The AI revolution could leave us unable to perform important tasks on our own.
By the mid-1980s, most commercial aircraft were equipped with sophisticated autopilot systems. In theory, that technology would reduce human error and make flying safer. And it did, but only up to a point. Planes still crashed at a worrisome rate. National Aeronautics and Space Administration researcher Earl Wiener, trained as both a pilot and a psychologist, spent years studying the problem. Automation eliminates some pilot errors, Wiener discovered. But it also changes the pilot’s role in the cockpit, he wrote, in ways that could “lead to fewer but more critical errors.”
Pilots were spending more time passively monitoring their aircrafts’ systems and less time with their hands actively on the controls. Gradually, both their mental acuity and stick-and-rudder skills would degrade. These pilots were slow to react to problems, Wiener found, and surprisingly ham-fisted when they did. This erosion of basic competence seems to have caused the baffling mid-Atlantic crash of Air France Flight 447 in 2009, among other accidents.
Continue reading the entire piece here at the Wall Street Journal (paywall)
______________________
James B. Meigs is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a City Journal contributing editor.
Photo by Thomas Fuller/NurPhoto via Getty Images