intelligence as ‘the ability to select an action that is expected to maximize a performance measure’ (Russell & Norvig, 2016, p. 37).
    - mikro2nd 5y ago
      I am forced to wonder, though, whether Norvig's definition is a useful one. By this measure we'd have to consider bacteria to be intelligent. Corporations, too, for that matter. (I do go along with author Charles Stross, occasionally seen here on HN: that Corporations are Old Slow AIs, in which case we've already had AIs around for centuries.) Personally I'm happy to grant a degree of intelligence to plants (and probably even bacteria, if I squint hard enough) though it's of a quite different nature to our own. Certainly feedback loops are central to the idea of intelligence, but there's a whole lot more wanted/needed than merely feedback. And so, I find Norvig's definition a tad wide of the sort of intentionality and sentience we'd want flying a plane, and certainly far, far short of the sort of thing we'd call AGI.
cnqyx 5y ago
Why would one name an aerospace company after Dadedalus, who crashed after flying too close to the sun?
- jollybean 5y ago
  Icarus crashed after flying too close to the sun after Daedalus' warnings.
- throw0101a 5y ago
  > […] Dadedalus, who crashed after flying too close to the sun? It wasn't Dadedalus [sic] who flew towards the sun, but his son Icarus: > In Greek mythology, Daedalus (/ˈdɛdələs ˈdiːdələs ˈdeɪdələs/; Greek: Δαίδαλος; Latin: Daedalus; Etruscan: Taitale) was a skillful architect and craftsman, seen as a symbol of wisdom, knowledge and power. He is the father of Icarus […] * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daedalus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daedalus
  - mometsi 5y ago
    In any case, he manufactured some critically flawed aviation equipment, which resulted in a fatality.
    - throw0101a 5y ago
      IIRC, it was the operator's (Icarus) fault.
      - namdnay 5y ago
        That’s what Daedalus says, he’s trying to shift the blame on the operator. But he’s the one who made a wing with wax whilst pretending it could be flown under the previous “bird” certification
        fhd2 5y ago
        I think I figured out why they called themselves that at this point :P
goodpoint 5y ago
A lot of accidents have been caused by the almost complete lack of automated monitoring and good alerting on airplanes. I find it very surprising that there isn't at least non-AI software to monitor what the pilots are doing.
- cjrp 5y ago
  On airliners? There's tons of them.. TCAS (you're about to hit someone), GPWS (you're about to hit something), EICAS (your engine isn't doing so well), etc.
  - goodpoint 5y ago
    That's exactly the problem. There's a ton of single-purpose and "relatively dumb" systems that need to be enabled and disabled as needed. Plenty of accidents follow similar patters: pilots forgot to enable some warning system, or ignored a warning because it came up in the wrong context, or where overwhelmed by the amount of checklists they had to do or by multiple alarms coming up at the same time. There is no monitoring system that is aware of the full context, including the state of the plane, the history of previous warnings or malfunctions and the intentions of the pilots.
    - jimktrains2 5y ago
      > There is no monitoring system that is aware of the full context, including the state of the plane, the history of previous warnings or malfunctions and the intentions of the pilots. Its called the pilot. We even include a second system, fully programmed and built entirely by a separate team, to double-check and challenge the primary system: the copilot. > Plenty of accidents follow similar patters: pilots forgot to enable some warning system, or ignored a warning because it came up in the wrong context, or where overwhelmed by the amount of checklists they had to do or by multiple alarms coming up at the same time. And yet, commercial aviation is by far safer than driving. General aviation, with fewer of these systems is roughly the same as driving. You also day plenty of accidents, but I'd be willing to bet that just as many if not more were situations beyond the pilots control. You're also not comparing it to the number of times that pilots got out of sticky situations by following checklists and/or not having warnings suppressed.
mannykannot 5y ago
