Friday, January 4, 2013

New Information Emerges About Air France Flight 447

More than two years after the Airbus 330 crashed, new information has emerged thanks to locating and recovering the "black box" flight data recorder. In short, human error caused the crash of AF 447. But the human error was in the face of -- and in some cases, enhanced by -- advanced autopilot functions that the human pilots were relying upon. Because they trusted the Airbus to "self-correct", the inexperienced pilots continued to fly the plane in the face of stall alarms. If they had been flying a much less sophisticated vehicle, it seems unlikely that they would not have taken corrective action and avoided the catastrophe. The Popular Mechanics article shows one of the problems that can emerge when "artificial intelligence" is relied upon in the face of other empirical data. Popular Mechanics article

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