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>>. How about a quarter? Or a tenth? The answer is zero. An airplane autopilot has increased the overall safety of airplanes by several orders of magnitude com

>>. How about a quarter? Or a tenth? The answer is zero. An airplane autopilot has increased the overall safety of airplanes by several orders of magnitude compared to human pilots, but literally no errors in its operation are tolerated, whether they are deadly or not. The exact same standard has to apply to cars or any automated machine for that matter. If there is any issue discovered in any car with this tech then it should be disabled worldwide until the root cause is found and eliminated. >> It's all too easy to see a potential future where many people die needlessly because technology that could save lives is regulated into a greatly reduced role. I really don't like this argument, because we could already prevent literally all automotive deaths tomorrow through existing technology and legislation and yet we are choosing not to do this for economic and social reasons.

esaym 2y ago
You can't equate airplane safety with automotive safety. I worked at an aircraft repair facility doing government contracts for a number of years. In one instance, somebody lost the toilet paper holder for one of the aircraft. This holder was simply a piece of 10 gauge wire that was bent in a way to hold it and supported by wire clamps screwed to the wall. Making a new one was easy but since it was a new part going on the aircraft we had to send it to a lab to be certified to hold a roll of toilet paper to 9 g's. In case the airplane crashed you wouldn't want a roll of toilet paper flying around I guess. And that cost $1,200.
- gambiting 2y ago
  No, I'm pretty sure I can in this regard - any automotive "autopilot" has to be held to the same standard. It's either zero accidents or nothing.
  - murderfs 2y ago
    This only works for aerospace because everything and everyone is held to that standard. It's stupid to hold automotive autopilots to the same standard as a plane's autopilot when a third of fatalities in cars are caused by the pilots being drunk.
    - kelnos 2y ago
      I don't think that's a useful argument. I think we should start allowing autonomous driving when the "driver" is at least as safe as the median driver when the software is unsupervised. (Teslas may or may not be that safe when supervised, but they absolutely are not when unsupervised.) But once we get to that point, we should absolutely ratchet those standards so automobile safety over time becomes just as safe as airline safety. Safer, if possible. > It's stupid to hold automotive autopilots to the same standard as a plane's autopilot when a third of fatalities in cars are caused by the pilots being drunk. That's a weird argument, because both pilots and drivers get thrown in jail if they fly/drive drunk. The standard is the same.
travem 2y ago
> The answer is zero If autopilot is 10x safer then preventing its use would lead to more preventable deaths and injuries than allowing it. I agree that it should be regulated and incidents thoroughly investigated, however letting perfect be the enemy of good leads to stagnation and lack of practical improvement and greater injury to the population as a whole.
- gambiting 2y ago
  >>If autopilot is 10x safer then preventing its use would lead to more preventable deaths and injuries than allowing it. And yet whenever there is a problem with any plane autopilot it's preemptively disabled fleet wide and pilots have to fly manually even though we absolutely beyond a shadow of a doubt know that it's less safe. If an automated system makes a wrong decision and it contributes to harm/death then it cannot be allowed on public roads full stop, no matter how many lives it saves otherwise.
  - exe34 2y ago
    > And yet whenever there is a problem with any plane autopilot it's preemptively disabled fleet wide and pilots have to fly manually even though we absolutely beyond a shadow of a doubt know that it's less safe. just because we do something dumb in one scenario isn't a very persuasive reason to do the same in another. > then it cannot be allowed on public roads full stop, no matter how many lives it saves otherwise. ambulances sometimes get into accidents - we should ban all ambulances, no matter how many lives they save otherwise.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
  - CrimsonRain 2y ago
    So your only concern is, when something goes wrong, need someone to blame. Who cares about lives saved. Vaccines can cause adverse effects. Let's ban all of them. If people like you were in charge of anything, we'd still be hitting rocks for fire in caves.
V99 2y ago
Airplane autopilots follow a lateral & sometimes vertical path through the sky prescribed by the pilot(s). They are good at doing that. This does increase safety, because it frees up the pilot(s) from having to carefully maintain a straight 3d line through the sky for hours at a time. But they do not listen to ATC. They do not know where other planes are. They do not keep themselves away from other planes. Or the ground. Or a flock of birds. They do not handle emergencies. They make only the most basic control-loop decisions about the control surface and power (if even autothrottle equipped, otherwise that's still the meatbag's job) changes needed to follow the magenta line drawn by the pilot given a very small set of input data (position, airspeed, current control positions, etc). The next nearest airplane is typically at least 3 miles laterally and/or 500' vertically away, because the errors allowed with all these components are measured in hundreds of feet. None of this is even remotely comparable to a car using a dozen cameras (or lidar) to make real-time decisions to drive itself around imperfect public streets full of erratic drivers and other pedestrians a few feet away. What it is a lot like is what Tesla actually sells (despite the marketing name). Yes it's "flying" the plane, but you're still responsible for making sure it's doing the right thing, the right way, and not and not going to hit anything or kill anybody.
- kelnos 2y ago
  Thank you for this. The number of people conflating Tesla's Autopilot with an airliner's autopilot, and expecting that use and policies and situations surrounding the two should be directly comparable, is staggering. You'd think people would be better at critical thinking with this, but... here we are.
  - Animats 2y ago
    Ah. Few people realize how dumb aircraft autopilots really are. Even the fanciest ones just follow a series of waypoints. There is one exception - Garmin Safe Return. That's strictly an emergency system. If it activates, the plane is squawking emergency to ATC and and demanding that airspace and a runway be cleared for it.[1] This has been available since 2019 and does not seem to have yet been activated in an emergency. [1] https://youtu.be/PiGkzgfR_c0?t=87 https://youtu.be/PiGkzgfR_c0?t=87
Aloisius 2y ago
Autopilots aren't held to a zero error standard let alone a zero accident standard.
peterdsharpe 2y ago
> literally no errors in its operation are tolerated Aircraft designer here, this is not true. We typically certify to <1 catastrophic failure per 1e9 flight hours. Not zero.
AlchemistCamp 2y ago
> ”The answer is zero…” > ”If there is any issue discovered in any car with this tech then it should be disabled worldwide until the root cause is found and eliminated.” This would literally cost millions of needless deaths in a situation where AI drivers had 1/10th the accident injury rate of human drivers.

