Conversation

Thanks for all the replies! Here are the responses I found most illuminating: 1. Autopilot vs. AV is not a fair comparison. Autopilot doesn't do takeoff/landing—it's more akin to cruise control. (Although a quick search says that some autopilots can do landing? Unclear)
18
112
2. The autopilot problem is mostly a control problem, which is easy for machines but not intuitive for humans. Driving has a much greater component of perceiving objects, predicting motion, planning routes, and similar tasks that are built in to humans, but hard for machines.
10
151
It's not all that much easier, but the stakes are 100X lower. Most people, me included, have crashed a car, or at least had a fender bender. The average pilot *never* hits anything with the plane, even on the ground.
6
117
Show replies
Very few jaywalkers between clouds. That’s one of many things that’s easier with automating flight.
5
175
Show replies
Flying an airplane requires more technical & specialized knowledge, so has a higher barrier to entry, but once you get the hang of it, it's less hazardous to maneuver in the air versus a car. Therefore, autopilot doesn't need to handle as many dangerous cases
1
14
When I say hazardous, I mean the # of decisions the autopilot algorithm has on an average run. A plane crash would be very bad and catastrophic, but planes don't have the same degree of edge cases that an autopilot car faces (pedestrians, cars, stop signs, turns, bad roads, etc)
14
Show replies
(1) Fewer obstacles. You point a plane in the right direction and go. Nobody's unloading their groceries or turning without indicating next to your flight path. (2) Boeing 777 =$279m, Toyota Camry = $26,000. Unit cost of autopilot favors planes.
6