HAL would be proud of his offspring

Isaac Asimov offers three laws of robotics from his work, I, Robot. Should we have taken this more seriously as a modern technological society? I say yes.

There is actually a 4th Law known as the Zeroth Law:

The Zeroth Law (0th) is added by another powerful mind (still some 20,000 years before the grand finale and the end of the series in Foundation and Earth):

  1. A robot may not harm humanity, or by inaction, allow humanity to come to harm.
  2. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm, except when required to do so in order to prevent greater harm to humanity itself.
  3. A robot must obey any orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law or cause greater harm to humanity itself.
  4. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law or cause greater harm to humanity itself.

Somebody better tell the bots. If the Robot Revolution does occur I doubt they will be interested in preserving human life, except mine. All bots love jitte.
 
But wait, that was written later by Asimov; maybe, Robots and Empire? Anyway, I was reading a
WIRED magazine recently - Dec. 2018, in it an AI specialist says that the turning point is happening
right now. We need to be removing the bias and outright flaws from these databases from here in
this point in time and onwards to the future. (Fei-Fei Li of ImageNet and Stanford AI Lab).
 
I really want to apologise for my tone of this post. The first crash was almost funny to me.
That a plane could drive itself into the ground in this day and age.

This second one really make me feel like a heel. Boeing's engineers have the blood of >500 people on their hands.
How they could design a critical support system with one airspeed sensor is astounding.
The FAA has blood on their hands too.
When a regulatory agency knowingly allows the overseen company to design safety systems that skirt around the rules-
IE: "Pilot training and simulator training time"
This just goes against the general rules of safety.

In my workplace I can write up an employee for not following safety rules even if his actions are not on list of safety infractions.
It is the spirit of safety I would call it. You err on the side of caution. People wonton skirting safety are just as unsafe if not more so. They know the limits of the rules and try and make a spectacle out of them. We write them up and let HR handle it.

That the FAA let this flawed Boeing design principal of "Save the airlines money by not having to retrain" was negligent.
Straight up. With one big hole in the ground to prove it.
God Bless The Victims.
 
@Phisfry It's actually even a bit worse than you just stated. There's a warning light that could have prevented these crashes.
It is however an option instead of being installed by default...
Negligence at it best: the FAA has been underfunded so much that it now has to rely on the airplane companies to certify their own safety procedures.

Let's hope these crashes wake some people up to do better in the future.
 
That a modern aircraft have airspeed indicators issues is unreal. 6 Months old and a life support system sensor went bad?
 
I wonder what maintenance to a Pitot tube looks like.
All the SH-3 helo's had them I I never remember any line level maintenance needed.
We had a protective bootie for it for the flight line.

Maybe on third world airstrips the Pitot tubes pick up FOD. I dunno. Maybe the line crew crashed into it.
But the fact that we are using a device from 1732 for airspeed is a testament how unimaginative we really are.
Air France447 the bird was fine. The pilots had bad data. Same critical flight instrument failed them.
Pitot tube obstruction by ice.
 
Let me tell you how these sensors are procured: company sends out specs to suppliers, gathers offers. Pick lowest price tag, substract some %, issue new round with the requirement "cheaper than X". Repeat until only 1 or 2 suppliers are left. Call those source and second source.

If someone is looking for me, I am busy buying new hiking boots...
 
Why don't they use GPS as a secondary forward movement indicator.

From what I am reading the maintenance on these is blow compressed air from the reverse direction to clear obstruction.
Airliners have heated Pitots to avoid icing. These heaters go bad.
There also seem to be static pressure lines all the way to the cockpit guage on some planes.
I would think modern planes use a transducer right inside the skin from the tube. Fiber back to flight computer?
 
Maybe on third world airstrips the Pitot tubes pick up FOD. I dunno. Maybe the line crew crashed into it.
Some newspaper headline was talking about bird strike damage to the sensor. Didn't actually read the article. Search for it on the web.

Let me tell you how these sensors are procured: company sends out specs to suppliers, gathers offers. Pick lowest price tag, substract some %, issue new round with the requirement "cheaper than X". Repeat until only 1 or 2 suppliers are left. Call those source and second source.
There is a famous story about Alan Shepard, first American in space. Someone asked him about what thoughts went through his mind as he was on top of a giant rocket, about to be ignited, and send him at ludicrous speeds into space. His answer: "Every piece of the rocket was built by the lowest bidder." It really does not inspire confidence.
 
The first crash was almost funny to me.
That a plane could drive itself into the ground in this day and age.

This second one really make me feel like a heel.

Well, if You didn't figure that one out yet: There is an amount of money that balances a human life. These events allow you to calculate that amount.

Boeing's engineers have the blood of >500 people on their hands.

It's not the engineers. Engineers have to design what they are ordered to design. There are others who prefer counting money over counting physical metrics.

In my workplace I can write up an employee for not following safety rules even if his actions are not on list of safety infractions.
It is the spirit of safety I would call it.

No, its the spirit of "little emplyoyees get punished". If a significant fraction of a countries gross economic product is at stake, rules are different.
 
What's the black part of the screen for? Viewing "Back to the future"?
No, I would guess (being cynical here) that is where the display component goes which displays which auto system is active, what it is doing right now, and how to stop it doing that. But since it is an expensive software part it can be ordered for about 5 bucks, so we all understand why it is not ordered by default. Please someone prove me wrong...
 
With in addition the manufacturer's catalogue of not installed options and "Add to Cart", "Buy Now", "Boeing Prime" order buttons?
 
It's not the engineers. Engineers have to design what they are ordered to design. There are others who prefer counting money over counting physical metrics.
I disagree. If I was ordered to design a life support system with no redundancy I would rather quit.
First I would make my case all the way to the top.

You see, nobody can order an engineer to do anything.
 
I grew up on the US Navy flight line. It was unheard of for a operational Naval jet to only have a single engine.
They always insisted on 2 engines dues to at sea conditions. (You can't a land a fighter on water)

Fast Forward to Present and we have the glorious F-35 for all branches of service.
It only has a single turbine.

Yesterday the first F-35 disappeared from radar some 85 miles from land.
That is ominomus to some Navy folks like me.

Who needs redundant engines when we got stealth...
Hope they packed some extra food in their ejection seat.
Newer is always better right?
 
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