These are going to be war machines, make absolutely no mistake about it. On-device autonomy is the perfect foil to escape centralized authority and accountability. There’s no human behind the drone to charge for war crimes. It’s what they’ve always dreamed of.
Who’s going to stop them? Who’s going to say no? The military contracts are too big to say no to, and they might not have a choice.
The elimination of toil will
mean the elimination of humans all together. That’s where we’re headed. There will be no profitable life left for you, and you will be liquidated by “AI-Powered Automation
for Every Decision”[0]. Every. Decision. It’s so transparent. The optimists in this thread are baffling.
MIT spinoff Google-owned Boston Dynamics pledged not to militarize their robots. Which is very hard to believe given they're backed by DARPA, the DoD/Military investment arm.
How would these things be competitive with drones on the battlefield? They probably cost the equivalent of 1000 autonomous drones and 100x the time and materials to make, way more power would be required to make them work too.
Terminator is a good movie but in reality, a cheap autonomous drone would mess one of those up pretty good.
I've seen some of the footage from Ukraine, drones are deadly, efficient, they are terrifying on the battlefield. Even though those robots will get crazy maneuverable, it's going to be pretty hard to out run an exploding drone.
Maybe the Terminators will have shotguns, but I could imagine 5 drones per terminator being a pretty easy to achieve considering they will be built by other autonomous robots.
There's a clear task being given to the robot. If anything this will save lives. There are plenty of soldiers that love to kill for the hell of it, at least this will be easy to track down to who gave the order.
> there won’t have to be a human in the loop to execute mass murder
This looks like an increasingly theoretical concern. (And probably always has been. Wars were far more brutal when folks fought face to face than they are today.)
I feel such vindication in my disdain for this work, and the people who continue to automate human experience away.
You are monsters who mistake luxury for bliss, money for agency, and power for love.
I speak directly to the likes of Paul Graham, Peter Thiel, and all those who follow them. They are false prophets who deny us all our humanity. Monster is the perfect word for them.
Web browser engine, and OpenSSL (or equivalent) patches alone are the main concern in userspace. Those codebases are a constantly moving target. Look at the stream of CVEs and security patches that Apple publishes. Almost every bug affects every product because of how much code is shared up and down the stack.
Apple is definitely not the worst in this regard, but the most recent version of iOS to support the iPad 3rd generation (the device we are discussing which is being used as a PDF reader) is iOS 9.3.5 (a security/bugfix release on August 25, 2016 which supports the WiFi-only version of the iPad 3rd generation) or iOS 9.3.6 (also a bugfix release on July 22, 2019 which supports the WiFi+cellular version of the same device - specifically, this was a fix to keep GPS working).
The iPad 3rd generation was released in 2012, so the 2016 9.3.5 iOS release gave 4 years of security/bugfix support for the WiFi-only version of that device.
Apple patches anything with a proven exploit as long as it’s in a supported version of the OS. E.g. They will not patch versions beyond macos 10.14 i believe, not sure what the cutoff for iOS is but it’s usually about 6 years of security updates. Which means that iOS 9.3.5 is well outside of that and so a bug that impacts that os will not be patched. Which means using an old device like that on the open internet is deeply foolish
My whole point is that what you believe isn't correct. Apple continues to release security updates for "unsupported" versions (let's be careful about terminology, that term is specific and we're both using it), generally for two more years after a version becomes unsupported.
This is in a lot of the reporting about the topic and linked repeatedly in these comments. Please don't repeat false information.
Now you're right that this particular really old version also doesn't get security updates - but boy do I not have that expectation, and I would be surprised if anyone acting in good faith did.
I used it for a while but plateaued after some time. Using https://www.typequicker.com/practice now - has more detailed stats and a daily typing test with a leaderboard to motivate me to do at least a little each day Lol
Newark’s overworked controllers might argue differently. Of course in this forum the general suggestion will be to replace tired controllers with sleepless machines, and the technologists here have strong incentives to advocate for such solutions.
(Shrug) ATC is no job for humans, and I'm tired of pretending it is.
If we were building our aviation infrastructure from scratch starting today, you would get some really strange looks if you suggested employing humans to manage air traffic.
En-route ATC is already mostly automated, with humans supervising the system and talking to the pilots.
Arrival/departure/ground ATC has to deal with much more complex traffic, emergency situations and edge cases in general. Technologically, we're nowhere near fully automating this.
When's the last time someone in a control tower was actually surprised by anything genuinely new? (Anything that didn't involve ancient equipment breaking down in a new and unusual way, that is.)
ATC is a solved problem. Nothing is going to happen that hasn't happened before, or otherwise can't be anticipated. There's nothing about ATC that inherently demands human involvement in real time.
