this post was submitted on 18 Aug 2023
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There's another difference between humans and computers you forgot to mention. Once a computer 'learns" something, (like avoiding driving into wet concrete), it will never make that mistake again. Prople on the other hand continue making the same error over and over.
You are using an argument that is not new .. pilots have used it for decades (and some still do) to complain about automation on the flight deck. Yet every day tens of thousands of airliners fly to their destination (and sometimes land there as well) with no pilot intervention. Pilots could easily be eliminated from airplanes .. the reason they are still flying has more to do with PR and a public not willing to fly without a human up front. But automation has made air travel safer by an order of magnitude. It will do the same for cars.
Planes fly with significant distance between them, well above any major obstacles, along routes with very few turns. Cars on the other hand are close together, traveling along poorly marked routes that have significant amounts of turns, and need to dodge a lot of obstacles. It's quite rare for a plane to hit a cat.
Planes are serviced by teams on a regular basis. Regulations and double checking galore. There are trailers on the road at this moment being held together with welded closed vise grips.
I remember that one episode of Pimp My Ride back in the 90s where the guy had a Frankenstein car that consisted of two half-cars welded together in the middle…
That is such a massive oversimplification of how computer learning works that it's neither here nor there.
Also, automation might work in some cases and not others. Sometimes different things are similar, and sometimes they're different. Just because similar arguments have been made before about different things doesn't mean you get to discount them now in an different situation.
Airplanes don't have to interact with hundreds of other vehicles all constantly changing speeds and course headings