"beavis" wrote in message
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[...]
Had that been a "pilotless airliner," you *couldn't* shut off all
electric power, and the wire would have continued to burn. I doubt it
would have been as uneventful as it turned out with humans at the
controls.

I don't dispute that one can imagine scenarios where only a human would
help. I don't even dispute that a fully-automated cockpit (no pilot at all)
could still fail (and of course, would fail in ways in which a human never
would).

Your example is meaningless, as would any single example of some event. The
question is who would cause accidents more often: human beings, or
computers. Only a complete statistical study can answer that question;
individual experiences are irrelevant.

That said, the event you describe was most dangerous because of the smoke in
the cabin. A computer wouldn't care about smoke. Yes, the short would
likely cause some failure to other components, but I would expect any
computer-piloted aircraft to include various redundancies and
system-isolation features.

No computer would eat the fish for lunch, either.

To think that a computer couldn't have safely handled the event you describe
is to have a complete lack of imagination for what is possible.

Pete