esaym 2y ago

You can't equate airplane safety with automotive safety. I worked at an aircraft repair facility doing government contracts for a number of years. In one instance, somebody lost the toilet paper holder for one of the aircraft. This holder was simply a piece of 10 gauge wire that was bent in a way to hold it and supported by wire clamps screwed to the wall. Making a new one was easy but since it was a new part going on the aircraft we had to send it to a lab to be certified to hold a roll of toilet paper to 9 g's. In case the airplane crashed you wouldn't want a roll of toilet paper flying around I guess. And that cost $1,200.

gambiting 2y ago
No, I'm pretty sure I can in this regard - any automotive "autopilot" has to be held to the same standard. It's either zero accidents or nothing.
- murderfs 2y ago
  This only works for aerospace because everything and everyone is held to that standard. It's stupid to hold automotive autopilots to the same standard as a plane's autopilot when a third of fatalities in cars are caused by the pilots being drunk.
  - kelnos 2y ago
    I don't think that's a useful argument. I think we should start allowing autonomous driving when the "driver" is at least as safe as the median driver when the software is unsupervised. (Teslas may or may not be that safe when supervised, but they absolutely are not when unsupervised.) But once we get to that point, we should absolutely ratchet those standards so automobile safety over time becomes just as safe as airline safety. Safer, if possible. > It's stupid to hold automotive autopilots to the same standard as a plane's autopilot when a third of fatalities in cars are caused by the pilots being drunk. That's a weird argument, because both pilots and drivers get thrown in jail if they fly/drive drunk. The standard is the same.

