MountainBear, #180
That leads to a circular argument. They are 'nothing like smart enough'
because they haven't been programmed to be. They haven't been programmed
to be precisely because the pilot is there.
My response to that, to break the loop, is that they haven't been programmed
to be because the technology to do it safely doesn't exist.
It's no problem to program computers to take off from London, fly to New
York and land. The problem is how to handle the probably millions of
failure modes, their combinations and sequences, that could interfere
with the task. This is without considering environmental factors such as
weather and other unpredictable events. Computers are pretty dumb,
in that they can only be programmed to process a set of rules within strictly defined
limits. Outside these limits, the machine has no code to execute, nor
algorithm available to process the data and can only generate a failure
message. "Does not compute", applies here. It's very difficult, if not
impossible, to program a machine to handle chaos.
You might then argue that we can throw ai techniques at the problem, but
the response would be that ai technology is nowhere near mature enough
to be given responsibility for a high risk activity like flying several
hundred souls at 35k feet under full automatic control. It will possibly
never be, despite any claims that it can be done by optimistic
technologists.
It's unfair to blame the machine or the programmers behind the machine
for the inadequacy of the design document they were handed. The
human/machine interface only becomes a issue when you assume that that a
human being must be on the flight deck. Take away that design
requirement and the design of a FBW system is going to look a lot
different than it does now.
I don't think of it in terms of "blame" and have never subscribed to
blame culture. I'm sure that the systems have been tested rigorously to
the original specification and all involved were altruistic and
dedicated in their intent. All i'm arguing for is a much more holistic
(sorry about that word) view of the whole system. In the same way that
intuition and instinct, as well as learning, all contribute to the
merging of man and machine in m/cycle riding, car driving, light a/c
flying and more. The exact opposite to current civil aviation practice,
where crew seem to be trained and encouraged to fly the computers, not
the aircraft.
As for the flight deck, if it ever got to the stage that the crew became
redundant, there would most likely be no flight deck, just more racks of
avionics humming away in the background. But what an opportunity for the
beancounters. Not only do you save the space and weight of the kit on
the flight deck, but dispense with the services of expensive and sometimes
unpredictable crew as well. A win-win situation all round i'm sure
...
Regards,
Chris