Well said "the ability to make decisions in a dynamic environment".

One of my pet peeves is when friends/family/people ask me about the autopilot or automation in general.. There is a true perception that we are pretty much doing nothing but watching the autopilot do its thing...
I sometimes use the analogy of vehicle cruise control that does a great job maintaining speed in the car but has no idea that it is running up on another vehicle...if you were the only vehicle on the road or the only aircraft in the sky there would be no issue....unfortunately there are hundreds of decisions to be made every flight because it is a dynamic environment.... obviously self driving vehicles have gone well beyond cruise control but the artificial intelligence required to fly a plane will require exponentially more factors to be considered than driving a 2 dimensional land based vehicle like a train or car...

Now that I've said that we can all be amazed when some 12 year old kid from the Midwest comes out with prototype software next year..... Speaking of which, I wish that same kid would focus on an improvement to PBS first....

 

Lots of remote control trains operating in rail yards and spur lines across the country today and have been for a long time. Point to point cross country isn’t happening but the technology to run trains remotely has been around for quite awhile.

 

There are several reasons they have not automated trains yet. Like aircraft, train engines take years to design, cost a ton, and have a long service life. Also, train engineers are pretty cheap. Their pay has gone way down and you don't need very many of them.

 

You mean the C-Series?

Step 1 - single pilot:
"When I mentioned to Rob Dewar that the AHMS had the potential to make the C Series the airline’s first single pilot aircraft, he replied to me saying that this had been envisaged from the very start of the program. However the absence of regulatory framework which adds up to the rejection by the public of such technology left no choice for Bombardier than to let this technology be put to one side. Remember that whilst these two obstacles are currently very much present, if in 20 years the situation were to change then it would not be necessary to redesign a new aircraft."

https://aeroemploi.ca/nouvelles/n/19...-c-series-ahms

 

Fully automated passenger airliners are at least 50 years away. Single pilot airliners are as close as our idiot unions allow.

 

Despite the hype, AI is nowhere near what some people would have you believe.

https://www.wired.com/story/tesla-autopilot-why-crash-radar

There will be problems. Significant numbers of real self driving cars are at least a decade away. Airliners are way more complex, and operate in a far less forgiving environment

 

You guys are extrapolating the past and thinking technology grows like this:

When in reality it happens like this:


People who are so sure that "anyone alive today" will not see this are likely wrong.

 

You ain't a real pilot if you haven't shot at least one ADF approach to minimums.

 

Preferably, in a third country, where the approach has three beacons and your ADFs are of the “coffee grinder” variety. I’m looking at you, Yerevan.

GF

 

No, you're just not paying attention.

I think everyone grasps the rate of change when it comes to technology. The thing you fail to understand is: Just because the technology is there, doesn't mean it's going to be implemented.