Robin Hood wrote:So, surely the inverse is true? Convince the people that air crashes are mainly due to pilot error ..... whether that is actually true or not ...... and people are told “Look our automated pilotless aircraft have not had any serious problems and no crashes ...... and you can travel from London to New York in our modern automated aircraft for $50 return ..... because we don’t have to pay two guys to sit up front and gaze out of the window just in case they are needed ................ or pay $500 return and have the ‘two pilots up front’ version if that makes you more secure!" Once the automated flights catch on and become the norm then the piloted version will become more and more expensive until it prices itself out of the market.
I take your point about propaganda but obviously the reverse reverse is true! Pilots and their unions would be fighting the reverse propaganda war insisting that two pilots are necessary for safe flight.
And of course all aircraft couldn’t be made pilotless on day #1. The battle would be over the first pilotless flight and the unions would surely hold the power of strike action to stop every other flight to prevent it – I suspect that is why we still have train drivers.
Also, it doesn’t cost ~$90K per flight to have the two guys sitting up front and you’d have to factor in the extra costs of automation – extra sensors, RADAR, LIDAR, the AI, presumably some form of machine vision system so the aircraft can ‘see’ the terrain and decide that landing on the Hudson is the least worst option?
Robin Hood wrote:As humans we need thinking time and by the time we think it out it is too late. So we respond on instinct which could go either way. Program the system to preserve a child’s life at all costs and the system will say swerve to avoid killing the child ...... and maybe unintentionally cause an accident involving a bus-full of children.
I would say that is something that is impossible to deal with ..... you would have to just take your chances that the system makes the right decision ..... after all, we all place that trust in others when we are their passenger! Is that really any different?
The big difference is that if I’m driving my car and do something stupid like making a phone call or overtaking on a blind bend and as a result run over a load of children standing at a bus stop I’ll be arrested and punished – almost certainly will a jail sentence.
If a Google Car makes a stupid mistake and say swerves to avoid a cat and as a result runs over a load of children standing at a bus stop then who is going to be punished? The car owner who was sitting in the back reading a newspaper? Or will Google and their AI face $Millions or perhaps $Trillions in lawsuits because their cars valued the life of kitty over kiddies…?
And what if an automated aircraft crashed and the subsequent investigation showed that in circumstances that nobody predicted (like that 777 that crashed at Heathrow with ice in the fuel lines) the aircraft would choose to land on a convenient school playing field rather than trying to stretch the glide onto the runway? Kerrrchiiing! Bye, bye Airbus or Boeing...
