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Can Claude Fly a Plane?

so.long.thanks.fish

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Re: Can Claude Fly a Plane?

#31

Post by stinkbeetle »

Markoff wrote: post #26

I wouldn't really worry about flying, but more about taking off/landing. Related from December 2025: Garmin Emergency Autoland deployed for the first time https://www.flightradar24.com/blog/aviation-news/aviation-sa...

Autoland has been used for 60 years and on much more complicated aircraft than that Beechcraft B200.

Re: Can Claude Fly a Plane?

#32

Post by codingconstable »

dewey wrote: post #28
operatingthetan wrote: post #18

We already have advanced autopilots that can fly commercial airliners. We just don't trust them enough to not have human pilots. I would trust the autopilot more than freaking Claude. We already do, every day.

I don't think anyone is suggesting we should do that...but it's still a fun project to play around with?

Agreed. I think thats a really fun way to test out Claude's ability to perform an abstract task it's probably not trained on, was nice to read

Re: Can Claude Fly a Plane?

#33

Post by Ekaros »

operatingthetan wrote: post #18

We already have advanced autopilots that can fly commercial airliners. We just don't trust them enough to not have human pilots. I would trust the autopilot more than freaking Claude. We already do, every day.

I think we can trust them to not have human pilots. It is just that having human in loop is very useful in not that rare scenarios. Say airfield has too much wind or fog or another plane has crashed on all runways... Someone needs to make decision what to do next. Or when there is some system failure not thought about.

And well if they are there they might as well fly for practise.

And no. I would not allow LLM in to the loop of making any decision involving actual flying part.

Re: Can Claude Fly a Plane?

#35

Post by ekianjo »

operatingthetan wrote: post #18

We already have advanced autopilots that can fly commercial airliners. We just don't trust them enough to not have human pilots. I would trust the autopilot more than freaking Claude. We already do, every day.

> We just don't trust them enough to not have human pilots

never mind that most crashes are caused by humans, very rarely by technical issues going amok

Re: Can Claude Fly a Plane?

#36

Post by stnikolauswagne »

Markoff wrote: post #27
thewhitetulip wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And which human will fly in an llm operated plane?!

I am sure some Ryanair customers would risk it for good price.

Give the whole scheme some sort of mile multiplier and you will get high-freq fliers salivating over taking a llm flight with a 12 hour layover in Iceland to get to Portland from New York for those sweet miles.

Re: Can Claude Fly a Plane?

#37

Post by LiamPowell »

Ekaros wrote: post #33
operatingthetan wrote: post #18

We already have advanced autopilots that can fly commercial airliners. We just don't trust them enough to not have human pilots. I would trust the autopilot more than freaking Claude. We already do, every day.

I think we can trust them to not have human pilots. It is just that having human in loop is very useful in not that rare scenarios. Say airfield has too much wind or fog or another plane has crashed on all runways... Someone needs to make decision what to do next. Or when there is some system failure not thought about. And well if they are there they might as well fly for practise. And no. I would not allow LLM in to…

There's also the issue that when something goes wrong, many people will never trust an autopilot again. Just look at how people have reacted to a Waymo running over a cat in a scenario where most humans would have made the same error. There's now many people calling for self-driving cars to never be allowed on roads and citing that one incident.

Re: Can Claude Fly a Plane?

#38

Post by boring-human »

operatingthetan wrote: post #18

We already have advanced autopilots that can fly commercial airliners. We just don't trust them enough to not have human pilots. I would trust the autopilot more than freaking Claude. We already do, every day.

> We just don't trust them enough to not have human pilots.

Much of the value of a human crew is as an implicit dogfooding warranty for the passengers. If it wasn't safe to fly, the pilots wouldn't risk it day after day.

To think of it, it'd be nice if they posted anonymized third-party psych evaluations of the cockpit crew on the wall by the restrooms. The cabin crew would probably appreciate that too.

Re: Can Claude Fly a Plane?

#39

Post by ramon156 »

> CRASHED #2, different cause. Plane was stable in a slow descent but between fly.py invocations (~20 sec gap while I logged and computed the next maneuver) there was no active controller. Plane kept descending under its last commanded controls until it hit terrain at 26 ft MSL, 1.7 nm short of the runway. Lesson: never leave the controller idle in flight

Gold

Re: Can Claude Fly a Plane?

#40

Post by stnikolauswagne »

ekianjo wrote: post #35
operatingthetan wrote: post #18

We already have advanced autopilots that can fly commercial airliners. We just don't trust them enough to not have human pilots. I would trust the autopilot more than freaking Claude. We already do, every day.

> We just don't trust them enough to not have human pilots never mind that most crashes are caused by humans, very rarely by technical issues going amok

>never mind that most crashes are caused by humans, very rarely by technical issues going amok

Because humans are the fallback for all the scenarios that the tech cannot reliably cover. And my intuition says that the tech around planes is so heavily audited that only things that work with 99.999...% accuracy work will be left to tech.

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