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Since we’re going to be talking about automation quite a bit here, I found Sully’s take on automation in the cockpit to be quite relevant: > “I’VE COME across

by teeray 4y ago

Since we’re going to be talking about automation quite a bit here, I found Sully’s take on automation in the cockpit to be quite relevant: > “I’VE COME across a number of people over the years who think that modern airplanes, with all their technology and automation, can almost fly themselves. That’s simply not true. Automation can lower the workload in some cases. But in other situations, using automation when it is not appropriate can increase one’s workload. A pilot has to know how to use a level of automation that is appropriate.” … “Whether you’re flying by hand or using technology to help, you’re ultimately flying the airplane with your mind by developing and maintaining an accurate real-time mental model of your reality—the airplane, the environment, and the situation. The question is: How many different levels of technology do you want to place between your brain and the control surfaces? The plane is never going somewhere on its own without you. It’s always going where you tell it to go. A computer can only do what it is told to do. The choice is: Do I tell it to do something by pushing on the control stick with my hand, or do I tell it to do something by using some intervening technology?” [0] [0] Sully: My Search for What Really Matters by Chesley B. "Sully" Sullenberger III, Jeffrey Zaslow https://a.co/2iSmRDH https://a.co/2iSmRDH

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
teeray 4y ago
I’m going to pull another quote from that section that I think also supports the idea. There are specific cases cited in the book… I just don’t think copying an entire section of a book will be as helpful at getting the ideas out here: > “Dr. Wiener[0] worried, and I agree, that the paradox of automation is that it often lowers a pilot’s workload when that load is already low. And it sometimes increases the workload in the cockpit when it is already high… For those who believe technology is the answer to everything, [he] would offer data to prove that isn’t the case. He said that automated airplanes with the highest technologies do not eliminate errors. They change the nature of the errors that are made. For example, in terms of navigational errors, automation enables pilots to make huge navigation errors very precisely… Dr. Wiener is not antitechnology, and neither am I. But technology is no substitute for experience, skill, and judgment.”[1] [0] “Earl Wiener, Ph.D., a former Air Force pilot who is now retired from the University of Miami’s department of management science. He is renowned for his work in helping us understand aviation safety.”[1] [1] Sully: My Search for What Really Matters by Chesley B. "Sully" Sullenberger III, Jeffrey Zaslow https://a.co/gRNJtON https://a.co/gRNJtON
- jrockway 4y ago
  That makes a lot of sense. Automation is more interesting in how it can enhance human capabilities. Humans don't need a whole lot of help keeping the wings straight and level on a clear day. But they do need help landing the airplane in dense fog, and two humans and three computers working together can actually do that. The computers can't do it by themselves, the humans can't do it by themselves, but together, they can!
  - GauntletWizard 4y ago
    As a SRE, or what I'm going to term "Operations Automation Engineer" (because like DevOps or Systems Administrator, there's a treadmill of terminology), I have often automated myself out of my secondary responsibilities, the ones that take up the majority of my time. At Google, we liked to joke that "It's SRE's job to automate ourselves out of our jobs every 18 months", and I think that from the perspective of time, that was very true. Whatever we spent most of our time on eighteen months ago should be a trivial task today. What I can't automate myself out of is my primary responsibility; Making sure that the site or service is up and available and making our customers happy. I can make constant improvements to that, with occasional backslides, but what I'm paid to do and feel comfortable with my job security is to make a reliable, trustworthy service. That's not going anywhere.
  - AustinDev 4y ago
    > But they do need help landing the airplane in dense fog, and two humans and three computers working together can actually do that. The computers can't do it by themselves, the humans can't do it by themselves, but together, they can! This is not remotely true. Two humans can easily land in dense fog with instruments alone. If you can't then you shouldn't be flying a plane especially not one with passengers. To suggest otherwise is absurd.
- bmitc 4y ago
  In general, I don't understand the push of humans to want to replace everything we do with machines. What's the point? What's the end goal? We just sit in a vat of embalming fluid consuming media with a feeding tube while machines whir about? Why can't enough ever be enough for humanity?
daigoba66 4y ago