This article attempts to conflate two very different levels of capability. On the one hand, the author discusses what they have achieved so far - a machine-vision based system that can fly reasonably competently in good visibility and low traffic density, comparable, they say, to aviation 80 years ago (actually, as I mentioned in another comment, aviation in 1941 had already advanced significantly beyond that.) A little later, they write this; There is no reason to believe computers will always be worse at that than you are. There is no reason the machine can’t reliably make the call to land in the Hudson when all engines are out and to do so in adversarial conditions safely. True enough, as far as it goes, but there is also no reason to suppose that the technologies the author is discussing here will deliver that level of performance. The good judgement demonstrated by Sullenberger that day (and by many pilots in many other dire situations) depended on an extensive understanding of how the world works, and to reason about outcomes outside of the rules of the game, so to speak (for example, short-cutting the checklist in order to ensure the aircraft continued to have auxiliary power.) Current machine-vision systems, on the other hand, lack the ability to reason about how things ought or might be, and so can make utterly bizarre-seeming judgements about what they are "seeing." Personally, I believe fully-automated aviation will become both feasible and acceptable, but with arguments like the one quoted above, this article is glossing over the challenges that remain.
- taneq 5y ago
  > The good judgement demonstrated by Sullenberger that day (and by many pilots in many other dire situations) depended on an extensive understanding of how the world works Tree bad, river pretty?
- fho 5y ago
  I am not exactly knowledgeable about airplane safety, but I feel like safety checklists are something that could be, and probably are, handled by a machine more efficiently? I would guess that there are probably enough things on there that are constantly monitored theses days so the plane could just give you a big green "all systems nominal" light? Maybe I am just naive :-)
  - 5y ago
verisimi 5y ago
I'm genuinely a little bored of hearing about how AI has any actual 'intelligence'. It doesn't. Its not akin to people. The better analogy, IMO, is how people are being pushed into a computing model and adopting computing attributes as characteristics. We are becoming like "semi-autonomous computers". And worse, it is a client-server model, with corporations and governance taking the executive decisions! Rather than describing some software as intelligent, we would be better describing the change that this idea (and the idea of collectivisation - as opposed to individuation) has had on people. It is people that are changing, machines are still inanimate.
- andreyk 5y ago
  FYI, there are a ton of definitions of 'intelligence', some fit with what AI algorithms can do, some don't. I found reading 'A Collection of Definitions of Intelligence' quite interesting myself https://arxiv.org/abs/0706.3639 https://arxiv.org/abs/0706.3639
- IshKebab 5y ago
  I think it has some kind of intelligence. The word isn't well defined enough for you to just declare that it doesn't.
- bobthechef 5y ago
  Right. Every epoch shows a tendency to model intelligence in terms of some favored technology. It's a mistake to take these beyond very casual and loose metaphors. It's a very difficult habit of thought to break for some people because they've tacitly committed to a particular (sloppy and half-baked) metaphysical view of the world and haven't yet learned to examine those presuppositions and learned how they fail spectacularly. I would prefer we use "automation" instead of "AI". That way, we are forced to speak specifically ("automation of what?; it's always specific) and say things like "machine-automated aviation" because that's what this is. It's clear, faithful to the truth, and obvious what we're talking about and what's happening at a general level, and we aren't reifying some vague bullshit fantastical term like "artificial intelligence" which only leads to romanticized mystification and projection. There is no artificial intelligence. Machines doing so-called AI are the same kinds of machines we use to write email and make phone calls. We've just configured them in a way that makes them useful in different situations in different ways for specific ends, even if the applicability appears general; we've done the generalization which is then represented in concrete ways which are not themselves general. (N.b. central to intelligence is the ability to abstract (not the lambda calc/CS meaning) from particulars. I have the concept Circularity which is not just an image (there are potentially an infinite number of circular objects), but based on experience of particular circular things, my intellect has abstracted from this experience the universal concept of Circularity. I understand Circularity, apart from any given circle, and yet what is true of it is true of all circles. I can analyze the concept to infer that any circle's circumference is twice its radius times pi or that its area is the square of its radius times pi. Computers don't do this and cannot do this even in principle because all physical things are always concrete. There is no physical Circularity, only physical, concrete circles. And abstraction is not regression. Indeed, all the abstract values in your computer aren't really abstract except in the mind of the observer. Those in your computer are representations only, devoid of denotation except what's in the programmer's head.)
