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The ATC told them to enter the runway because they were confused or distracted due t overwork. No one here or anywhere is saying automation would solve or be a

by clint 6mo ago

The ATC told them to enter the runway because they were confused or distracted due t overwork. No one here or anywhere is saying automation would solve or be able to handle everything that human operators handle, that's an argument you invented that no one is making. People are saying automation could handle a significant portion of the routine things allowing humans to handle the more complex/finicky issues. Even if automation could handle 10% of the most common situations it would be a huge boon. In reality its probably closer to 50%.

dpark 6mo ago
> The ATC told them to enter the runway because they were confused or distracted due t overwork. Very possibly. It will be interesting what comes from the investigation. > No one here or anywhere is saying automation would solve or be able to handle everything that human operators handle, that's an argument you invented that no one is making. I’m asking if it would have solved even the current situation. The truck presumably saw the red light, and was asking to cross. Would traffic control have said no if more had been automated and if so, what automation would fix this? Unless we are supposing the truck would be autonomously driven and refuse to proceed when planes are landing, in which case, maybe, though that’s not really ATC automation anymore.
- Palomides 6mo ago
  an automated system that could check if a plane is about to land on a runway and show some kind of alert or red light is hardly a stretch of the imagination
  - dpark 6mo ago
    That’s such a great idea that it already exists and is deployed at La Guardia. https://www.faa.gov/air_traffic/technology/rwsl https://www.faa.gov/air_traffic/technology/rwsl
    - Nition 6mo ago
      Thank you for providing your aviation knowledge to this discussion. What a classic example of tech people thinking that because they're smart, every other industry must be dumb and they can just jump in and fix it.
      - dpark 6mo ago
        I also do not like this persistent tone of “everyone else is stupid; software would easily fix it” that pops up so often. Not all problems are easy to fix with some code. To be clear, though, I don’t even have significant aviation knowledge. But this isn’t hard to learn about. That’s part of what irks me so much about this tone. It’s not just “I’m so smart” it’s “I’m so confident that you’re dumb that I don’t need to know anything about the domain you’re working in to know better than you”. Someone could ask ChatGPT why airports don’t have stoplights to stop traffic from crossing the runway and it would reveal the existence of this system.
        jerbearito 6mo ago
        > "I don’t need to know anything about the domain you’re working in to know better than you" This frustates me to no end. Is it just an example of the Dunning–Kruger effect?
        dpark 6mo ago
        Something like that. It feels a bit different because it’s less about overestimating one’s knowledge/ability and more about underestimating the complexity of domains outside one’s expertise. But yeah. Very similar.
        dahart 6mo ago
        Me too, but I don’t like referring to Dunning-Kruger ever for multiple reasons. There are perfectly good labels like cockiness, arrogance, ignorance, presumptuousness, and wrongheaded. ;) There are many issues with DK, and the paper’s widely misunderstood. For one, the primary figure demonstrates a positive correlation between confidence and competence, so according to DK’s own paper, high confidence is not an indicator of incompetence, contrary to popular belief. The paper also measured things in a very funny way (by having participants rank themselves against other people of unknown skill), and it measured only very simple things (like basic grammar, and ability to get a joke), and it only polled Cornell undergrads (no truly incompetent people), and there were a tiny number of participants receiving extra credit (might exclude the As and Fs in the class). Many smart people have come to the conclusion that DK is a statistical artifact of the way they did their experiment, not a real cognitive bias. Some smart people have pointed out that DK is probably popular because it’s really tempting to believe - we like the idea of arrogant people getting justice. The paper also primes the reader, telling them what to believe even though the title isn’t truly supported by the data. It’s an interesting read that I think would not pass today’s publication criteria. Anyway, sorry, slash rant.
cogman10 6mo ago
There's unfortunately an alertness problem WRT automated systems. If the reason you have the human there is to handle the unusual cases, you run the real risk that they just aren't paying attention at critical moments when they need to pay attention. It's pretty similar to the problem with L3 autonomous driving. Probably the sweet spot is automation which makes clear the current set of instructions on the airport which also red flags when a dangerous scenario is created. I believe that already exists, but it's software that was last written in 1995 or so. Regardless, before any sort of new automation could be deployed, we need slack for the ATC to be able to adopt a new system. That's the biggest pressing problem. We could create the perfect software for ATC, but if the current air traffic controllers are all working overtime and doing a job designed for 3 people rather than one, they simply won't have the time to explore and understand that new system. It'll get in the way rather than solve a problem. More money is part of the solution here, but we also need a revamped ATC training program which can help to fill the current hole.
ApolloFortyNine 6mo ago
In an ideal world this would be like rail traffic, where the runway would be 'locked' (red signal) due to the landing plane, and the fire engine would have to explicitly request an override to cross the locked runway, and importantly, this process has to be _rare_. If it's something that's done 5000 times a day, it'll be normalized. Everyone involved should be aware of the dangers of traversing a 'locked' runway.
- burntwater 6mo ago
  My understanding that this scenario is exactly what happened here.

