On the other hand, human pilots have made errors in judgment that directly crash planes into the sea before too. The difference is, AI doesn't yet have real "objective" style thinking. They don't have a part that says "the most important thing is to arrive safely" or "human lives are valuable". They have the barest part of situational awareness, and general rule sets, nothing more.
Ultimately, computer driven systems are going to be the safest way to fly or drive. Think of the number of times a human pays attention to their intuition over the instruments on the flight panel and end up being lost at sea. (I've heard that the windows are basically there for show, and most pilots are trained just to read the instruments over all else and ignore what they see out the window.) I've no idea exactly what sort of mistake in logic that plane's computer system made to determine that the landing strip was in the ocean... Maybe an instrument failed and the program was unable to determine that the rest of the instruments should be used and the one faulty one should be ignored. We may see similar errors in computer judgment as more and more cars start to become automated. My biggest concern? Unusual road layouts. Take the time to drive around the outskirts of the Tulsa area, or even certain regions of downtown, and you'll find a lot of very difficult to figure out roads. I've seen a two-lane road "split" into two other two lane roads, with the two lanes of one road being "one way" and the other being "two way", and no easy way to figure out exactly what the heck just happened or which path leads to not crashing. There's a 5-way intersection in downtown Tulsa. That is, a standard intersection of two roads in a cross formation, like normal, and now add at one "corner" a diagonally intersecting exit from a nearby highway. It is not at all clear exactly which of the two sets of traffic lights you can see are supposed to be "your" light, or even what a "safe" way to enter any of the roads in the intersection is supposed to be. There are plenty of other "off" situations of this or that street strangely ending, or curving, or branching, or joining, or becoming someone's driveway, or any other weird layout decision out there, and while a human being may have trouble in such a situation, at least it can be navigated with a little communication with other drivers. How the heck are computer driven cars supposed to figure this out? That's not even taking into account Amazon's drone delivery program. In a perfect world, they'd be fine. However, in an imperfect world, someone's "house" comes off a small gravel road off a numbered road, and that leads to a laundry room technically not even attached to the main house, with the whole yard covered in trees. The front porch used to just be a porch, but last year the person living there bought some metal sheeting from Southerland's and put a rather trashy awning over the pattio. How does Amazon's drone figure out exactly where to leave that package? Do they leave it at the end of the concrete road? Does it know what a gravel road looks like, but it ends up leaving it at the laundry room instead of the main house? Does it attempt a landing and crash in the tree branches? Does it determine where the porch is, but accidentally leaves it on top of the awning because it didn't know a new extension was built? What about people who's addresses are basically mile markers because they live on a farm? Does that package just get left on the side of the highway?
This is the problem. Real life is an insane and chaotic mess where nothing makes sense and hope is a lie. I'm not sure computer programs can navigate it very well.
"On two occasions, I have been asked [by members of Parliament], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able to rightly apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question." ~ Charles Babbage (1791-1871)
Ultimately, I think the best system isn't for every single car to independantly determine a safe route, but for every car to be tied into a road-installed navigation system that manages driving for them.
"On two occasions, I have been asked [by members of Parliament], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able to rightly apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question." ~ Charles Babbage (1791-1871)
GR and DJ hit it on the head. Thank god I won't have to think about something mundane like traffic in the future. I get BAD road rage. I mean, I live in Philadelphia, ranked in the top 10 worst cities in America to be driving. So I have some right to anger. Or maybe I'm part of the havoc. Either way, fuck it, get an emotionless computer that can calculate these things to optimize safety and speed.
I mean seriously, you know, I don't LIKE to look at my phone while I'm driving. But it's not particularly unsafe if you do it smart. No taking your eyes off the road if you're in movement, namely. Unless you're worried about being rear-ended, chill out and check the internet while you're at a stop light. That's like ten whole seconds of time when your attention isn't being focused on something. Left to my own thoughts? Sir, THAT thought offends me.
On a somewhat related note, one thing I've heard of is the idea of planes that don't have windows, but instead use screens to see out. This would mean the pilots wouldn't have to be in the front, etc., though they'd be doing less probably because of all the automation and stuff turned over to the computer. Problem is... computer problems, now you can't see out at all if something happened! That could happen I'm sure, as the article I linked suggests.
Also of course, the more power you give a computer network, the bigger the risk if it gets hacked, of course. Wouldn't a fully-automated traffic control system be an irresistible target for malicious hackers?
I suppose that's true but couldn't there be a manual override system? Everyone is still required a license, is expected to be able to drive manually at a moment's notice. If a system is hacked, the driver can pull a lever or whatever to switch to driving it themselves. There are protections for these sorts of things, I reckon.
Your computer is not the same as a flight computer. Here's what I mean by that. They can hard-test these things. If they: remove all online access to the components that actually keep the plane in flight, and make those parts of the plane a hard ROM that can't be overwritten instead of storing it in Flash memory, then it is safer.
Also, consider the computers designed by NASA. They work out how those machines should function right down to the bare metal to such a degree they can actually upgrade a satellite's physical abilities without taking it offline. They've got such a high degree of what their software needs to function that the majority of their satellites are still functioning to this day.
Hold up a highway computer system to that standard, we've got something we can rely on. To that same extent, Tesla has done similar things with their own onboard computers.
"On two occasions, I have been asked [by members of Parliament], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able to rightly apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question." ~ Charles Babbage (1791-1871)
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