scarier 5y ago
I think this lecture (https://youtu.be/5ESJH1NLMLs https://youtu.be/5ESJH1NLMLs) should be mandatory for anyone trying to improve flight safety with more automation. I think we're already at diminishing returns, and the only way to eliminate accidents caused by over-reliance on automated systems is to cut the pilot out of the loop entirely. Even in general aviation, the low-hanging fruit is elsewhere. That said, this is still pretty cool, and I could see something like it being one component of a much larger fully automated flight management system. Edit: link should be fixed. If I'm still crushing it, the title of the lecture is "Children of the Magenta Line."
- Animats 5y ago
  Wrong link? That's an ad for a book on graph algorithms.
  - scarier 5y ago
    Thanks! Should be fixed now.
leaded_syrinx 5y ago
This is really cool and I overwhelmingly agree with the risk stats they mention in their brief intro. That said, the reason pilots are paid to fly dangerous whirlybird machines is primarily for take-off and landing. Takeoff and landing are operations that require the most concentration, coordination with air-traffic controllers and other aircraft and regardless of weather carry the most risk. Takeoff and landing are likely to be some of the last functions to be automated, I'd argue this even further with take-off. Another important aspect here is the pilot should be able to act independently of multiple systems failing - as the moniker goes... "fly the plane until its on the ground or stopped". The coolest pilot safety automation tool to improve safety I've seen thus far is an iPad app developed by the OG developer of the X-Plane flight sim Austin Meyer[0] (definitely check out his blog) called Xavion [1]. Basically, it's an app that with decent GPS will calculate a glide plane to the nearest airport in seconds. Austin is an avid pilot and clearly a brilliant guy - I'm eager to see if he starts commenting on autopilot ai initiatives like that of Deadalean. 0 - https://austinmeyer.com/ https://austinmeyer.com/ 1 - https://xavion.com/ https://xavion.com/
Animats 5y ago
There's already a system that does the whole job of flying, for emergency use only - Garmin Safe Return.[1] In the plane, there's one big red button. If pushed, the plane finds an airport and lands, all by itself. It picks the nearest suitable destination airport, using info about fuel state, weather, and airport status. It starts squawking with the emergency transponder code. It plays emergency messages to ATC. There's also pilot incapacitation detection. If the pilot doesn't do anything for a long time, the system sounds warnings, then takes over. Everybody else has to get out of the way, though, when it declares an emergency. It can't really communicate with ATC. So it's strictly an emergency system, for now. This is really just integrated control of the existing avionics. The existing systems are good enough that you can input waypoints and have them followed, and do an automatic instrument landing on a designated runway. This mostly sets up a flight path. It can't deal with traffic. There are no new sensors. The additional hardware just lets it lower the landing gear, apply the wheel brakes, and shut down the aircraft after landing. After which you're blocking the runway until someone comes out and moves the aircraft. Again, emergency use only. It's intended for the "sick pilot, healthy airplane" case - the pilot is out of action, but the hardware is fine. It's not helpful in making hard decisions when the aircraft is having problems. [1] https://youtu.be/d-ruFmgTpqA https://youtu.be/d-ruFmgTpqA
- coredog64 5y ago
  Allegedly the B-2 bomber has had “go to war” and “return to base” buttons for 30 years. The latter is for exactly the same reason you note: Plane is good, pilots are not. Not quite sure about the value of the former.
  - hotpotamus 5y ago
    I'm not sure I buy the existence of such buttons, but if the pilots are incapacitated in a nuclear bomber with a target in mind, then I can think of a use for the go to war button.
- Buttons840 5y ago
  So the modern remake of those "pilot incapacitated, help me land" shows can be shortened to "push the big red button, then have a snack"?

