The tragedy unfolding this week at New York’s LaGuardia Airport hints at human error. We shouldn’t jump to conclusions based on early reports, but in this case we have audio of the air traffic controller saying, “I messed up.”
Nothing but complete sympathy here for everyone involved, including the air traffic controller. Air traffic control is recognized as one of the most difficult, stressful and pressure-filled jobs on offer. And by all accounts it’s been decades since our corps of air traffic controllers was fully staffed.
But we must acknowledge the reality of human error. In many tragedies, human error is the No. 1 cause:
- Traffic accidents: 90 to 95% are attributed to human error.
- Aviation accidents: 70 to 80% are attributed to human error.
- Maritime accidents: 75 to 96% are attributed to human error.
- Medical errors: Human error is a leading cause of death in medicine, including misdiagnosis, medication errors, and surgical mistakes.
- Nuclear power and major industrial accidents: Both the Chernobyl disaster and the Three Mile Island incident were attributed to human error.
- General industrial/workplace accidents: Most are attributed to human error.
Human error is also a major factor in cybersecurity breaches, IT system failures, construction accidents, structural failures, power grid failures, and even in other areas such as business failure, including risk management errors and so-called “fat finger” trading errors.
Human error is neither a character flaw nor a lack of intelligence or integrity. It’s just a known element of human nature. That’s why in tragic cases like a child left in a backseat by a distracted parent, the proper reaction is compassion, not judgment. We all make mistakes.
Though human error may be inevitable, we are creating tools to help us compensate.
Human error is a perfect place to implement tools like AI to protect us from our own mistakes and compensate for our frailties. Implementing AI could substantially contribute to our quality of life by reducing preventable tragedies.
It’s likely that implementation of AI could eliminate most accidents due to human error. Chips and software don’t get tired, don’t get distracted, and make decisions in millionths of a second that a human might take 5 or 10 seconds to make. Studies suggest that humans can keep track of 3 to 5 independent variables at the same time, while AI can manage orders of magnitude more.
Humans are attention-constrained, while AI is computation-constrained. And while we can’t do anything to improve the former, we’re reducing the computational constraints on AI every day.
After the air traffic controller said, “I messed up,” some kind soul immediately responded with “No, man, you did the best you could.” And that’s entirely possible. It’s likely advanced AI could have prevented the accident, both pilots could have returned to their families, and an air traffic controller could be able to sleep tonight.