Will a robot steal either your or your child's pilot job?

Hangar Flying
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Ten years or so ago, back when I was in this weird phase where I found The Economist to be entertaining, I read within an article about Europe’s new AI guidelines. Europe was the first government to state how they expected these sticky moral subjects to be handled. That’s about all I remember other than that The Economist, being The Economist, seemed way more concerned about liability than the societal impact of robots becoming drivers, pilots, coders, doctors and lawyers.

If I truly cared about this subject I would probably seek out this original European document because educated stakeholders were likely involved in its creation. But I don’t really care enough to overcome my natural human laziness. I will continue to fly and drive and write and occasionally code because I enjoy those things and they will likely be legal for the remainder of my life. My 16yo daughter absolutely hates driving and is agnostic about flying and so properly primed for the future that I fear. Maybe her generation will expect the robot in charge to always sacrifice her and her co-travelers at their own expense rather than risk the lives of others. On the other hand, maybe she will be rich enough to have a Titanium Level moral RF chip installed and her robot will legally protect her at the expense of all the poor suckers out there just rolling the dice.

In the meantime, I’ve got a robot vacuum and a robot coffee maker (Spinn!). Life is good. Everyone else can get stuffed!

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You simply can’t trust a robot to make coffee! One day it will say that you’ve had enough caffeine and deny you that espresso you so sorely need to stay awake… This is in fact a serious flight safety issue! :coffee: :sunglasses:

Ditto! :wink:

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This has been a rollercoaster. Really interesting stuff guys. I don’t know who’s right, wrong or in between. But I’ve had some input into autonomous trucks and made a strong case for introducing them in certain applications,
Namely jobs which stay fundamentally “the same” day after day.

The job I’m doing at night is one of these.

Hitch up trailer in Witney.
Use a major Road to Motorway
Drive using motorway to Sutton Coldfield
Leave motorway and use major road to industrial estate.
Enter queue to unload
Unload (by forklift)
Wait for 7 hours
Load (by forklift)
Drive back to Witney

The only parts that a driver is absolutely REQUIRED is to park after unloading (easily solved with changes to parking)
The opening of the trailer (could be solved with a mechanism to pull the curtain or use the staff at loading point to do it)
The securing of the load itself inside the trailer (again see above)
And refuelling (twice a week, this actually makes a great case for electric trucks as well, charge them both ends while parked)

There is no reason, even road closures and diversions that it could not be done autonomously. I think its almost the perfect way to do the job and if electric trucks are used it would be so so efficient and cheap and eco friendly.

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What i meant to include was, we have been talking about passenger flight in the thread, but what about cargo? Does that not remove 1 major variable from the risk? Surely by not having any lives to save on board, the AI could extend its options for saving life on the ground and mitigating any conflicts arising due to the need to “save” everyone in flight and on the ground? Possibly? @sobek would that actually make a difference or not?

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Yep. take away the passengers it is already happening and not that far from where I live:

Throw passengers into the mix and it is a whole other can of worms, which is what I was trying to get at with my earlier posts - in that case is isn’t a tech issue but a psycological/sociological issue.

edit: nearly forgot about this… AI can’t cope with ‘biologics’ :eagle:

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With truck driving, a lot of the waiting and delays could be solved with more trailers… pick up full trailer … drop of at destination pick up pre loaded different trailer for next job if there was no return load, just send the cab back it would be more efficient than pulling an empty trailer…,

Sorry for the massive derailment … just the rambling thoughts of someone whose trains are running well and I’m bored :grinning::grinning::grinning:

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Or better still than different trailers … have container style boxes … all ready loaded just to be put on the back of the truck… think thunderbird 2 then you could also have automated loading ( and yest trains are all still fine and I’m still bored😂)

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You do realise that you are describing a rail transport system don’t you? :stuck_out_tongue: :stuck_out_tongue: :stuck_out_tongue:

And I’m bored too…

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You are could be correct there :grinning::grinning::grinning:

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Me neither. I don’t think such distinctions are possible, yet. And for the sake of the discussion, it’s irrelevant. :slight_smile:

I recently took the bus. :bus:
An autonomous bus. There was a safety driver onboard as the bus was still under development. I knew the safety driver and he showed me how things worked, as I was the only passenger on the bus.
Long story short, the bus had laser scanners and a bunch of other sensors, mapping the surroundings as it drove through the city at a very slow pace. Humans, cars, dogs, birds, dust, snow, branches and just about anything coming into its path made it slam the brakes. The slow speed and panic braking made the ride very uncomfortable and the bus appeared very erratic to human drivers, contending with it in traffic.

