Quote:
Originally Posted by P-hack
well that is the liberty part, the freedom to go wherever and whenever.
an airplane autopilot would gladly fly into another airplane. It is a glorified cruise control. There are still humans watching things fairly closely.
perfect safety is never leaving the house, stuff happens.
It would seem there is no limit to liberty that can be constrained in the name of safety if nobody objects.
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I can't think of anything more liberating than having the freedom to take a nap, read a book, watch TV, catch up on work, have a conversation, plan an ecomod... instead of having to drive to your destination. The average American spends 37,935 hours driving in their lifetime, or 1,580 full days of their life. It amounts to 11% of our waking hours. With automated driving, we could learn a new language instead of practicing sign language on those that cut us off in stop-and-go-traffic. Liberty is being liberated from the mundane. Freedom is having a choice of activities to engage in.
Autopilot is much more than glorified cruise control, and it would not run airplanes into each other. The sky has lanes of travel separated by 1000 ft of altitude. The autopilot does a much better job of maintaining the proper lane of travel than a human can. Autoland systems also exist and are activated when visibility is poor. The automated system performs the most difficult part of flying with more precision than a human can. Then there are UAVs...
Why the resistance to automating a monotonous task that requires no creativity? I think of the Amish and their arbitrary cutoff for acceptance of technology. Technology doesn't force us into being lazy, it frees us to pursue more creative endeavors.
Pointing out the shortcomings of the current prototype technology to discredit its use in the future is foolish. It's like pointing out that the ENIAC computer is the size of a room and stating that people will never have computers and they are of little practical use.