A cargo plane flew 50 miles with no pilot onboard using a semi-automated system. An aviation expert says the technology could address the pilot shortage.::The flight system allows a plane to be remote operated by a pilot on the ground, which could streamline pilot airline operations in the future.

  • randon31415@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    This will be done more and more until the first crash. Then everyone will freak out and everything will be grounded. The engineers will point out that statistically the flights done this way were safer ( 1 million miles were flown by AI in the last 3 years with only one incident. The same done by commercial pilots would have caused 3.5 incidents!)

    Then other incidents will be dredged up. Some won’t be actual incidents, some won’t be the fault of the AI, and some will be because a human overrid AI control. However, the public will firmly be on the side of only humans should fly planes. Laws will be drafted. Then loopholes for “drones” will be made. A decade later these loopholes will be large enough to fly a 737 through.

    No one will remember why they were put in place in the first place, but one political party will be firmly against removing the laws. It will take another generation for them to finally be removed, and by that point computers will be so far integrated with humans that biological humans might be banned from flying under the law if things didn’t change.

    Hopefully, people will look back on this and say, lol, no, that post was edited in 2035, but good try.

    • SlopppyEngineer@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      However, the public will firmly be on the side of only humans should fly planes. Laws will be drafted. Then loopholes for “drones” will be made.

      That part could just as well go another way:

      The transportation and large sellers of packages, like Amazon, strongly lobbied the government. Now any victim of a crash with automated planes gets a standard payout from the insurance. A class action lawsuits from family members of the victims was eventually decided in favor of the corporations.

      • BearOfaTime
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        11 months ago

        I’ve read your life is only worth $10k.

        I have nothing to back that up, but if anyone finds the source of that quote, I’d be interested.

        Yea, no thanks on automation. In the end I’m still dead by another human’s mistake. So I’d rather have a pilot on board.

        I’ve seen how bad aircraft automation is already. Much of it shouldn’t even be in the air currently. It’s already overridden pilot commands łor at least ignored inputs as outside parameters), crashing planes.