The problem I’m pointing at is not a technological one.
It may seem that I’m against automation and that I don’t think autonomous planes, trains and automobiles will happen.
That is not the case.
The point I’m trying to make is that humans are still the problem, with autonomous vehicles.
They are designed by humans.
They are operating in close proximity with humans and pose a threat to human lives, regardless if humans or toasters is in the cargo.
The human designers don’t want the autonomous vehicle to kill other humans so they need to limit what the vehicle is allowed to do.
So far, the easiest solution is to put a accountable human in the vehicle. Anything goes wrong, we can hold the human accountable. Design away this safety driver and the human designer must be held accountable. Remember, somebody must go to jail if lives are lost.
Now imagine designing an autonomous vehicle and signing off on its safety and letting it loose in traffic… You better make sure that this vehicle won’t put you in jail. So you limit the speed. You put in safety features that stops the vehicle immediately, should anything make it question the safety of the surroundings.
So autonomous vehicles are designed with human limitations, because humans distrust technology and won’t risk going to jail or dying, because of the chance that the tech will fail. Both designers and occupants feel safer if there is a human controlling the vehicle, or at least appear to be controlling it. Someone to blame, at the very least.

Now, designing a vehicle to operate in city traffic isn’t a trivial task and for technology to evolve, it must start somewhere.
But as long as these vehicles pose a risk to to human lives, and must contend with humans in traffic, the situation becomes unpredictable.
Put this vehicle on rails, vast seas, their own roads, etc. and the situation becomes more predictable again.

The question is not if engineers can build autonomous vehicles. Sure they can.
The question is how to get regulators, politicians and people in general to trust them without putting too many restraints on them.

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Another memory. I was in DC at a union meeting in 2002. At that time the FedEx pilot group played a big leadership role at ALPA. Their CEO was a guy named Fred Smith who for all his brilliance, hated labor. He was taunting his pilots that autonomous feed was two years away…meaning the Cessna Caravan sized airplanes that bring much of the area cargo in to the hubs. “The rest will soon follow on a ten year timeline.” I was worried. 911 had just happened and I feared that my career was toast. And given how pilots were central to 911, getting rid of us would benefit society. But our FedEx leadership wasn’t worried. Technology always overpromises and underdelivers. They proved more right than I could have ever hoped. Will it happen someday? Sure it will. The only human jobs to remain will be jazz musicians, pro athletes and super models. War will be fought only against civilian targets. And life will be like Wall-e where we only need to choose between the blue juice and the pink.

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I think the difficulty of doing automated vehicles depends greatly on the nature of the vehicle itself …. Certain vehicles would be easier to automate than others, underground trains for example are easier to do than overground trains, due to not having to deal with an open environment, weather, larger birds landing on the track, wonderful people chucking stuff (or themselves off bridges) when you start adding all the variables of an open road system and all of the things that entails then it is going to be a bumpy road… if you then include the complexities of having an ai navigating through that, and that is why I don’t think I could sit in a car that is parking itself, hands and feet off the controls :grinning:

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It’s funny how this thread breaks down. We have @sobek who sees AI as a poorly understood system held back largely by ignorance. We then have @Troll who sees the limitation not so much in AI itself but in the human-in-the-loop. And we have me, a human enthralled by the human brain and filled with fear that moral and societal concerns are underplayed. That’s probably about as good a triangulation of how most people feel as can be found.

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I don’t regard anyone here as ignorant. Stubborn perhaps but certainly not ignorant.

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I interpreted @smokinhole’s comment as held back by ignorance in society. People are afraid of what they don’t know and understand.

No I’m not! No I’m not! No I’m not! No I’m not!

No Way Bird GIF

:wink:

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Not to give anyone ideas, but there is probably a thesis in that :slight_smile:

Still it would be interesting to correlate against an age demographic - for the record I’m in the same camp as you and just turned 55.

I love tech. I’m probably an earlier adopter of new tech than most of my age group… I don’t fit into the ‘digital native’ demographic, but I certainly don’t feel like a ‘digital immigrant’. And, I have also probably read too many novels and non-fiction articles about the dystopian future that awaits us if we let it take over and consume our lives.

Edit: What I should have added. I guess I am of that age where, on the subject of technology (specifically AI), I’m torn. On the one hand I can see the endless possibilities, but on the other it scares the crap out of me.

Bah, who cares… I’m only a few years away from “You damn kids get off my lawn” :stuck_out_tongue:

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I am fine with tech as long as I am in control of it. Nothing I have seen to date regarding autonomous machines has given me any indication that I will be changing that position any time soon.

Wheels

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now even birds can be afraid :grin:

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I doubt it will ever poop with the precision of a real seagull… :wink:

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Yes, souls on board would be an important input parameter for the AI.