There’s a great classic pilot training video that covers this topic too: https://safeblog.org/2016/01/14/automation-dependency-children-of-the-magenta/amp/ https://safeblog.org/2016/01/14/automation-dependency-childr... It’s really great info for a lot of professions, not just aviation.
indus 4y ago
Automation in aviation can be broken down into: * Avionics * Weather * Communication * Controls * Positioning What Sully refers to automation is controls. Beyond auto-pilot capabilities, there has been advancement but little has gone to mainstream/commercial. Automation in communication and weather reporting has gone up leaps. Look at ADS-B or real-time satellite based in/out reporting. Just like the advancement in AI we are seeing with other areas of computing, matter of time before we leapfrog in Avionics and Controls.
- wrp 4y ago
  I think there is some confusion here about "automation". The benefits referred to involve providing greater access to information. The problems referred to involve putting more layers of abstraction between you and what you are controlling.
  - iso1631 4y ago
    I see this in system admin. It's not a popular view, but automation is not always the best way forward. maintaining your terraform/ansible/etc ecosystem to run a single service on a single raspberry pi that sits in an office running a ticker above reception is far more work than a 5 line instruction manual. Chances are you'll never have to touch that box again until it comes time to move office, and when you do all that automation fails anyway.
ReptileMan 4y ago
As the Boeing max fiasco showed sometimes the plane can decide to go where it wants while contradicting the pilot.
jillesvangurp 4y ago
You are right that current planes are still pretty dumb. It's an artificial restriction though. Certification in this space is very tough for obvious reasons so there are not a lot of companies working on self flying planes because getting solutions in this space past the certification is going to be a long and expensive process. There are a few though and there have already been unmanned cargo flights. From a technical point of view, flying and landing planes automatically is not that hard. It's a lot easier than self driving cars. And probably also a lot easier than landing a rocket, which is of course something that is not done manually by spacex. Why would they? It's way too complicated for humans and most of the important things require split second decision making far beyond what humans can even do. The hard part is going to be fixing procedures and practices, which are optimized for humans communicating via 1960s technology. A lot of what pilots do isn't staying ahead of the plane (as they sometimes refer to it) but dealing with a crazy level of communication overhead of people yelling out courses, altitudes, transponder codes, radio frequencies, and weather information to each other over a really poor radio connection, while baby sitting the auto pilot, running down endless checklists, and micro managing it's gazillions sub systems. It's stressful and even very experienced pilots quickly loose the ability to keep up if they don't fly regularly. Because people fundamentally aren't very good at this stuff. They make mistakes. They mishear things. Etc. It's hard but also very much something that could and should benefit massively from automation. Lots more than we have today. All that check listing can be vastly simplified with automation. All the routine sharing of information can be done in text/binary form and be machine readable so the auto pilot can act on it (with or without human confirmation). Etc. But that requires change and the aviation world is extremely change resistant. The military will likely get there first. The new B21 apparently can fly unmanned. It may still have a crew but it should be able to operate without one.
- nradov 4y ago
  The actual hard part is dealing with emergencies. It's impossible to anticipate and code for every possible failure mode, but an experienced human pilot can sometimes figure out a good solution from first principles. In the famous case of US Airways flight 1549, the pilots intentionally disregarded part of the official checklist and improvised a new procedure on the fly. Would an automated system have performed as well? The military is willing to accept a certain amount of operational losses in order to accomplish their mission, especially for unmanned aircraft. Tolerance for losses on commercial passenger flights is virtually zero.
cyanydeez 4y ago
The real problem in automation is the area Tesla is in: halfway there. As pilots age out of real experience, their replacement with by coddled by vr and never manage. Full manual for years until the auto fallback hits them and suddenly they have a huge issue of recall. So no matter how many pilots you have, automation needs to be all or nothing.
pictureofabear 4y ago
Automation really just takes out the hand-eye coordination part. It helps you fly more precisely. It does not take out the decision-making. It is also comforting to passengers that there are highly experienced people overseeing the operation of the plane.

