Originally published at: Poll: Would You Take Flying Lessons From AI? - AVweb
Poll: Would You Take Flying Lessons From AI? Poll: Would You Take Flying Lessons From AI? No Maybe some of the ground school Ground school and basic maneuvers Yes
It sounds like a good way to prepare for a live lesson in advance. Or something sim only pilots might like.
Quite often highly experienced Flight Instructors will get bored repeating themselves when it comes to the basic principles of flight. One example: Walking a new student thru Bernoulliās Principle. Many instructors expect the student to already be educated on the topic and as such donāt even bring it up. During the studentās testing they are not adequately prepared and miss basic knowledge questions. AI doesnāt get bored with the studentās asking questions and repeating the same basic boring answer over and over again.
Also, the deeper into the topic the student wants to dive the more the AI will produce on the subject matter. Every Pilot has different interest and they want to dig deeper into a topic and thatās just what AI does.
No, as an instructor I watch the students eyes, expression, body language to determine if they comprehend my instruction or do I need to explain in a different manner. Iām not sure that AI can do that. I have had students say they understand but their look says otherwise. We went over the material and they did not understand. After a little different work they grasped the concept and were able to solve the problem.
Show me an AI that doesnāt randomly make up itās own āfactsā and Iāll reconsider my position. I have yet to meet one that doesnāt give me demonstrably false information after only a few queries.
Sure. If it was ātrainedā on the specific knowledge needed for a flight instructor, not genetic information skimmed from the web like the chat GPT programs everyone is now coming to terms with.
Also, these programs have trouble with spatial reasoning, a key element in flight training.
An AI program trained on student actions and instructor responses, for example, could work.
Hallucinations occur because the current crop of chat programs, available for free now, are set to evaluate and provide responses that are ālikelyā answers. When the program is tightened up with correct prompts, the wild answers are eliminated.
1 Like
And we will know this when? That seems to be an important question.
I have been programming computers since the punch card days and have written commercial software that sold for a couple of decades, so Iām not completely ignorant. AI is troubling and not because it might put software developers and actors out of business. The internet runs (and ruins) lives and the original ARPA/DARPA folk never intended the internet for the purposes for which it is being used. AI has the potential for far worse consequences and we must be very, very careful how we proceed.
No, I donāt want flight instruction from an AI. I want a living CFI who has been there and done that. An AI āmachineā will never know what it feels like to fly.
Exactly what Bruce S said.
I probably started programming computers slightly earlier (wiring plugboards on unit-record devices), enjoyed a rewarding career programming mainframes, CAD/CAM, networking, software package development, the whole schmear. Then I got talked into teaching what Iād learned to DP professionals internationally, for a comfortable living, and a lot more FF miles. Iāve been an ACM member for over a half-century, and keep up on the state of the art.
There is no way Iād let any AI (as it currently exists) anywhere near flying, especially in a training environment. For that matter, Iād never allow a student to be taught by a human that experiences āhallucinationsā.
You have me beatenā¦ Iāve never directly used analog plugboards, but Iāve seen them. 
The enormous worry in all of this is, to paraphrase Ken Iverson (author of APL/J and the father of array languages in general), computers should be tools of thoughtā¦ to which Iāll add ānot substitutesā.
Where is the edge of the cliff we seem to be approaching?
Iāll fall off my soapbox nowā¦
I use various software. One thing is certain. It is all buggy, and fixes are uncertain. We might have AI capable of teaching other AI or even humansā¦ but not yet. Not today.
Haha! No way would I take flying lessons from an AI ā just look at some of the answers AIs give on the internet!
Fly me to the moon? Probably into a mountain.