April 22, 2015: Would you fly an airliner lacking a flight crew and operated by software and a few back-up pilots on the ground? Actually many people would, just as many people are keen to try out a driverless car (or use existing self-parking software). The fact of the matter is that all this automation has been sneaking up on us, just has it has been doing for over half a century, until it is fully developed and accepted. This is all despite the fear of new technology, often for good and practical reasons.
Let’s go back a long time to the first people who learned how to control (start when needed) fire. There were probably warnings that this would lead to more burn injuries and even then it was probably realized that inhaling too much smoke was bad for you. Today there are still hundreds of millions of people depending on open fire for cooking and heating and there are medical statistics to show that this population suffers many more burn injuries and ill effects (on lungs and other organs) of all that smoke. Yet no one has seriously advocated outlawing controlled fire, just making it safer. Same with more recent tech, like steam engines (the early ones, be they for boats, railroads or factories, were quite dangerous) and automobiles (which are still dangerous, but much less so that a few decades ago, thanks to a lot more software and microprocessors). The same thing has been happening with automated flight controls (for engines, other equipment and piloting as well). If all this seems inevitable well, that’s because it has been.
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