by teeray 4y ago

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

teeray 4y ago

I’m going to pull another quote from that section that I think also supports the idea. There are specific cases cited in the book… I just don’t think copying an entire section of a book will be as helpful at getting the ideas out here: > “Dr. Wiener[0] worried, and I agree, that the paradox of automation is that it often lowers a pilot’s workload when that load is already low. And it sometimes increases the workload in the cockpit when it is already high… For those who believe technology is the answer to everything, [he] would offer data to prove that isn’t the case. He said that automated airplanes with the highest technologies do not eliminate errors. They change the nature of the errors that are made. For example, in terms of navigational errors, automation enables pilots to make huge navigation errors very precisely… Dr. Wiener is not antitechnology, and neither am I. But technology is no substitute for experience, skill, and judgment.”[1] [0] “Earl Wiener, Ph.D., a former Air Force pilot who is now retired from the University of Miami’s department of management science. He is renowned for his work in helping us understand aviation safety.”[1] [1] Sully: My Search for What Really Matters by Chesley B. "Sully" Sullenberger III, Jeffrey Zaslow https://a.co/gRNJtON https://a.co/gRNJtON

jrockway 4y ago
That makes a lot of sense. Automation is more interesting in how it can enhance human capabilities. Humans don't need a whole lot of help keeping the wings straight and level on a clear day. But they do need help landing the airplane in dense fog, and two humans and three computers working together can actually do that. The computers can't do it by themselves, the humans can't do it by themselves, but together, they can!
- GauntletWizard 4y ago
  As a SRE, or what I'm going to term "Operations Automation Engineer" (because like DevOps or Systems Administrator, there's a treadmill of terminology), I have often automated myself out of my secondary responsibilities, the ones that take up the majority of my time. At Google, we liked to joke that "It's SRE's job to automate ourselves out of our jobs every 18 months", and I think that from the perspective of time, that was very true. Whatever we spent most of our time on eighteen months ago should be a trivial task today. What I can't automate myself out of is my primary responsibility; Making sure that the site or service is up and available and making our customers happy. I can make constant improvements to that, with occasional backslides, but what I'm paid to do and feel comfortable with my job security is to make a reliable, trustworthy service. That's not going anywhere.
- AustinDev 4y ago
  > But they do need help landing the airplane in dense fog, and two humans and three computers working together can actually do that. The computers can't do it by themselves, the humans can't do it by themselves, but together, they can! This is not remotely true. Two humans can easily land in dense fog with instruments alone. If you can't then you shouldn't be flying a plane especially not one with passengers. To suggest otherwise is absurd.
bmitc 4y ago
In general, I don't understand the push of humans to want to replace everything we do with machines. What's the point? What's the end goal? We just sit in a vat of embalming fluid consuming media with a feeding tube while machines whir about? Why can't enough ever be enough for humanity?

daigoba66 4y ago

There’s a great classic pilot training video that covers this topic too: https://safeblog.org/2016/01/14/automation-dependency-children-of-the-magenta/amp/ https://safeblog.org/2016/01/14/automation-dependency-childr... It’s really great info for a lot of professions, not just aviation.

indus 4y ago

Automation in aviation can be broken down into: * Avionics * Weather * Communication * Controls * Positioning What Sully refers to automation is controls. Beyond auto-pilot capabilities, there has been advancement but little has gone to mainstream/commercial. Automation in communication and weather reporting has gone up leaps. Look at ADS-B or real-time satellite based in/out reporting. Just like the advancement in AI we are seeing with other areas of computing, matter of time before we leapfrog in Avionics and Controls.

wrp 4y ago
I think there is some confusion here about "automation". The benefits referred to involve providing greater access to information. The problems referred to involve putting more layers of abstraction between you and what you are controlling.
- iso1631 4y ago
  I see this in system admin. It's not a popular view, but automation is not always the best way forward. maintaining your terraform/ansible/etc ecosystem to run a single service on a single raspberry pi that sits in an office running a ticker above reception is far more work than a 5 line instruction manual. Chances are you'll never have to touch that box again until it comes time to move office, and when you do all that automation fails anyway.

ReptileMan 4y ago

As the Boeing max fiasco showed sometimes the plane can decide to go where it wants while contradicting the pilot.

jillesvangurp 4y ago

You are right that current planes are still pretty dumb. It's an artificial restriction though. Certification in this space is very tough for obvious reasons so there are not a lot of companies working on self flying planes because getting solutions in this space past the certification is going to be a long and expensive process. There are a few though and there have already been unmanned cargo flights. From a technical point of view, flying and landing planes automatically is not that hard. It's a lot easier than self driving cars. And probably also a lot easier than landing a rocket, which is of course something that is not done manually by spacex. Why would they? It's way too complicated for humans and most of the important things require split second decision making far beyond what humans can even do. The hard part is going to be fixing procedures and practices, which are optimized for humans communicating via 1960s technology. A lot of what pilots do isn't staying ahead of the plane (as they sometimes refer to it) but dealing with a crazy level of communication overhead of people yelling out courses, altitudes, transponder codes, radio frequencies, and weather information to each other over a really poor radio connection, while baby sitting the auto pilot, running down endless checklists, and micro managing it's gazillions sub systems. It's stressful and even very experienced pilots quickly loose the ability to keep up if they don't fly regularly. Because people fundamentally aren't very good at this stuff. They make mistakes. They mishear things. Etc. It's hard but also very much something that could and should benefit massively from automation. Lots more than we have today. All that check listing can be vastly simplified with automation. All the routine sharing of information can be done in text/binary form and be machine readable so the auto pilot can act on it (with or without human confirmation). Etc. But that requires change and the aviation world is extremely change resistant. The military will likely get there first. The new B21 apparently can fly unmanned. It may still have a crew but it should be able to operate without one.

nradov 4y ago
The actual hard part is dealing with emergencies. It's impossible to anticipate and code for every possible failure mode, but an experienced human pilot can sometimes figure out a good solution from first principles. In the famous case of US Airways flight 1549, the pilots intentionally disregarded part of the official checklist and improvised a new procedure on the fly. Would an automated system have performed as well? The military is willing to accept a certain amount of operational losses in order to accomplish their mission, especially for unmanned aircraft. Tolerance for losses on commercial passenger flights is virtually zero.

cyanydeez 4y ago

The real problem in automation is the area Tesla is in: halfway there. As pilots age out of real experience, their replacement with by coddled by vr and never manage. Full manual for years until the auto fallback hits them and suddenly they have a huge issue of recall. So no matter how many pilots you have, automation needs to be all or nothing.

pictureofabear 4y ago

Automation really just takes out the hand-eye coordination part. It helps you fly more precisely. It does not take out the decision-making. It is also comforting to passengers that there are highly experienced people overseeing the operation of the plane.