travem 2y ago

> The answer is zero If autopilot is 10x safer then preventing its use would lead to more preventable deaths and injuries than allowing it. I agree that it should be regulated and incidents thoroughly investigated, however letting perfect be the enemy of good leads to stagnation and lack of practical improvement and greater injury to the population as a whole.

gambiting 2y ago
>>If autopilot is 10x safer then preventing its use would lead to more preventable deaths and injuries than allowing it. And yet whenever there is a problem with any plane autopilot it's preemptively disabled fleet wide and pilots have to fly manually even though we absolutely beyond a shadow of a doubt know that it's less safe. If an automated system makes a wrong decision and it contributes to harm/death then it cannot be allowed on public roads full stop, no matter how many lives it saves otherwise.
- exe34 2y ago
  > And yet whenever there is a problem with any plane autopilot it's preemptively disabled fleet wide and pilots have to fly manually even though we absolutely beyond a shadow of a doubt know that it's less safe. just because we do something dumb in one scenario isn't a very persuasive reason to do the same in another. > then it cannot be allowed on public roads full stop, no matter how many lives it saves otherwise. ambulances sometimes get into accidents - we should ban all ambulances, no matter how many lives they save otherwise.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
- CrimsonRain 2y ago
  So your only concern is, when something goes wrong, need someone to blame. Who cares about lives saved. Vaccines can cause adverse effects. Let's ban all of them. If people like you were in charge of anything, we'd still be hitting rocks for fire in caves.

V99 2y ago

Airplane autopilots follow a lateral & sometimes vertical path through the sky prescribed by the pilot(s). They are good at doing that. This does increase safety, because it frees up the pilot(s) from having to carefully maintain a straight 3d line through the sky for hours at a time. But they do not listen to ATC. They do not know where other planes are. They do not keep themselves away from other planes. Or the ground. Or a flock of birds. They do not handle emergencies. They make only the most basic control-loop decisions about the control surface and power (if even autothrottle equipped, otherwise that's still the meatbag's job) changes needed to follow the magenta line drawn by the pilot given a very small set of input data (position, airspeed, current control positions, etc). The next nearest airplane is typically at least 3 miles laterally and/or 500' vertically away, because the errors allowed with all these components are measured in hundreds of feet. None of this is even remotely comparable to a car using a dozen cameras (or lidar) to make real-time decisions to drive itself around imperfect public streets full of erratic drivers and other pedestrians a few feet away. What it is a lot like is what Tesla actually sells (despite the marketing name). Yes it's "flying" the plane, but you're still responsible for making sure it's doing the right thing, the right way, and not and not going to hit anything or kill anybody.

kelnos 2y ago
Thank you for this. The number of people conflating Tesla's Autopilot with an airliner's autopilot, and expecting that use and policies and situations surrounding the two should be directly comparable, is staggering. You'd think people would be better at critical thinking with this, but... here we are.
- Animats 2y ago
  Ah. Few people realize how dumb aircraft autopilots really are. Even the fanciest ones just follow a series of waypoints. There is one exception - Garmin Safe Return. That's strictly an emergency system. If it activates, the plane is squawking emergency to ATC and and demanding that airspace and a runway be cleared for it.[1] This has been available since 2019 and does not seem to have yet been activated in an emergency. [1] https://youtu.be/PiGkzgfR_c0?t=87 https://youtu.be/PiGkzgfR_c0?t=87

Aloisius 2y ago

Autopilots aren't held to a zero error standard let alone a zero accident standard.

peterdsharpe 2y ago

> literally no errors in its operation are tolerated Aircraft designer here, this is not true. We typically certify to <1 catastrophic failure per 1e9 flight hours. Not zero.

AlchemistCamp 2y ago

> ”The answer is zero…” > ”If there is any issue discovered in any car with this tech then it should be disabled worldwide until the root cause is found and eliminated.” This would literally cost millions of needless deaths in a situation where AI drivers had 1/10th the accident injury rate of human drivers.