WOULD YOU USE A DRIVERLESS TAXI SERVICE?

[Meadow Skipper]

Like that'll ever happen up in grizzly country.

Goes to show, you’re gonna have a task on your hands trying to out-curmudgeon Bunny.

[Ted Striker]

An F18 can land on a Nimitz class in autopilot....

The Magic Carpet is not a technicality a full autoland on a CVN.

That's actually a good comparison though. A jet can be built to autoland on a piece of pavement, with the man inside just monitoring in case something fails, but it requires equipment on the ground at that specific location. If you want to land it anywhere else, you're going to need a pilot.

At this point, the pilot doesn't need to be in the airplane, but the public doesn't trust that yet, and the people who do the job are putting a lot of resources toward fighting (or at least delaying) it.

[Vt-Freeheel]

Goes to show, you’re gonna have a task on your hands trying to out-curmudgeon Bunny.

POTD [so far]

[yeahman]

Yeah I don't think I'll be getting on a pilotless jet plane any time soon. No flight attendants needed either, just serve yourself! Nobody on this flight to Europe 'cept us passengers. That'll work great.

[Meadow Skipper]

POTD [so far]

Thx. It is always - always - hilarious how Bunny gives people a hard time about where they live. It usually means he’s running out of material.

[Ted Striker]

Yeah I don't think I'll be getting on a pilotless jet plane any time soon. No flight attendants needed either, just serve yourself! Nobody on this flight to Europe 'cept us passengers. That'll work great.

The public's attitude is a big part of why it hasn't happened yet. Obviously, the technology already exists to fly military drones remotely, but nobody wants to ride on a pilotless flight, so the theoretical first step is eliminating the First Officer by putting them on the ground.

Then the captain is gonna be like the old Maytag repairman



But they'll never get rid of the flight attendants.

[Benny Profane]

I think Sullenberger has a contrary opinion here.

[ill-advised strategy]

Didn’t read the thread, the answer is hard no.

[dunfree]

Luddites be luddites.


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economics, not techno fears. Uber drivers make shit and supply, clean and maintain the expensive car. Any “robotaxi” service has to compete against this, and if you expect waves of job disruption you’d expect more supply of people willing to drive ubers with their own car for peanuts.

[yeahman]

economics, not techno fears. Uber drivers make shit and supply, clean and maintain the expensive car. Any “robotaxi” service has to compete against this.

Cleaning the car between riders is a big question mark. What are all these robot cars going to do, go back to headquarters after each passenger and have the car checked and cleaned? How is the robot going to know if somebody puked in the back? Or even just left a pile of fast food garbage. Christ, people will be shooting up in robot cars, having sex, you name it. Need a human to deal with this aspect of the service.

[yeahman]

The public's attitude is a big part of why it hasn't happened yet.

Otherwise known as human nature. Not easily changed or overcome. It can take generations.

[Benny Profane]

Is that...

sperm?

[yeahman]

And now a few minutes after posting about dirty Uber cars look what appears on my gram feed.

[MontuckyFried]

At this point, the pilot doesn't need to be in the airplane, but the public doesn't trust that yet, and the people who do the job are putting a lot of resources toward fighting (or at least delaying) it.

I dunno. While the tech is certainly CAPABLE of flying no prob, what no AI can do (yet) is handle the hard ethical decisions that pilots sometimes have to make when SHTF. That is just something that I don't believe people will ever be comfortable with. Leaving your life in the hands of another human being just sits better with me than having a robot deciding on whether or not we gonna die.

Plus, who's gonna handle the technical stuff that requires a physical presence if no crew's on board? There is many an aviation story of crewmen saving the day by climbing out of their seats and taking care of business. No AI is capable of physically handling something critical in the avionics compartment or elsewhere , ya know?

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[Ted Striker]

I think Sullenberger has a contrary opinion here.

Contrary to what? I didn't express an opinion. The American military and industry are working to automate all modes of transportation. Same goes for the EU. That's a fact.

[Benny Profane]

Oh no, I wouldn't presume to argue with a pro. It's just that I got a sense that some think it's possible.

I mean, no way a robot could have pulled off what he did, right? Well, maybe in Terminator future times, but, shit, I don't even want to know.

[ill-advised strategy]

Also, at risk of being dunked-on by all the rich important ppl here, I have driven truck, taxi, bus, and lyft for a living for the last 10 years or so.

The self-driving vehicle thing makes a lot of sense to me under limited specialized circumstances: replacing team-driving scenarios for bi-coastal cross-country freeway freight runs, handling certain really tricky tight dark parking/docking situations...maybe some really straightforward terminal-to-terminal express transit or greyhound kind of runs.

I think there’s an awful lot of complex intractable problems to solve before we just get in a vehicle and get taken wherever we want to go.

