no, it is not the count down to the usa launching military or covert offensive action against pyongyang. weirdly, it is a countdown of the number of pilots in the average jetliner.
the number of pilots operating a standard jetliner was first reduced from three, to two.
no biggie, right?
well, it depends on your perspective, in 2018 Boeing will start testing artificial intelligence.
the initial goal of the ai is to further reduce the number of pilots to one. (and then, in time, obviously to zero)
apparently pilots only exert manual control on the average jetliner for between three and six minutes.
i wonder how long it would take for the average person to be okay with a pilot-less jetliner?
all the jetliner staff will probably be replaced by robots and automation. the upside is that jetliners will basically become huge drones. the airline would be able to ‘remote control’ every aspect of any jetliner, so i guess in reality there would be many pilots on standby to deal with any possible type of emergency. if communications fail, i guess the ai could just land the plane, or perform an emergency landing.
when one starts contemplating the future realities the whole autobot and cybertron thing does not seem so very sci-fi anymore…
