“Dear Pilot, thank you for your supervision!”

5/5 (1)

 

The year of the first plane: 1903

We have spent years and years to reach a centuries old human ambition: flying. Early planes however were considerably dangerous and many accidents happened over the course of centuries. Ranging from small to large accidents, the critical goal was that we needed more safety in the air.  We attempted to increase the safety of flying by building better planes and by educating our pilots to minimize danger.

Over time, planes have become much safer and the number of accidents have declined significantly. Technology has played a large part in this development. For instance, planes nowadays are more resilient in the air, can handle more unexpected events (such as storms) due to the developments in airplane technology. The role of communication technology in reducing aero accidents is critical as well. Especially when attempting to minimizing landing and takeoff accident.

Automated Pilot

However, there is one crucial element that has helped to diminish airplane related accidents: the automated pilot. The increasing number of safe flights is also related to the more frequent use of automatic pilots and a spur in the percentage of time that the automatic pilots fly a plane during flights.

Automatic pilots now fly 90% of the time (Mahoney, 2017). This not only makes the life of pilots easier, but reduces the amount of human errors as well.

Is there room for AI?

The future of AI pilots seems evident. Most accidents happening nowadays occur when the plane lands and when the plane heads off into the air (takeoff). If AI can facilitate safe takeoff and landing, then plane accidents can certainly be reduced. Several techniques that AI can take advantage off are (Flightsafetyaustralia, 2017).

1. High-Powered parallel processing. Powerful chips can be used to increase computing power. Especially when related to graphical processing capability;
2. Big Data. There is so much information that can be used. AI systems using the cloud to get their computing power can access many computers together to analyze this big data.
3. Deep Learning. Means that AI can actually learn through trial and error. With enough flight data, AI can outlearn the human pilot.

Thoughts

AI can certainly work and replace the human pilot up to a certain level. Human supervision would be advised, certainly at the start. Nevertheless, in the future, everything is possible. Can AI fully replace the human pilot?

Personally, I think ethics come into play here. Trusting a non-human 100% of the time to fly our planes causes trust issues. At least for me. What do you think about it? Would you rather have a human pilot or an AI pilot in the future? Does your answer change when AI proves to be the statistical better of the two?

References

1. Mahoney, D, 2017. “Flying on autopilot improves airline safety but can lead to errors” Retrieved from: http://www.businessinsurance.com/article/00010101/NEWS06/302289983/Flying-on-autopilot-improves-airline-safety-but-can-lead-to-errors

2. Flightsafetyaustralia, 2017. “Getting Smart Artificial intelligence and Aviation”. Retrieved from:  http://www.flightsafetyaustralia.com/2017/07/getting-smart-artificial-intelligence-and-aviation/