I have to think they must have a way, now, to be operating the current state of the art software in a passive mode as a professional million or two or three million safe mile driver works, and recording and learning from any deviations between what the machine tries to do versus what the pro does. They’ve gotta be doing those studies, I’d be interested in seeing how much deviation there is, and what the after-action turns up on those errors.

[ill-advised strategy]

Also, one nail in the coffin of my truck driving days was that twice the freightliner software dynamited the brakes on its own for no good reason, and one of those times it almost caused a crash, so I felt like those trucks were unsafe to drive because the panic-stop automation stuff was not correct.

One spiked the brakes for a deer I wasn’t going to hit. The other locked the brakes on an off ramp because it thought I was headed for a guardrail. I am telling you, when you’re just doing normal driving stuff in the middle of a 2500 mile week in a 110,000 mile year, and your truck just slams the brakes on in the middle of a random turn... you want to gtfo of that truck and not get back in it.

I was left with a sense that, while that was a snapshot of that particular tech in that moment of time, it also represented something more ominous and persistent: that industry will deploy tech that’s not ready for prime-time. As such, I’m nervous about these inevitable rollouts.

[ill-advised strategy]

Also, somebody shit my bus just the other day, just me and her, said nothing to me. I was disinfecting and found shit smeared on the seat.

Camera, no camera.... somebody is going to shit or puke or jizz or die in that car. People are. t h e w o r r r s t.

[MontuckyFried]

Also, one nail in the coffin of my truck driving days was that twice the freightliner software dynamited the brakes on its own for no good reason, and one of those times it almost caused a crash, so I felt like those trucks were unsafe to drive because the panic-stop automation stuff was not correct.

One spiked the brakes for a deer I wasn’t going to hit. The other locked the brakes on an off ramp because it thought I was headed for a guardrail. I am telling you, when you’re just doing normal driving stuff in the middle of a 2500 mile week in a 110,000 mile year, and your truck just slams the brakes on in the middle of a random turn... you want to gtfo of that truck and not get back in it.

I was left with a sense that, while that was a snapshot of that particular tech in that moment of time, it also represented something more ominous and persistent: that industry will deploy tech that’s not ready for prime-time. As such, I’m nervous about these inevitable rollouts.

Wow, ias. That is freaking crazy. Screw that. What compels these idiotic companies to implement premature "safety" tech like that? Probably another reason (asides from the mandatory regen nonsense I used to deal with) that older rigs go for a premium these days. Drivers don't want that crap! Along with the big brother connected logs and what not, talk about intrusive.

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[Benny Profane]

Also, somebody shit my bus just the other day, just me and her, said nothing to me. I was disinfecting and found shit smeared on the seat.

Camera, no camera.... somebody is going to shit or puke or jizz or die in that car. People are. t h e w o r r r s t.

Yup. Drove a cab in 70s NYC. People suck a lot.

[Ted Striker]

I dunno. While the tech is certainly CAPABLE of flying no prob, what no AI can do (yet) is handle the hard ethical decisions that pilots sometimes have to make when SHTF. That is just something that I don't believe people will ever be comfortable with.

I mean, no way a robot could have pulled off what he did

At this point, all they're seriously looking at is shared control between someone in the air and someone on the ground, but who knows what slippery slope might follow that.

Needless to say, the big pilot unions are against this for both safety and job protection, but they're preparing for damage control if/when it might come to fruition. Part of that fight is that the industry has been in a race to the bottom for so long that there's a major recruitment problem (pre-covid, that is) so the airlines would love to reduce the number of 'real' pilots required.

[Benny Profane]

People love the cheap fares. Just like Uber. Blame the user.

[Ted Striker]

I was left with a sense that, while that was a snapshot of that particular tech in that moment of time, it also represented something more ominous and persistent: that industry will deploy tech that’s not ready for prime-time. As such, I’m nervous about these inevitable rollouts.

Absofuckinglutely.

And the tech that works, but doesn't correctly inform the operator, resulting in a dangerous tug of war.

And the tech that was imagined by one team, designed by another, built by yet another, with the technical writing performed by another, incorporated into a training syllabus by a different organization, taught by independent contractors between midnight and 6am, and not seen during normal ops so that when it does rear its head, there's a good chance it'll be a huge WTF moment at time where there isn't much time.

[ill-advised strategy]

Well, the curmudgeon cynic in me tells me that Congress will pass a bi-partisan bill shielding the truck manufacturers and fleet owners from that litigation, much like nursing home operators were protected from their murderous operations in this pandemic. They always have our best interests close to their hearts.

All of this will only work with trillions of infrastructure built to create an environment that shit box robot cars can operate fairly safely. Like high speed train lines. But then, you wonder, why not trains?

You’re not a cynic...
Here’s a real cynical take: they’ll just put drivers in there who have no real control, pay them even less because the machine does everything, then lay all the blame on the drivers when things go wrong.