Persuasive Essay: Will Robots Take My Wings?

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Will Robots Take My Wings?
Imagine boarding a plane for vacation. You have your carry on bag, headphones in, ready to sit down, relax, and maybe watch a couple of movies. As you enter the plane, the flight attendents have welcoming smiles and help you find your seat. Everything seems just right except one thing. Instead of a trained pilot in the cockpit, a robot is put to the task of flying the Boeing 737 jet to get you to your vacation spot. On willrobotstakemyjob.com, a website that predicts the risk of a job becoming automated, airline pilots, copilots, and flight engineers have an 18% risk of becoming automated in the near future. Some believe this is going to be our future, but there is skepticism whether or not a robot or artificial intelligence …show more content…

Commercial airline pilots have to have a bachelors degree and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) issued Airline Transportation Pilot (ATP) certificate (Bureau of Labor Statistics). This requires many hours of training and years of experience. In the case of commercial flying, most humans simply do not trust artificial intelligence that can’t be trained like pilots are to be responsible for that many lives. In the article “Planes Without Pilots,” Dr. Cummins is skeptical passengers on an airline jet would fly with no human pilot on board. “You need humans where you have humans… if you have an bunch if humans on an aircraft you’re going to need a Captain Kirk on the plane. I don’t ever see commercial transportation going over to drones” (Markoff). Pilots argue robots and artificial intelligence cannot be programmed to think and assess situations and come up with a rational choice quicker than humans. “A pilot on board an aircraft can see, feel, smell or hear many indications of an impending problem and begin to formulate a course of action before even sophisticated sensors and indicators provide positive indications of trouble” (Markoff). Pilots have to be able to connect with the passengers and crew members to have a safe flight, especially is something goes astray. Robots are not able to connect with a person emotionally and solve a problem with passengers. Robots can only physically fly the plane, but a pilot’s job is so much more than

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