90 points by ur-whale 5y ago

> we have built a system that uses nothing but visual input, just like the human pilot in that almost-uninstrumented aircraft from 80 years ago, to see where you are without GPS or radio or inertial navigation see where you can fly without ADS-B or RADAR or ATC see where you can land without ILS or PAPI Isn't this the 'Tesla' approach?

cjrp 5y ago
Seems like a weird selling point "we're as good as the pilots from 80 years ago!"
triplelll 5y ago
Teslas don't land or fly. In what sense do you mean?
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- throw0101a 5y ago
  In the sense of (possibly) overselling what the system is capable of doing.
  - DoingIsLearning 5y ago
    I think it was meant in the sense that it has (mostly) a single source of information. A big part of safety critical systems is having redundancy and often voting systems, or sensor fusion. So having a single source of information means that you can potentially go down with a single-fault condition. (e.g. If your vision system is in the visible spectrum, things like sun glare, snow, bird poops on your lense/windshield, one of your cameras fails and you lose stereo vision etc)
- hoseja 5y ago
  Trying to achieve self-driving with only optical cameras.
mannykannot 5y ago
When I read that second claim, "see where you can fly without ADS-B or RADAR or ATC", my first thought was "Really? this system is reading sectional charts?" as there are quite a few places where you cannot fly without some of the technologies they are doing without, and those regions are not marked out on the ground. The choice to focus on purely visual systems seems an odd one, given that aviation did not really get going until it advanced beyond that stage. Even by 80 years ago, instrument flying with radio navigation in conditions that did not permit visual flying was a routine practice, and this, together with the increasing number of aircraft in the sky, necessitated the development of air traffic control. While one can very plausibly argue that we are approaching the point where ATC as we know it could be largely dismantled (not, by the way, through the use of AI), that will not be achieved by reverting to purely visual methods, which can only function safely in fair weather with good visibility, and also only where the traffic density and speed are low.
- jcims 5y ago
  It kind of sounds like they are targeting general aviation, where VFR still has a pretty strong presence. If they can create a bolt on autopilot that can also take off and land that might be marketable.
  - kayodelycaon 5y ago
    An autopilot that fails as soon as you end up in a low-visibility situation sounds like a really, really bad idea, especially with pilots who don't know how to fly by instruments. We have better technology than that now.
    - jcims 5y ago
      Totally agree, we know what happens when pilots lose visual reference and don't trust their instruments. I think I'm biasing my opinion on finding it impossible to believe they won't incorporate basic things like an IMU (or three) into the product so that simple flight coordination is impossible when there is a loss of vision data. Strictly speaking that wouldn't be vision only though, so who knows.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
numpad0 5y ago
I believe Tesla’s problems basically stem from irresponsible decisions made on dubious technical basis. They’re not always architecturally wrong.

dr_dshiv 5y ago

Autopilot was invented in 1914. It is clearly a form of artificial intelligence. That AI doesn't require computers should be a conceptual shock-- one that can help us better understand what AI really is.

throw0101a 5y ago
I'm not sure a feedback loop is "clearly" AI: * https://www.electronics-tutorials.ws/systems/negative-feedback.html https://www.electronics-tutorials.ws/systems/negative-feedba... * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feedback https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feedback There are no heuristics involved: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heuristic_evaluation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heuristic_evaluation * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heuristic_(computer_science) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heuristic_(computer_science)
- bencoder 5y ago
  Seems like an example of the AI effect: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI_effect although I think when autopilot was invented, the concept of "AI" didn't exist, so maybe not a perfect example
- dr_dshiv 5y ago
  Autopilot is clearly AI. If I didn’t mention 1914, you wouldn’t doubt it. A feedback loop — namely between a system and its measure of its own performance— is central to the idea of AI. At least according to Peter Norvig, the director of research at Google, who defines intelligence as ‘the ability to select an action that is expected to maximize a performance measure’ (Russell & Norvig, 2016, p. 37).
  - mikro2nd 5y ago
    I am forced to wonder, though, whether Norvig's definition is a useful one. By this measure we'd have to consider bacteria to be intelligent. Corporations, too, for that matter. (I do go along with author Charles Stross, occasionally seen here on HN: that Corporations are Old Slow AIs, in which case we've already had AIs around for centuries.) Personally I'm happy to grant a degree of intelligence to plants (and probably even bacteria, if I squint hard enough) though it's of a quite different nature to our own. Certainly feedback loops are central to the idea of intelligence, but there's a whole lot more wanted/needed than merely feedback. And so, I find Norvig's definition a tad wide of the sort of intentionality and sentience we'd want flying a plane, and certainly far, far short of the sort of thing we'd call AGI.