by clint 6mo ago

dpark 6mo ago

> The ATC told them to enter the runway because they were confused or distracted due t overwork. Very possibly. It will be interesting what comes from the investigation. > No one here or anywhere is saying automation would solve or be able to handle everything that human operators handle, that's an argument you invented that no one is making. I’m asking if it would have solved even the current situation. The truck presumably saw the red light, and was asking to cross. Would traffic control have said no if more had been automated and if so, what automation would fix this? Unless we are supposing the truck would be autonomously driven and refuse to proceed when planes are landing, in which case, maybe, though that’s not really ATC automation anymore.

Palomides 6mo ago
an automated system that could check if a plane is about to land on a runway and show some kind of alert or red light is hardly a stretch of the imagination
- dpark 6mo ago
  That’s such a great idea that it already exists and is deployed at La Guardia. https://www.faa.gov/air_traffic/technology/rwsl https://www.faa.gov/air_traffic/technology/rwsl
  - Nition 6mo ago
    Thank you for providing your aviation knowledge to this discussion. What a classic example of tech people thinking that because they're smart, every other industry must be dumb and they can just jump in and fix it.
    - dpark 6mo ago
      I also do not like this persistent tone of “everyone else is stupid; software would easily fix it” that pops up so often. Not all problems are easy to fix with some code. To be clear, though, I don’t even have significant aviation knowledge. But this isn’t hard to learn about. That’s part of what irks me so much about this tone. It’s not just “I’m so smart” it’s “I’m so confident that you’re dumb that I don’t need to know anything about the domain you’re working in to know better than you”. Someone could ask ChatGPT why airports don’t have stoplights to stop traffic from crossing the runway and it would reveal the existence of this system.
      - jerbearito 6mo ago
        > "I don’t need to know anything about the domain you’re working in to know better than you" This frustates me to no end. Is it just an example of the Dunning–Kruger effect?
        dpark 6mo ago
        Something like that. It feels a bit different because it’s less about overestimating one’s knowledge/ability and more about underestimating the complexity of domains outside one’s expertise. But yeah. Very similar.
        dahart 6mo ago
        Me too, but I don’t like referring to Dunning-Kruger ever for multiple reasons. There are perfectly good labels like cockiness, arrogance, ignorance, presumptuousness, and wrongheaded. ;) There are many issues with DK, and the paper’s widely misunderstood. For one, the primary figure demonstrates a positive correlation between confidence and competence, so according to DK’s own paper, high confidence is not an indicator of incompetence, contrary to popular belief. The paper also measured things in a very funny way (by having participants rank themselves against other people of unknown skill), and it measured only very simple things (like basic grammar, and ability to get a joke), and it only polled Cornell undergrads (no truly incompetent people), and there were a tiny number of participants receiving extra credit (might exclude the As and Fs in the class). Many smart people have come to the conclusion that DK is a statistical artifact of the way they did their experiment, not a real cognitive bias. Some smart people have pointed out that DK is probably popular because it’s really tempting to believe - we like the idea of arrogant people getting justice. The paper also primes the reader, telling them what to believe even though the title isn’t truly supported by the data. It’s an interesting read that I think would not pass today’s publication criteria. Anyway, sorry, slash rant.

cogman10 6mo ago

There's unfortunately an alertness problem WRT automated systems. If the reason you have the human there is to handle the unusual cases, you run the real risk that they just aren't paying attention at critical moments when they need to pay attention. It's pretty similar to the problem with L3 autonomous driving. Probably the sweet spot is automation which makes clear the current set of instructions on the airport which also red flags when a dangerous scenario is created. I believe that already exists, but it's software that was last written in 1995 or so. Regardless, before any sort of new automation could be deployed, we need slack for the ATC to be able to adopt a new system. That's the biggest pressing problem. We could create the perfect software for ATC, but if the current air traffic controllers are all working overtime and doing a job designed for 3 people rather than one, they simply won't have the time to explore and understand that new system. It'll get in the way rather than solve a problem. More money is part of the solution here, but we also need a revamped ATC training program which can help to fill the current hole.

ApolloFortyNine 6mo ago

In an ideal world this would be like rail traffic, where the runway would be 'locked' (red signal) due to the landing plane, and the fire engine would have to explicitly request an override to cross the locked runway, and importantly, this process has to be _rare_. If it's something that's done 5000 times a day, it'll be normalized. Everyone involved should be aware of the dangers of traversing a 'locked' runway.

burntwater 6mo ago
My understanding that this scenario is exactly what happened here.