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asynchronous13 | 5 years ago

If you ever take commercial flights you are already being flown by autopilot, and have been for decades. It might give you comfort that there is a human pilot in the cockpit for backup, but it's only a matter of time before the human backup moves to a ground station.

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blueplanet200|5 years ago

The autopilot is still at the control of the pilots, and usually enabled only at higher altitude. Landing/takeoff are still manually flown by pilots most of the time.

I don't have issues with a computers ability to maintain altitude, climb, or turn to a heading. I have a problem with a computer's ability to respond to the unexpected while in the air. For instance, comms failure is a scenario pilots train for and can deal with. I imagine autopilot might have some issues with that.

gonehome|5 years ago

The Boeing 737 max 8 software couldn't keep a plane in the sky with an army of pilots fighting to save their own lives.

I wouldn't get in one of these until there are better controls on this kind of software, it's not the same as autopilot.

asynchronous13|5 years ago

There is a long list of entirely preventable human-caused accidents. Is there a reason pilot-caused crashes are less scary for you? Computer caused accidents will be fixed and won't happen again. Human-caused accidents will keep happening as long as experience is valuable.

    Aeroflot Flight 593 - pilot let his son fly the plane, 63 dead
    Germanwings Flight 9525 - (possibly suicidal) pilot deliberately crashed , 144 dead
    Air France Flight 447 - pilot caused airplane to stall, 228 dead
    Aero Flight 311 - both pilots got drunk, 25 dead
and this is just a random selection, there are long long lists of human-caused aviation accidents.

bioipbiop|5 years ago

The 737 max was brought down by a classic autopilot style feature.

I imagine full automation will come to air cargo first and gradually find its way in passenger liners as the public becomes less hysterical.

ekianjo|5 years ago

Most accidents are due to human error, so you are taking way more chances by relying on the ability of pilots, statistics wise.