cnqyx 5y ago

Why would one name an aerospace company after Dadedalus, who crashed after flying too close to the sun?

jollybean 5y ago
Icarus crashed after flying too close to the sun after Daedalus' warnings.
throw0101a 5y ago
> […] Dadedalus, who crashed after flying too close to the sun? It wasn't Dadedalus [sic] who flew towards the sun, but his son Icarus: > In Greek mythology, Daedalus (/ˈdɛdələs ˈdiːdələs ˈdeɪdələs/; Greek: Δαίδαλος; Latin: Daedalus; Etruscan: Taitale) was a skillful architect and craftsman, seen as a symbol of wisdom, knowledge and power. He is the father of Icarus […] * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daedalus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daedalus
- mometsi 5y ago
  In any case, he manufactured some critically flawed aviation equipment, which resulted in a fatality.
  - throw0101a 5y ago
    IIRC, it was the operator's (Icarus) fault.
    - namdnay 5y ago
      That’s what Daedalus says, he’s trying to shift the blame on the operator. But he’s the one who made a wing with wax whilst pretending it could be flown under the previous “bird” certification
      - fhd2 5y ago
        I think I figured out why they called themselves that at this point :P

goodpoint 5y ago

A lot of accidents have been caused by the almost complete lack of automated monitoring and good alerting on airplanes. I find it very surprising that there isn't at least non-AI software to monitor what the pilots are doing.

cjrp 5y ago
On airliners? There's tons of them.. TCAS (you're about to hit someone), GPWS (you're about to hit something), EICAS (your engine isn't doing so well), etc.
- goodpoint 5y ago
  That's exactly the problem. There's a ton of single-purpose and "relatively dumb" systems that need to be enabled and disabled as needed. Plenty of accidents follow similar patters: pilots forgot to enable some warning system, or ignored a warning because it came up in the wrong context, or where overwhelmed by the amount of checklists they had to do or by multiple alarms coming up at the same time. There is no monitoring system that is aware of the full context, including the state of the plane, the history of previous warnings or malfunctions and the intentions of the pilots.
  - jimktrains2 5y ago
    > There is no monitoring system that is aware of the full context, including the state of the plane, the history of previous warnings or malfunctions and the intentions of the pilots. Its called the pilot. We even include a second system, fully programmed and built entirely by a separate team, to double-check and challenge the primary system: the copilot. > Plenty of accidents follow similar patters: pilots forgot to enable some warning system, or ignored a warning because it came up in the wrong context, or where overwhelmed by the amount of checklists they had to do or by multiple alarms coming up at the same time. And yet, commercial aviation is by far safer than driving. General aviation, with fewer of these systems is roughly the same as driving. You also day plenty of accidents, but I'd be willing to bet that just as many if not more were situations beyond the pilots control. You're also not comparing it to the number of times that pilots got out of sticky situations by following checklists and/or not having warnings suppressed.

