Reddit reviews Our Robots, Ourselves: Robotics and the Myths of Autonomy

There is Our Robots, Ourselves by David Mindell. It covers how complete automation is not the best answer but rather having humans and robots working together is the most effective way to tackle problems. There are seven chapters covering a variety of fields that use robots such as oceanography, airplanes, space and war. I’m actually still reading it, almost finished but it’s an interesting read.

[ downvotes -- Please leave a comment explaining why. Thanks! ]

> Do they also call for airlines to shut down since people die in plane crashes? Just curious...

Airlines do ground aircraft using the same parts thought to be defective in accidents. A Google talk given by an engineering professor at MIT named David Mindell about his book "Our Minds, Ourselves: Robotics and the Myths of Autonomy has a pretty good discussion on what happened to the Air France flight that crashed in the ocean near Brazil, and what that may mean for future autonomous systems. The problem with that flight was the transition from computer control to human control was not smooth. Here is the opening of Mindell's book which describes that incident,

> Late in the night, high above the atlantic ocean in the long, open stretch between Brazil and Africa, an airliner encountered rough weather. Ice clogged the small tubes on the aircraft’s nose that detected airspeed and transmitted the data to the computers flying the plane. The computers could have continued flying without the information, but they had been told by their programmers that they could not.
>
> The automated, fly-by-wire system gave up, turned itself off, and handed control to the human pilots in the cockpit: thirty-two-year-old Pierre Cedric Bonin and thirty-seven-year-old David Robert. Bonin and Robert, both relaxed and a little fatigued, were caught by surprise, suddenly responsible for hand flying a large airliner at high altitude in bad weather at night. It is a challenging task under the best of circumstances, and one they had not handled recently. Their captain, fifty-eight-year-old Marc Debois, was off duty back in the cabin. They had to waste precious attention to summon him.
>
> Even though the aircraft was flying straight and level when the computers tripped off, the pilots struggled to make sense of the bad air data. One man pulled back, the other pushed forward on his control stick. They continued straight and level for about a minute, then lost control.
>
> On June 1, 2009, Air France flight 447 spiraled into the ocean, killing more than two hundred passengers and crew. It disappeared below the waves, nearly without a trace.

Consumer Reports is not calling for Tesla's autopilot to be shut down forever. They're saying "disable it until it can be programmed to keep hands on the wheel". I think forcing hands to be on the wheel every few seconds is a relatively simple change to make since the wheel already has sensors. Minutes is too long.