Posted on 09/03/2018 11:09:34 AM PDT by Silentgypsy
... the pilots cited cases where, they argued, the action of pilots had saved an airplane and its passengers when the computers could not have.
In at least two of those cases they had a point.
In January 2009 Captain “Sully” Sullenberger saved the lives of 150 passengers by making an emergency landing on the Hudson River. And in November, 2010 what would have been one of the world’s worst air disasters was averted when Captain Richard de Crespigny of the Australian airline Qantas managed to get a giant Airbus A380 that had been badly crippled by an exploding engine back to earth in Singapore, saving 469 people.
The pilots in both instances were flying Airbus airplanes with “fly-by-wire” controls and what was then state-of-the-art cockpit automation. Sullenberger saved his airplane by choosing the Hudson as his nearest landing point, a split-second calculation that his computers could never have made. Crespigny’s computers, faced with 120 major systems failures, automatically shut down 99 percent of the airplane’s electrical systems.
Fortunately there were three off-duty pilots on the A380 in addition to Crespigny and his first officer and it needed the skills of all five to get to the runway—they had the brains while their computers had become imbecilic.
“When programs pass into code and code passes into algorithms and then algorithms start to create new algorithms, it gets farther and farther from human agency” admitted Ellen Ullman, a pioneering programmer in 2018.
(Excerpt) Read more at thedailybeast.com ...
I want a human at the controls, just in case.
The only I’m certain about artificial intelligence is, in the end, whomever owns the AI, will not be giving away the benefits for free. Even if everybody is out of work because of AI.
My sense is that, if you can’t keep up, you will be provided for but you might have to exchange being sterilized for those benefits to ensure that you don’t children who are not capable of keeping up. Only the most intelligent will be permitted to have children.
In at least two of those cases they had a point.
In January 2009 Captain “Sully” Sullenberger saved the lives of 150 passengers by making an emergency landing on the Hudson River.
No, they don't have a point with this case, for two reasons.
First, computers could easily be trained to do this. Sully taught pilots in simulators for years after the incident. Computer systems can learn from that data.
Secondly, Sully could land the plane because he had very precise extra skills as a glider pilot, which commercial pilots aren't trained for. In other words, out of all the pilots in the world, he was one of a handful, or even the only one, who could land that plane safely. Every other pilot would have ended up killing someone. If a computer is trained in this landing, then any aircraft that is running with that software can survive.
And this doesn't even go into the fact that most aircraft fatalities are due to pilot error. If machines can eliminate those, there will be far fewer fatalities, even counting the extreme cases that the software can't handle.
So do I.
That creates a whole new element for consideration.
Other parts article are congruent with your second point.
of the
Robots have been around for 40 years. And I still see shortage of skilled people and corporations can’t find enough qualified workers. My nephew just graduated with an engineering degree and has MULTIPLE job offers to choose from. I guess the robots are not smart enough to replace him.
That’s Jonty’s point.
Robots still need engineers to design them, manufacturing to provide the parts, technicians to build them, programmers to program them (or to program the AI that will run them) and project managers to manage all these processes. It is, IMHO just another phase of our technological and industrial evolution. Jobs will be lost but new ones will be created. Adapt to or train for these changes or become obsolete. The changes will keep happening whether you’re ready or not.
Called robot day.
Glad I won’t be alive to see it.
This all will not have a happy ending, and yet there’s no way to stop it.
"Infinite leisure", what is meant by that? I believe that the author foresees a world where robotics and computer automation replaces every need for human labor. If so, we would inherit the blessing of infinite leisure. Maybe. But consider for what purpose beyond our basic needs would that automation be used? This would depend on human imagination which cannot not be replicated by any algorithm. John Quincy Adams once wrote "I am a warrior so that my son can be a merchant, so that his son may be a poet". Once we are secure, and all our our material needs have been fulfilled and more, we will still need to inspire and entertain ourselves, lest we die of boredom.
Then we can have Robot Day instead.
Labor Day sounds a little too progressive, in my opinion.
Then there’ll be jobs for people to design, build and maintain ...robots.
Win/Win
Exactly.
Eventually robots will be able to design and repair other robots, harvest all the raw materials we need (eventually from space) and generate all the energy without human input.
Absolutely zero human effort required and all material riches of the universe will come to us on demand.
However, human nature is very tied to effort and achievement. Even though we hate having too much work, I believe some is essential to hapiness. When no effort is required to obtain anything, very strange things happen to the human mind...
The Bible said something about “Idle hands”.
The focus on flying was the hook. There is no such thing as infinite leisure. Unless there are extraordinary circumstances, nonfunctional humans won’t mesh with the future unless there are mitigating influences (power, corruption, etc.). Humans won’t become obsolete.
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