An auto-pilot for an airplane is a considerably easier problem to solve. No lanes; no pedestrians; very little other traffic; three spatial degrees of freedom. That's why auto-pilots for airplanes have existed for almost a century but we're just now beginning to get self-driving cars. Humans are still better at dealing with the full panoply of crap that road driving throws at us.

Aircraft autopilots also rely on experienced and licensed pilots to operate them and be responsible for the aircraft at all times. Self driving cars have assume the operator is not particularly capable nor paying attention to anything happening on the road.

Google Self-Driving Cars currently fail approximately every 1,500 miles, according to their own report. We are a LONG way away from being able to separate the operator's attention from driving.

Do they rely on the pilot? I was under the impression it was entirely hands off.

Current generation of autopilots doesn't handle traffic avoidance or make any routing decisions - they just follow pre-programmed routes at pre-programmed speed and altitude (or climb/descent profile).

But even this relatively simple level of automation causes problems - pilots start to rely on automation too much, and when things go south they are not capable to deal with it.

Airlines recognize it, and put more emphasis on hand-flying during training and routine operations, so pilots don't lose their basic piloting skills.

It's not a new problem - there is an excellent training video from 1997 - "Children of the Magenta": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pN41LvuSz10

This video also inspired an excellent podcast from 99 Percent Invisible about the challenges and dangers of automation. I would highly recommend listening.

http://99percentinvisible.org/episode/children-of-the-magent...

There are many conditions unders which an aircraft autopilot will simply disconnect without previous warning and hand over controls to the pilot.

> Yeah, remember, auto-pilot in a plane needs to be 100% reliable, or everyone dies.

First, they're not anywhere near 100% reliable. They can fail on their own, and they'll also intentionally shut themselves off if the instruments they rely on fail. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_France_Flight_447

Second, an autopilot failure shouldn't lead to death if the pilots are competent and paying attention.

What does a failed autopilot look like? Would a pilot do any better with an "aerodynamic stall"? I know little about planes and it seems like that'd be a big problem with or without a pilot driving.

All pilots are trained to recover from a stall.

A failed autopilot could look like all sorts of things, from just automatically disconnecting itself (usually with a loud warning alert) to issuing incorrect instructions (which is why the pilots are supposed to be awake and alert while it's engaged, watching the instruments).

Actually a key finding in AF447 was that pilots were not trained on how to recognize and recover from a high altitude stall. It is not like flying a Cessna 150. The junior first officer didn't realize the aircraft had stalled.

Pilots were trained on the procedure for recovering from a low altitude stall; 100% or TOGA thrust and power out of it while minimizing altitude loss. Training has now changed for both low altitude and high altitude stall recovery.

IIRC, part of the issue was that the two pilots issued contradictory joystick commands, which the plane averaged to zero. Which is a bit terrifying.

AF447 was a PILOT failure, not AUTOPILOT failure. The pilot didn't use proper stall recovery procedures, and put the aircraft into an unrecoverable stall.

But autopilot for planes is actually much easier than negotiating traffic with irrational humans with road rage. You can coordinate with air traffic for takeoffs and landings, and there is very little to run into at tens of thousands of feet.

> auto-pilot in a plane needs to be 100% reliable, or everyone dies

Actually it is much more simpler than a self-driving car. And if there is a problem it disengages.

Autopilot in a plane usually doesn't involve autonavigation, whereas autodrive in a car generally requires navigation. Autodrive in a car without navigation is basically 'cruise control'.

'Cruise control' does not (at least it didn't until very recently) even attempt to avoid collisions with neighboring cars or keep the car in its lane. Even without navigation, autodrive in a car is a considerably more difficult problem than either cruise control or autopilot in a plane.

My point is that 'autopilot' is more like 'cruise control', and except in advanced cases, is not analagous to 'autodrive'.

Not sure low-probability/high-damage events are comparable to high-prob/"low"-dmg in the first place and that's not a trivial question to handle in real-time

Self-driving car could be better than human in average. But as long as there are human drivers who drive better than self-driving software, it would be disaster for these drivers. We definitely do not want some technique than do good for majority but do horrible things for minority, right?

I;m not following your argument here.

A single driver's ability isn't the only risk factor... if I'm a great driver but every one else sucks (that's how it for everyone already, right :D ), then an overall increase in the population's driving ability helps me, right?

the overall increase helps you indeed. But do you want use self-driving software if you are a great driver(or you think you are)? I do not because I want to be more safer by driving myself.

If great drivers like to drive themselves. Others wants too because they do not trust these great drivers.

In everyone driver's eyes, there are only two kinds of drivers 1 ) bad driver slower than me. 2 ) mad driver faster than me.

This would be true only if your driving ability only affected your chance to die, but your driving ability has an effect on everyone else's safety on the road as well!

Consider you are a damn good driver, better than self-driving software. If self-driving software can reduce your risk by giving you a safer environment(by replacing lots of bad drivers), but it will increase your risk when handling risks(because it's not as good as you). Would you like to choose self-driving software?

The point here is, no matter how good the driving environment goes, I do not want to lost any chance to survive(If I'm a good driver).

The best drivers in the world (Formula 1) are already outcompeted by traction and stability control systems.

Why would it be a disaster?