> Nothing is going to happen that hasn't happened before, or otherwise can't be anticipated.
By the way, this mentality is at odds with safety. If you design a safety-critical system under the assumption that nothing unexpected will ever happen, then whenever it happens (and it's a question of when, not if) people will die.
The first and most important reaction to anything unexpected is simple: localize the trouble spot and reroute traffic away from it.
What can't be handled by doing that? You've listed quite a few examples (and thanks for taking the time to do so!) but all but one of them seem like perfectly reasonable scenarios for automation.
Another point I'd raise is that most ATC screwups don't involve anything weird happening except failures to follow existing ATC procedures. Any list of Things That Make For Bad Days at the Airport needs to include that.
Happy you asked! Here are a few interesting cases that the respective ATCs probably hadn't seen before or will ever see again:
- Plane loses radio communication on final approach and ignores go-around orders, lands on occupied runway as ATC gets others out of the way [1]
- Guy steals a plane and takes off without permission [2]
- Someone left some cones on a runway at JFK [3]
- Door blows off aircraft [4]
- Some dude runs across the runways [5]
- Pregnant woman giving birth on flight [6]
- Student pilot freaks out, ATC calms her down and gets her instructor on frequency [7]
- Earthquake [8]
- Pilot hits a deer [9]
- Bomb threat on board, pilots decide to evacuate on the tarmac after no help arrives in ~1h [10]
Some situations have probably happened before, somewhere. Some others are completely new. I would highly recommend that you watch these videos (they're all relatively short) and genuinely ask yourself whether our current state-of-the-art AI models would be able to successfully handle these situations in the short timeframe required to do so. Let alone the fact that by AI we mean text models, so I'm not sure how they would integrate with terrain information, real-time radar data, arrival/departure routes, etc.
I think you have a fundamental misunderstanding of what control towers do. They're not there to simply observe planes do their thing and intervene if they get too close. They actively handle the traffic, and this task requires human pattern recognition and cross-domain reasoning skills in a matter of seconds, and the technology to replace this is simply not there yet. If you still disagree, I'd love to learn which technologies you'd apply to this problem and how they would compose with each other in order to achieve the same outcomes as in the cases I linked.
Of course, this is not to say that ATC shouldn't be made safer and more automated wherever possible. Particularly in the US, where equipment is severely outdated and some dubious regulations allow their ATCs to handle runways and give clearances in a way that would not be allowed in Europe and have already resulted in more than a few close calls. These are all valid concerns, but IMO they can't be extrapolated to "all ATC services can and should be automated".
I fly often, and I for one feel safer (at least, with our current technology) knowing that there are humans in the cockpit and in the control tower who can react and take control when unexpected stuff happens.
Plane loses radio communication on final approach and ignores go-around orders, lands on occupied runway as ATC gets others out of the way [1]
Trivially handled by video game-grade AI. Is an aircraft somewhere it's not supposed to be, or doing something it's not supposed to be doing (most likely because a human has screwed up somewhere?) Route everything else out of the area, signal authorities. Human intervention not required.
Guy steals a plane and takes off without permission [2]
See above. What can ATC possibly do about this, besides alert other aircraft to the situation and signal law enforcement?
- Someone left some cones on a runway at JFK [3]
Foreign object detected or reported on runway, an everyday occurrence. Alert other aircraft and facilities personnel. What else is the controller going to do, go downstairs and pick up the cone?
Door blows off aircraft [4]
What is the controller supposed to do about this, other than accept the crew's request for an emergency landing and (guess what) route everybody else out of their way?
Some dude runs across the runways [5]
Like other 'surprises', two-legged FOD might have surprised the Wright brothers, but that's about it. Alert law enforcement and warn aircraft.
Pregnant woman giving birth on flight [6]
Just another routine 'surprise' covered by standard procedure. Handled primarily by the air crew rather than ATC. Handle emergency landing permission if requested by crew, alert medical personnel to meet the aircraft when it lands, done deal.
Student pilot freaks out, ATC calms her down and gets her instructor on frequency [7]
Honestly not sure what should be done to automate this kind of situation. I suppose an LLM could handle it as well as anyone else. :-P
See also the edge cases where the pilot(s) are incapacitated and an untrained civilian needs to be talked through the landing. How often does that happen in real life (and how often does it actually work?)
Earthquake [8]
Not really something ATC would be involved with except at the purely-tactical level. Ground outgoing traffic and reroute incoming flights until all-clear given by officials.
Pilot hits a deer [9]
Reroute traffic and alert medics.
Bomb threat on board, pilots decide to evacuate on the tarmac after no help arrives in ~1h [10]
Not an ATC issue except for the need to (guess what) reroute traffic.
