Flying Is Safe Thanks to Data and Cooperation—What the AI Industry Could Learn From Airlines on Safety

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article .

Approximately 185,000 people have died in civilian aviation accidents since the advent of powered flight over a century ago. However, over the past five years among the U.S. airlines, the risk of dying was almost zero . In fact, you have a much better chance of winning most lotteries than you do of dying as a passenger on a U.S. air carrier.

How did flying get so safe? And can we apply the hard-earned safety lessons from aviation to artificial intelligence?

When humanity introduces a new paradigm-shifting technology and that technology is rapidly adopted globally, the future consequences are unknown and often collectively feared. The introduction of powered flight in