Just an FYI, helicopters can land without engine power by autorotation. I'm assuming these things, if you're putting people in them, would do the same.

Additionally, autonomous flight is fairly common right now. There's less going on in the air than on the ground (or rather less surprises with small response time and high consequences). Planes even land and take off by themselves. The first plane to actually be certified to autoland was in 1968[0]. The tech has been around for awhile and been making serious development this entire time.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autoland

Those powered lift aircraft don't have enough rotor inertia to perform autorotation. They will have to rely on redundant power systems plus ballistic recovery parachutes.

Autonomous flight is still quite rare. And even when it is used, there are still human pilots standing by to take over in case anything goes wrong.

> Autonomous flight is quite common. When it is used, there are still human pilots standing by to take over in case anything goes wrong.

FTFY.

I'm just saying that comparing autonomous flight to autonomous driving isn't fair. Flying is a lot easier for a machine. You already have tons of data streaming in from airports, other planes, and lots of equipment on the vehicle itself.

That's completely wrong. Sure machines can control take off, navigation, and landing as long as everything works. However they are unable to cope with unexpected system failures. A lot of things can go wrong on even the simplest aircraft and it's impossible to anticipate and code for all of them.

There's different levels of autonomy, just to be clear. I'm not saying they are level 5.

Additionally, people forget the extra energy cost of fighting gravity. It takes a lot more energy to use a motor and prop to directly resist gravity, rather than using a static object like a wheel. Energy loss fighting gravity with a propeller >> energy loss fighting wheel friction.

Energy is not the only thing you should care about freight and human logistics. Logistical resources of cities are scarce and it already badly affects labor market there.

Planes and drones are getting pretty good at autonomous flight. You might not need pilots by the time this tech is mature.

They said the same about doctors, and yet heart surgery is done by real people.

All your NNs are entirely completely utterly pointless when faced with inputs they have never been trained on. They always suck at extrapolating, and almost always suck at interpolating as well. So when an unexpected emergency happens, what exactly are they going to do?

And outside of NNs, The only thing we have are autopilots. They sometimes fail, and that is why real pilots mainly just babysit them as their main job.

Just an FYI, planes already regularly fly by themselves. Auto landing has even been around since the late 60's.

The idea that airplanes fly themselves is spectacularly overstated in the public consciousness. The reality is closer to multidimensional cruise control than the pilots are just there for decoration.

Yes but there are still trained human pilots monitoring the auto landing systems, ready to abort if anything goes wrong. It general autonomous systems are incapable of coping with unexpected failure modes.

Sorry, to be clear, planes are not level 5. But to also be clear, there are different levels of autonomy. I'm not trying to suggest they are level 5 though.