They actively handle the traffic, and this task requires human pattern recognition and cross-domain reasoning skills in a matter of seconds, and the technology to replace this is simply not there yet. If you still disagree, I'd love to learn which technologies you'd apply to this problem and how they would compose with each other in order to achieve the same outcomes as in the cases I linked.
You could still have a valid overall point regarding the need for humans in the real-time loop, but I disagree that most of the scenarios you mention support that point. All of those cases can be (and are) anticipated, all of them have happened before except possibly [10], and all of them can be handled by computers at least as well as humans. Except possibly the situation with the pilot needing real-time psych support.
Let alone the fact that by AI we mean text models, so I'm not sure how they would integrate with terrain information, real-time radar data, arrival/departure routes, etc.
I definitely don't mean LLM-style text models. As I suggested in the first answer, nothing on this list except (again) #7 would have flummoxed a game programmer ten or twenty years ago. If some people want to try an ELIZA-like LLM to deal with #7, fine, but that would be a research problem. Nothing else on your list requires any new research.
You have listed the correct actions to take in each scenario, but it's still not at all obvious to me how each case would be fully automated, start to finish. I would like more specifics, besides simply
Since I took the time to compile a list of examples that you sadly didn't find surprising enough, I would appreciate it if you returned the courtesy and provided a more concrete design of a fully automated ATC system using current technology.
> Trivially handled by video game-grade AI.
I think it's fairly likely I have played more flight simulator games than you have. If you know of a single one of them where the ATC AI isn't utterly stupid, please do let me know, I'd love to try it. There's a reason VATSIM exists and remains very popular :)
First of all, to the extent controllers are "surprised" by any of those events, you're making my point for me.
Second, I wasn't referring to ATC AI in flight sims; as you suggest I have no experience with that. I doubt anyone ever put any serious effort into flight sim ATC AI compared with AI for realtime strategy or even FPS games. Years ago, a primitive neural net dragged a 9-dan Go master up and down the ban, so I imagine our current tech can handle a few planes.
I'm not paid to redesign the ATC system, or qualified to do so (although that won't stop Musk, I'm sure.) But as I've made clear, I believe it can and probably should be done. In practice it would probably look more like
if (AircrewOrEmployeesReportForeignObjectOnRunway)
{
closeRunwayAndRedirectTraffic();
alertFacilityPersonnel();
leaveRunWayClosedUntilSomeoneInAuthorityReopensIt();
}
So many of the things you mention are simply not in ATC's wheelhouse to begin with. Their job is to keep things moving (or not) while other people in authority deal with those situations. That part wouldn't change, as I see it.
Thanks for replying. I won't continue this conversation as it seems to me you don't actually have any specific evidences of your claim besides "I believe it can be done", and don't actually know much about the responsibilities and areas of authority of ATC.
I'd say the burden of proof belongs with those who argue that it's impossible to automate ATC while maintaining at least the current safety record. That's an extraordinary claim at this point.
I asked for examples of situations that couldn't be handled through automation, you provided some that I consider invalid or inapplicable, and... well, there we are. GG
I enjoyed the thread, and thanks for compiling the list, but I have to add, I haven't found them surprising either.
Automation doesn't have to mean "level 5+: ATC AI on, let's go find an extended happy hour"
I think it's very important to separate the software engineering (and systems engineering, and safety and process design, and other disciplines involved on the object-level) from the challenges at the meta-level (politics, legal liability - insurability, scaling and economics, and procurement issues, avoiding yet another too big to fail boondoggle, and so on).
One obvious problem is that by definition someone sitting there doing their shift has a very holistic view, and asking them what do they need to do their job better might not worth it economically. (The faster horse problem. Though sending a few enthusiastic designers there, also crunching the numbers of the past near-misses and other issues would likely reveal gaps in the current procedures and tools, and ... and of course this all then runs aground because changing procedures and tools is hard, hello FAA, etc.) But, but, of course doing the top-to-bottom design naively is almost a surefire way to burn a few quick billion bucks for nothing. (So, I think this should be something like an ongoing challenge, like the DARPA Grand Challenge for driverless cars.)
It's very easy to make a flippant comment that disagrees with another, with no supporting evidence, but demands multiple examples from any future replies. A reply doing that could take a huge time investment to do properly (just look at agubelu's incredible reply to you). Sometimes the only feasible solution to that imbalance is a down vote.
It’s like I summoned you! Just be honest about your incentives if you care to make these arguments. Then be prepared to answer the accountability question, for when the system inevitably fails.
My "incentive" is that I fly somewhere every once in a while, as do people that I care about, and I want the system to be as safe, reliable, efficient, resilient, and cost-effective as possible.
