[QUOTE=Turbine70;10601091]
Originally Posted by
avtur007
Understood.
Look maybe this seems like semantics but in my view it really isn't.
The voice AI wasn't programmed to learn voices. The AI isn't programmed about voices. The programming is in providing it access to voices. The opportunity to listen to them.
I'll be a monkey's uncle if training AI to fly a plane isn't far simpler than training a human to fly a plane during the OP's daughter's career.
In my life look at a similar transition. From rotary dial to watching videos on a smartphone, in a similar period. The same smartphone that knows where you are and can switch the heat on half an hour before you get home. Try that with a rotary dial phone.
Understanding voice is no mean feat.
"Alexa, tell me a joke."
"OK google, find me a gas station"
"Hey Siri, how many beans make five?"
That was sci-fi in 1980.
AI pilots are sci-fi in 2019.
I went to a talk about a year ago by one of the leading researchers in AI in the UK (worked in the Alan Turing Institute). AI/genetic algorithms are very good at learning from a very controlled set of inputs and inferring the correct/optimum response. Examples of that now include a number of pieces of research which shows that AI analysis of medical imaging to be as good as, if not better than health professionals.
But AI has limitations. A further piece of research set out to see if AI could identify wolves from German Shepherd dogs. After feeding the algorithms thousands images of both and it generating its own identification rules, it ultimately based its decision on how much white was in the image because more images of wolves were fed into it where the wolves were in a snowy environment. Not good if you expect your robotic shepherd to protect your flock!
If aircraft were always 100% operational, with all comms/navigational systems active and in benign environments, AI would probably be the safer option. But the challenge to make AI safe for the almost infinite set of conditions that a pilot may be faced with, that is a very high bar indeed. For freight aircraft I can see it happening, but for passenger flights its a different matter. Even if statistically it were safer, we humans aren't always rational beings and we prefer a couple of warm bodies up front to save the day when things go pear-shaped.