mannykannot 5y ago

This article attempts to conflate two very different levels of capability. On the one hand, the author discusses what they have achieved so far - a machine-vision based system that can fly reasonably competently in good visibility and low traffic density, comparable, they say, to aviation 80 years ago (actually, as I mentioned in another comment, aviation in 1941 had already advanced significantly beyond that.) A little later, they write this; There is no reason to believe computers will always be worse at that than you are. There is no reason the machine can’t reliably make the call to land in the Hudson when all engines are out and to do so in adversarial conditions safely. True enough, as far as it goes, but there is also no reason to suppose that the technologies the author is discussing here will deliver that level of performance. The good judgement demonstrated by Sullenberger that day (and by many pilots in many other dire situations) depended on an extensive understanding of how the world works, and to reason about outcomes outside of the rules of the game, so to speak (for example, short-cutting the checklist in order to ensure the aircraft continued to have auxiliary power.) Current machine-vision systems, on the other hand, lack the ability to reason about how things ought or might be, and so can make utterly bizarre-seeming judgements about what they are "seeing." Personally, I believe fully-automated aviation will become both feasible and acceptable, but with arguments like the one quoted above, this article is glossing over the challenges that remain.

taneq 5y ago
> The good judgement demonstrated by Sullenberger that day (and by many pilots in many other dire situations) depended on an extensive understanding of how the world works Tree bad, river pretty?
fho 5y ago
I am not exactly knowledgeable about airplane safety, but I feel like safety checklists are something that could be, and probably are, handled by a machine more efficiently? I would guess that there are probably enough things on there that are constantly monitored theses days so the plane could just give you a big green "all systems nominal" light? Maybe I am just naive :-)
- 5y ago

verisimi 5y ago

I'm genuinely a little bored of hearing about how AI has any actual 'intelligence'. It doesn't. Its not akin to people. The better analogy, IMO, is how people are being pushed into a computing model and adopting computing attributes as characteristics. We are becoming like "semi-autonomous computers". And worse, it is a client-server model, with corporations and governance taking the executive decisions! Rather than describing some software as intelligent, we would be better describing the change that this idea (and the idea of collectivisation - as opposed to individuation) has had on people. It is people that are changing, machines are still inanimate.

andreyk 5y ago
FYI, there are a ton of definitions of 'intelligence', some fit with what AI algorithms can do, some don't. I found reading 'A Collection of Definitions of Intelligence' quite interesting myself https://arxiv.org/abs/0706.3639 https://arxiv.org/abs/0706.3639
IshKebab 5y ago
I think it has some kind of intelligence. The word isn't well defined enough for you to just declare that it doesn't.
bobthechef 5y ago
Right. Every epoch shows a tendency to model intelligence in terms of some favored technology. It's a mistake to take these beyond very casual and loose metaphors. It's a very difficult habit of thought to break for some people because they've tacitly committed to a particular (sloppy and half-baked) metaphysical view of the world and haven't yet learned to examine those presuppositions and learned how they fail spectacularly. I would prefer we use "automation" instead of "AI". That way, we are forced to speak specifically ("automation of what?; it's always specific) and say things like "machine-automated aviation" because that's what this is. It's clear, faithful to the truth, and obvious what we're talking about and what's happening at a general level, and we aren't reifying some vague bullshit fantastical term like "artificial intelligence" which only leads to romanticized mystification and projection. There is no artificial intelligence. Machines doing so-called AI are the same kinds of machines we use to write email and make phone calls. We've just configured them in a way that makes them useful in different situations in different ways for specific ends, even if the applicability appears general; we've done the generalization which is then represented in concrete ways which are not themselves general. (N.b. central to intelligence is the ability to abstract (not the lambda calc/CS meaning) from particulars. I have the concept Circularity which is not just an image (there are potentially an infinite number of circular objects), but based on experience of particular circular things, my intellect has abstracted from this experience the universal concept of Circularity. I understand Circularity, apart from any given circle, and yet what is true of it is true of all circles. I can analyze the concept to infer that any circle's circumference is twice its radius times pi or that its area is the square of its radius times pi. Computers don't do this and cannot do this even in principle because all physical things are always concrete. There is no physical Circularity, only physical, concrete circles. And abstraction is not regression. Indeed, all the abstract values in your computer aren't really abstract except in the mind of the observer. Those in your computer are representations only, devoid of denotation except what's in the programmer's head.)

