Hacker News Reader

Comment by llmslave | Hacker News Reader

The wright brothers first plane was also dangerous

This is more titan submersible than first plane.

It’s dumb, everyone knows it’s dumb, and people do it anyways. The unsolved root problem isn’t new but people just moved ahead. At least with the sub the guy had some skin in the game. Openclaw dev is making out like a bandit while saying “tee hee the readme says this isn’t safe”.

And universally across the globe societies have decided that flying them requires:

* Pilots to have a license and follow strict proceedure

* Every plane to have a government registration which is clearly painted on the side

* ATC to coordinate

* Manufacturers to meet regulations

* Accident review boards with the power to mandate changes to designs and procedures

* Airlines to follow regulations

Not to mention the cost barrier-to-entry resulting in fundamentally different calculation on how they are used.

> And universally across the globe societies have decided

No. Nobody decided anything of the sort about the wright brothers first plane. If they had, planes would not exist.

It also had a total of 2 users, if that.

It doesn't hold. This is a prototype aircraft that requires no license and that has been mass produced for nearly the entire population of earth to use.

Speaking of which, prototype aircrafts with no license still exists in aviation. I can build a plane in my backyard and fly it legally, so long as it's small enough.

We're already well past wright brothers. We have trillion dollar companies selling LLMs, hundreds of millions of people using chatbots and millions* of OpenClaw agents running.

Talking about regulation now isn't like regulating the wright brothers, it's like regulating lockheed martin.

* Going by moltbook's "AI agent" stat, which might be a bit dubious

Flight / aerospace is probably one of the worst analogies to use here!

As you say, it is one of the most regulated industries on earth. Versus whatever AI is now - regulated by vibes? Made mass accessible with zero safety or accountability?

All the aerospace rules are written in blood. Lots of blood. The comparison pretty much says that we have to expect lethal accidents related to AI

Or just lethal intent.

... Or lethality as a byproduct of vast resource extraction.

In America, any rando can build and fly an ultralight, no pilot license needed, no medical, no mandatory inspection of the ultralight or anything like that. I guess the idea is that 250 lbs (plus pilot) falling from the sky can't do that much damage.

But we didn't have thousands of people suddenly flying in their planes a few months from their first flight.

Now, the risks with OpenClaw are lower, you're not likely to die if something goes wrong, but still real. A lot of folks are going to have a lot of accounts hijacked, lose cryptocurrency and money from banks, etc.

Wow what an amazing analogy, you're absolutely right!

To continue the false equivalence - alchemists believed Magnum Opus will lead one day to Philosopher's Stone.

Because the Wright brothers knew their first plane was dangerous, they took care to test it (and its successor, and its successor's successor) only in empty fields where the consequences of failure would be extremely limited.

The big difference is that we didn’t incentivize or coerce the entire global population to ride on it.

Years and years ago I went to a "Museum of Flight" near San Diego (I think, but not the one in Balboa Park). I joked, after going through the whole thing, that it was more a "Museum of those who died in the earliest days of flying".

What the fuck is wrong with you people? You are glaring over the technology, defending it as the coming of christ and have no sense for security? Are you serious?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com