> Then be prepared to answer the accountability question, for when the system inevitably fails.
Airplanes have gotten increasingly automated. Who is responsible when Airbus' excellent automations that have prevented countless upsets and accidents fail? Nobody, if it was an honest mistake, and lessons learned are applied to improve even further.
The problem with modern ATC is that a lot of the safety systems are bolted and backported on top of existing extremely legacy tech. Ffs, the communications still happen over radio where transmissions are missed if more than one person talks at the same time. And people have died because of this, as well as controllers making a mistake or pilots and controllers misunderstanding each other.
There's no reason to continue bolting more stuff on top. A very large part of ATC can be fully automated and made safer.
All true, except that a key reason they still use AM for voice communications is precisely because it's obvious if multiple users are trying to transmit at once.
AM is obviously not the way a "CSMA/CD" system would be designed today, but it does get the job done, and has for a long time.
AM is good for instructions because its broadcast nature allows everyone to hear everyone, but arguably coordinates-over-voice-over-AM is dangerously error-prone. My sense is that the ideal system might look something like "AM with a digital side band" where ATC can press buttons to transmit data (e.g. authorized altitudes and vectors) to a plane but metadata is still carried over AM.
A lot of fatalities have been avoided thanks to a pilot overhearing ATC giving takeoff or landing clearance to another plane, but quite a few incidents could also have been avoided if plane cockpits had a big red light "authorized to enter runway" which could only be turned on by ATC. In an industry which is designed around so many redundant systems, it's rather astonishing that an error in a single communication channel can lead to disaster.
There was plenty of opportunity for a sovereign wealth fund for decades within Alberta and for all of Canada. You’re saying now it’s only on the table that the filthy liberal coastal elites won’t be on the unfair dole?
The unaccountable extra-national corporations who control most of Alberta’s oil production won’t suddenly become more generous and compliant to the needs of Albertans upon separation. You don’t have the balls or the leverage to control them. The province will have less leverage in the long run than before without the other two thirds of Canada’s economy to lever with in trade deals.
The main selling point it seems is to make the rest of Canada suffer as hard as possible. Make no mistake, we absolutely will suffer from the withdrawal of being cut off that black tar we’re addicted to from you. But you’re far more addicted to it than the rest of us are. What comes after?
Alberta _had_ a sovereign wealth fund. What happened to it? Equalization payments don’t explain of the collapse of the once huge fund. It sure didn’t buy much local diversification!
You’d think Alberta would be more like Norway already then. Instead you have lifted pickup trucks and tailings ponds. Even more wealth won’t solve the cultural bankruptcy that’s making the province upset enough to consider separation to begin with.
To answer your original question, that’s why I think it’ll be more like Russia.
Never mind the fact that it shrunk or stagnated in value due to mismanagement for decades. Oil prices are low and you have a single buyer who hoses you already.
Equalization transfers have cost $67 billion TOTAL since 1957. Less than a billion per year. Alberta collects >$25 billion PER YEAR in royalties. Canada isn’t your enemy here. Your province is addicted to a bad deal. You could have built refineries 50 years ago. That’s not possible now. Imagine how much control of those new facilities would go to unaccountable corporations? It wouldn’t be a good deal and the capex is insane.
The federal govt has been supportive, even under Trudeau, for increasing export opportunities. And you think that will get easier, especially through BC, after secession? Why?
Alberta needed to pivot hard away from oil 20 years ago. The US wont need Alberta crude forever.
> Alberta needed to pivot hard away from oil 20 years ago.
Why would you pivot away from something the world needs? Just yesterday at the G7 our European allies asked why we have interprovincial barriers, and requested a pipeline going east and LNG terminal so they can reduce their dependence on Russia.
Also our economy is more diverse than Ontario or BC. If you were here you'd see that, while oil and gas is a massive windfall, there's a lot of other stuff happening.
See, the thing is, our GDP per capita is 35% higher than Canada's as a whole... We haven't squandered anything. And what do we get from the rest of Canada? Barriers to further development...
Ask a hard question that you can’t answer by means conventional to you, like science or straightforward logic. Keep asking why until something bothers you. That discomfort is called philosophy. Some might call that psychology, but I think that’s just applied philosophy.
Who’s going to stop them? Who’s going to say no? The military contracts are too big to say no to, and they might not have a choice.
The elimination of toil will mean the elimination of humans all together. That’s where we’re headed. There will be no profitable life left for you, and you will be liquidated by “AI-Powered Automation for Every Decision”[0]. Every. Decision. It’s so transparent. The optimists in this thread are baffling.
0: https://www.palantir.com/