scarier 5y ago

I think this lecture (https://youtu.be/5ESJH1NLMLs https://youtu.be/5ESJH1NLMLs) should be mandatory for anyone trying to improve flight safety with more automation. I think we're already at diminishing returns, and the only way to eliminate accidents caused by over-reliance on automated systems is to cut the pilot out of the loop entirely. Even in general aviation, the low-hanging fruit is elsewhere. That said, this is still pretty cool, and I could see something like it being one component of a much larger fully automated flight management system. Edit: link should be fixed. If I'm still crushing it, the title of the lecture is "Children of the Magenta Line."

Animats 5y ago
Wrong link? That's an ad for a book on graph algorithms.
- scarier 5y ago
  Thanks! Should be fixed now.

leaded_syrinx 5y ago

This is really cool and I overwhelmingly agree with the risk stats they mention in their brief intro. That said, the reason pilots are paid to fly dangerous whirlybird machines is primarily for take-off and landing. Takeoff and landing are operations that require the most concentration, coordination with air-traffic controllers and other aircraft and regardless of weather carry the most risk. Takeoff and landing are likely to be some of the last functions to be automated, I'd argue this even further with take-off. Another important aspect here is the pilot should be able to act independently of multiple systems failing - as the moniker goes... "fly the plane until its on the ground or stopped". The coolest pilot safety automation tool to improve safety I've seen thus far is an iPad app developed by the OG developer of the X-Plane flight sim Austin Meyer[0] (definitely check out his blog) called Xavion [1]. Basically, it's an app that with decent GPS will calculate a glide plane to the nearest airport in seconds. Austin is an avid pilot and clearly a brilliant guy - I'm eager to see if he starts commenting on autopilot ai initiatives like that of Deadalean. 0 - https://austinmeyer.com/ https://austinmeyer.com/ 1 - https://xavion.com/ https://xavion.com/

Animats 5y ago

There's already a system that does the whole job of flying, for emergency use only - Garmin Safe Return.[1] In the plane, there's one big red button. If pushed, the plane finds an airport and lands, all by itself. It picks the nearest suitable destination airport, using info about fuel state, weather, and airport status. It starts squawking with the emergency transponder code. It plays emergency messages to ATC. There's also pilot incapacitation detection. If the pilot doesn't do anything for a long time, the system sounds warnings, then takes over. Everybody else has to get out of the way, though, when it declares an emergency. It can't really communicate with ATC. So it's strictly an emergency system, for now. This is really just integrated control of the existing avionics. The existing systems are good enough that you can input waypoints and have them followed, and do an automatic instrument landing on a designated runway. This mostly sets up a flight path. It can't deal with traffic. There are no new sensors. The additional hardware just lets it lower the landing gear, apply the wheel brakes, and shut down the aircraft after landing. After which you're blocking the runway until someone comes out and moves the aircraft. Again, emergency use only. It's intended for the "sick pilot, healthy airplane" case - the pilot is out of action, but the hardware is fine. It's not helpful in making hard decisions when the aircraft is having problems. [1] https://youtu.be/d-ruFmgTpqA https://youtu.be/d-ruFmgTpqA

coredog64 5y ago
Allegedly the B-2 bomber has had “go to war” and “return to base” buttons for 30 years. The latter is for exactly the same reason you note: Plane is good, pilots are not. Not quite sure about the value of the former.
- hotpotamus 5y ago
  I'm not sure I buy the existence of such buttons, but if the pilots are incapacitated in a nuclear bomber with a target in mind, then I can think of a use for the go to war button.
Buttons840 5y ago
So the modern remake of those "pilot incapacitated, help me land" shows can be shortened to "push the big red button, then have a snack"?