For a number of reasons. First of all, to act as a backup, assistant, babysitter, and replacement for the autopilot in modern planes. Exactly what GP says: to cover up for missed edge cases and unimplemented features. Autopilots are great and can do much, but not everything (yet?)
Then, there's a thing called “culpability”. You can’t blame a machine but you can blame a person when an accident does happen. Accidents can be happily resolved as “pilot error” without having to call back the entire fleet of aircraft.
Also, human passengers usually feel much more safe and calm when they know that their potentially fatal transport is controlled by a fellow human, just like them, instead of some soulless machine that can murder you all without so much as a blink if it goes awry. Some time ago elevators were not that safe and had elevator attendants, now they are safe enough for passengers to be fine with a computer controlling them.
Biggest issue with autopilots is that, well, they're part of the machine, the human comes in very important when the machine is partially crippled - we've already seen what happens to automation when critical sensors fail in the 737 Max.
> You can’t blame a machine but you can blame a person when an accident does happen. Accidents can be happily resolved as “pilot error” without having to call back the entire fleet of aircraft.
That's not really the case, air accident investigations won't blame the pilots just because they're there. They'll happily point out design defects, or maintenance failures, or pilot error, if it was actually a contributing cause.
Of course, plane manufacturers love being able to blame the pilots when their autopilot engages Kill All Humans mode.
They really should move the switch for that feature a little farther away from the "Cabin Attendant Call" button.
I believe this is called a "Porsche".
Absolutely.
> I am sure if you listen to beancounters, you won't save money and actually drive the system to the ground and make people unhappy.
Yes and no.
Economic realities are a thing. Organizations that stop producing enough income to cover their expenses soon stop being organizations.
The problem isn't necessarily the counting of beans, but rather how beans distribute over time.
There's a balance to strike there, and both the cultural and regulatory environments in the US push very strongly towards "acquire beans today, regardless as to what this does to tomorrow's bean-acquisition capabilities".
So, yes, the Counters of Beans get a say. Their input matters. But it's not the only thing that needs to be factored.
Uh, no? Maybe humans actually add in safety. Why do you think we have pilots in airplanes?
Humans are underrated.
I really don't want to those jobs "efficiented" away by a bunch of management experts who are chauffeured about in cars with tinted windows, and never ride the trains anyway.
I am sure if you listen to beancounters, you won't save money and actually drive the system to the ground and make people unhappy.
I'm not sure how, but we need to capture the idea that human happiness requires that every system have, built-in, a certain amount of inefficiency.
You exclude human happiness from the definition of efficiency.
Love is inefficient. One could make he argument that it would be better for society if computers assigned relationships based genetic/personality/economic/whatever criteria. But I don't think any of us want that, either. Gattica was a dystopia.
Why would anybody think this would be efficient or that it works at all?