Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Can Claude Fly a Plane?

so.long.thanks.fish

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 103 posts

Re: Can Claude Fly a Plane?

#71

Post by reeredfdfdf »

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

Still those technological issues do happen, and in those situations it's good to have a human pilot in control. See for example Qantas Flight 72 - the autopilot thought aircraft was stalling, and sent the plane into a dive. It could have ended up very badly without human supervision.

Re: Can Claude Fly a Plane?

#73

Post by LiamPowell »

zenmac wrote: post #70
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.

It would be interesting to see if Claude can land and take off. Don't think the autopilot can do that yet.

Autopilots can. Both on airliners and small planes, although only landing on the latter as far as I know and it's only meant for emergencies. Airbus ATTOL is probably the most interesting of these in that it's visual rather than ILS (note that no commercial airliners are using this).

Re: Can Claude Fly a Plane?

#74

Post by ButlerianJihad »

sandworm101 wrote: post #65
ButlerianJihad wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I sincerely doubt that pilots decide "when to eject a passenger". Mostly it would be the cabin crew: the flight attendants are 100% in charge of flight safety, and they would be managing relationships with passengers, and they would be the ones to make the call. It would ultimately be them calling some kind of law enforcement. If an Air Marshal is onboard already, obviously they would be on the front line as well. Fu…

No. Cabin crew recommend. Pilots actually decide.

Do the pilots also decide whether to issue a parachute to the ejected passenger?

Re: Can Claude Fly a Plane?

#75

Post by alex_duf »

Claude uses the wrong modality to be a piloting model. Latency is critical, and outputting tokens in the hope they take the action at the right time is kinda bonkers.

You'd want all the data from the plane to be input neurons, and all the actions to be output neurons.

Re: Can Claude Fly a Plane?

#76

Post by stnikolauswagne »

ButlerianJihad wrote: post #74
sandworm101 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. Cabin crew recommend. Pilots actually decide.

Do the pilots also decide whether to issue a parachute to the ejected passenger?

Pretty sure ejection here is meant as shorthand for "Transfer the passenger to an entity on the ground to proceed from there" whether that entity is emergency medical services or law enforcement is secondary.

Re: Can Claude Fly a Plane?

#77

Post by DoctorOetker »

sandworm101 wrote: post #43
boring-human wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

There are soooo many pilot decisions that AI is nowhere near making. Managing a flight is more than flying. It is about making safety decisions during crisis, from deciding when to abort an approach to deciding when to eject a passenger. Sure, someone on the ground could make many of those decisions, but i prefer such things be decided by someone with literal skin in the game, not a beancounter or lawyer in an office

I doesn't sound ethical to eject passengers while aborting an approach, regardless of precise timing.

Re: Can Claude Fly a Plane?

#78

Post by stnikolauswagne »

vidarh wrote: post #63
stnikolauswagne wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there any indication that current warning systems are insufficient in any way that would be improved by LLM involvement?

We won't know that until someone has actually investigated how an LLM would do in those scenarios.

That sounds like a solution looking for a problem though, i see plenty of arguments against throwing critical safety information that are in charge of peoples lives into an LLM "just in case the result is better than the result that the current battle-hardened systems already provide"

Re: Can Claude Fly a Plane?

#79

Post by captainbland »

stnikolauswagne wrote: post #61
amelius wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Using an LLM doesn't mean it has to take the final decision. You can also use it as a warning system.

Is there any indication that current warning systems are insufficient in any way that would be improved by LLM involvement?

Well they don't attract nearly as much investment in the current market, I think that might be the problem people really want to solve

Re: Can Claude Fly a Plane?

#80

Post by amelius »

stnikolauswagne wrote: post #78
vidarh wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We won't know that until someone has actually investigated how an LLM would do in those scenarios.

That sounds like a solution looking for a problem though, i see plenty of arguments against throwing critical safety information that are in charge of peoples lives into an LLM "just in case the result is better than the result that the current battle-hardened systems already provide"

Nobody can be against just collecting the data and letting people experiment with it.
Post reply on HN