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Are You Ready to Fly Without a Human Pilot?
Some think automation could obviate the need for human pilots, but experts say the technology, the industry and the passengers are not quite ready for fully autonomous flying. (www.nytimes.com) Más...Sort type: [Top] [Newest]
How about system failure? Technology like this will only be proved safe when it can: A. handle the amount of system failures experienced on QF32 (5 experienced pilots working at their limits to bring a stricken Airbus A380 back to Singapore's Changi airport following an uncontained engine failure in the No.2 engine. Over 5 pages of ECAM errors needed to be worked through in order for the Pilot in Command to execute a safe landing). B. When a computer can safely execute an emergency landing on the Hudson river (US Airways 1549 - both engines lost on an Airbus A320 shortly after take-off from LaGuardia Airport, New York City). The media will often report the instances where crashes have occurred due to pilot error, but what they never seem to report is the amount of times commercial flights have been saved due to the knowledge and experience of a professional crew.
Amen!
If you CAN get a computer to do all that stuff, then we're all in trouble. After all it's 2018. Can you say "Hello Hal, Please sing Daisy for me?"
I’m not disagreeing with anything you wrote but wanted to point out that both those incidents likely would have had a different outcome with a different set of humans at the controls. There are also plenty of cases where humans screwed up completely routine situations and got people killed because of mistakes, exhaustion, inattentiveness, or even intent.
Machines are not perfect, but neither are humans
Machines are not perfect, but neither are humans
Not to disagree with you Sir, but I believe what the Gentlemen poster was getting at with the Hudson River event comment was that a computer would very likely not select the Hudson as an alternative landing site. Finding no landing sites available it would have quit. And that is 100% of computers.
And that's exactly why it's impossible to program flight computers with all the things of which a human is capable.
Difference is 99.999% of humans prefer life over death or injury. Machine doesn't know and couldn't care less. I'd rather take my chances with an inept human pilot that at least has a survival instinct and wants to see Ma and the kids at the end of the day than a worthless piece of tin that can only respond to what ever programming was put into it. Who knows what kind of nut programmed it?
Humans give up, panic, freeze, make the wrong choice... And by some of the dumb stuff pilots continue to do year after year to kill themselves and others, a well programmed machine could be much better.