rickair7777

Well actually in this case you need a generalized artificial intelligence, which does not exist. And none of the experts know how to make one.

The one thing that the smartest people in the world do mostly agree on is that actually turning a general AI loose has very serious potential hazards, of the existential sort.

A buddy aircraft works for military operations where the buddy is expendable, and so are all the people under the flight path. For non-wartime ops, it will need to be fully capable of taking care of itself in an emergency.

The "software" as you call it is most certainly NOT known. Frankly you're talking about things which you don't understand. It can follow the magenta line and autoland, but if you think about it, on any given trip you (or your CA) make some judgement calls. And correct some DX errors. And W&B issues. And dodge some weather. Occasionally you deal with a systems failure or emergency. Software can't do any of that in a flexible manner... divert, RTB.

Sure. As long as everything goes smoothly.

The biggest problem, that most of the uneducated folks don't grasp, is the economics. Doesn't mater how much you save on pilots if your unmanned airliner diverts or returns to gate every time there's any sort of glitch. It has to be able to think in order to deal with the unexpected.. if you stump the chump, it will divert/RTB. Can't do that too often and stay in business.

Also can't crash more than once or twice. All that trillions of dollars in R&D will be for naught if the public and politicians get scared... and scared they'll be, far more so than if it was pilot error.

The driverless car advocates have already learned this hard way. At this point they have pretty much given up on the near term, they didn't make big public announcements to that effect, but it's true. A handful of fatalities and governments and underwriters have pulled the plug on testing. What you'll see are greatly enhanced automation to aid the driver, not replace him. Liability now insists that the driver have his hands on the wheel and eyes open.

Again it's as much people as technology. I think the only way ahead for autonomous cars in the near term is dedicated roads. That will eliminate most of the real-world factors which confuse automation, plus you can build in guidance aids.

This is true, you only have to do it once. But that's far more difficult than most folks comprehend.