"It may be hard to believe now, but before the German airship crashed in 1937, ponderously large dirigibles once seemed to represent the future of globe-spanning transportation, in an era when commercial airplanes, if you'll permit the pun, hadn't really taken off yet. And the Hindenburg, the largest airship in the world at the time, was the industry's crowning achievement - as well as a propaganda vehicle for Nazi Germany."
"At over 800 feet long, it wasn't far off the length of the Titanic - another colossus whose name became synonymous with disaster - and regularly ferried dozens of passengers on Trans-Atlantic trips. All those ambitions were vaporized, however, when the ship suddenly burst into flames as it attempted a landing in New Jersey. The horrific fireball was attributed to a critical flaw: the hundreds of thousands of pounds of hydrogen it was filled with were ignited by an unfortunate spark."
A Hindenburg-style catastrophe could abruptly end public confidence in AI, wiping out the momentum and investment behind the field. Before 1937 the German airship seemed to promise globe-spanning transportation; the Hindenburg was the industry's crowning achievement and a propaganda vehicle for Nazi Germany. The ship burst into flames during landing after hydrogen ignited, and the filmed inferno destroyed demand for airships worldwide. AI has attracted over a trillion dollars of investment and faces intense commercial pressure alongside insufficient rigorous testing. High-profile failures — for example deadly self-driving software updates or other catastrophic deployments — could trigger a comparable collapse of trust and investment.
Read at Futurism
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]