Re:AI Is About To Take The Ship's Helm Away From Humans
by AnimalMuppet on Thursday January 17, 2019 @12:39AM
(#18928640)
From the Wikipedia article on BART (the Bay Area Rapid Transit system):
> Less than a month after the system's opening, on October 2, 1972, an ATC [automated train control] failure caused a train to run off the end of the elevated track at the terminal Fremont station and crash to the ground, injuring four people.
In a bit more detail, they had trackside something-or-others that gave speed information to the train. One train mis-read the speed instruction as calling for 67 MPH instead of 20-something, at a time that it was heading into a dead-end station. When that happens, if there's no human there to say "wait a minute, that's not right", the mistaken command gets obeyed, and the train crashes.
Now: Does that happen more often with automated systems? Or less often? Arguably, less. But to this day, BART has people in the cabs of their trains, at least to monitor the automated system.
> Less than a month after the system's opening, on October 2, 1972, an ATC [automated train control] failure caused a train to run off the end of the elevated track at the terminal Fremont station and crash to the ground, injuring four people.
In a bit more detail, they had trackside something-or-others that gave speed information to the train. One train mis-read the speed instruction as calling for 67 MPH instead of 20-something, at a time that it was heading into a dead-end station. When that happens, if there's no human there to say "wait a minute, that's not right", the mistaken command gets obeyed, and the train crashes.
Now: Does that happen more often with automated systems? Or less often? Arguably, less. But to this day, BART has people in the cabs of their trains, at least to monitor the automated system.