© Getty Images / Reinier Snijders
All Boeing 737 MAX 8 planes operated by global carriers were grounded earlier this month after an Ethiopian Airlines aircraft crashed shortly after take-off, taking a steep nosedive not far from Nairobi.
The fatal accident which claimed 157 lives followed a similar crash in Indonesia, which killed all 189 people on board in October.
The two crashes appear to have something in common. The crews of both aircraft reportedly struggled with the MAX 8 autopilot system which pointed the nose of the airplane down before the crash.
The implications of the deadly incidents are much bigger than aviation itself, according to Alessandro Bruno, an independent international affairs and aerospace industry analyst.
"I think this accident shows the limitations of artificial intelligence and it should convince Elon Musk and Tesla to slow down efforts to push down self-driving cars," the expert told RT, highlighting that the latest crashes occurred due to software problems, not mechanical ones.
A recall of Boeing's flagship planes, lawsuits from global air carriers and a fall in the manufacturer's market value may undoubtedly result in the firm lagging behind Airbus, its key rival, according to Vladimir Rojankovski, an expert at the International Financial Center in Moscow.
"I think if this scandal is not 'extinguished' in time, it will trigger deep concerns over the entire sector of artificial intelligence and its credibility," the analyst said in an interview with RT.
He stressed that the burning desire of tech giants to get rid of the need for human labor, and thus salaries, may shatter confidence in the maturity of AI and its development.
"Americans should know this, because when they landed on the Moon, the computers failed, so they had to land manually," Bruno said.
"Imagine if the computers were controlled by the same system that is controlling 737 MAX 8, they would have crashed on the Moon."
While "dumbing-down" the explanations of these aircraft crashes by the media to make them understandable to average readers can be excused, there is no excuse for a supposed "aerospace industry analyst" like Bruno to compound the "dumbing-down" by conflating MCAS with AI. Associating the 737 MAX 8 MCAS with AI makes as much sense as conflating "tool"-using birds (e.g., use of a twig to poke at insect hives) with humans using advanced tools and instruments.
Basically, the MCAS behaved exactly as designed. The problem arises because it is a poor design, poorly implemented and integrated, inadequately tested, and inadequately documented, all because of massive failures by corporate management to assure the integrity of each step of the process, apparently because of the priority given to profit-maximization over quality of product.