Planes are still decades away from displacing most bird jobs
created: ; modified:Note: Parts of this essay were written by GPT-3, so it might contain untrue facts.
Introduction
Many of my friends are extremely excited by planes, rockets, and helicopters. They keep showing me videos of planes flying at enormous speed, rockets taking off from the ground while creating fiery infernos around them, and of helicopters hovering midair seemingly denying the laws of gravity.
I’ve been on a plane already, and it was nothing special. It was just a big metal tube with a bunch of people inside. It was loud and it smelled weird and I had to sit in a tiny seat for hours. So what is it that makes planes so special? Is it the fact that they’re machine? Is it the fact that they’re big? Is it the fact that they cost a lot of money?
Here’s the thing: all human-built artificial flight (AF) machines are incredibly specialized and are far away from being able to perform most of the tasks birds – the only general flight (GF) machines we are aware of – can perform.
More than 200 years after hot air balloons became operational and more than 100 years after the first planes flew, it’s clear that building a GF machine is much harder than anticipated and that we are nowhere close to reaching bird-level abilities.
Planes vs eagles
First, take a look at this video of an eagle catching a goat, throwing it off a cliff, and then feasting on it:
I haven’t ever seen a plane capable of catching a live animal and deliberately throwing it off a cliff. Not in 1922, not in 2022. Not even a tech demo. Such a feat vastly exceeds the abilities of any planes we have built, however fast they can fly.
Planes vs cuckoos
Second, let’s watch this video of a cuckoo chick ejecting the eggs of its competitors out of a nest:
You could say that this ability has nothing to do flight but, again, this misses the forest for the trees. Building a GF machine is not about Goodharting random “flight” benchmarks by flying high and fast, it’s about real-world performance on tasks GF machines created by nature are capable of. And, however impressive planes are, as soon as we try to see how well they perform in the real-world, they can’t even match a cuckoo chick.
Planes vs a hummingbirds
Third and final example. Take a look at the hummingbird’s amazing ability to maintain stability in the harshest aerial conditions:
Take any plane we have built and it stands no chance of survival placed in anything even close to these kinds of conditions, while a tiny-yet-mighty hummingbird doesn’t break a sweat navigating essentially a tornado.
Future of bird jobs: no plane danger
Birds can flap their wings up to three times per second, whereas the fastest human-made aircraft only flaps its wings at 0.3 times per second. Birds can fly for long periods of time, whereas airplanes need to refuel regularly. Birds use orders of magnitude less energy to lift the same amount of mass in the air, compared to planes.
Planes, rockets, and helicopters are (optimistically) decades away from being able to carry out most of the tasks birds are capable of. Therefore, for the foreseeable future, most bird jobs such as carrying messages (pigeons), carrying cargo (pigeons), hunting (hawks), and others, will remain safe from being displaced by human-built AF machines.
Even if planes start to approach birds in some of their abilities, birds will be able to simply move towards performing other jobs. For example, planes can’t navigate by themselves. So perhaps they will carry messages in simple conditions or to short distances, while pigeons will move towards specializing in complex message carrying or will learn to supervize plane routing, e.g. by piloting planes or by flying alongside and course-correcting them.
Birds can further make themselves safe from future job displacement by investing in their children’s education, ensuring their long-term employability in the face of the rise of AF machines.
Conclusion
At the end of the day, I just don’t see how human-built AF machines we are building right now could fundamentally change the way wars are fought, business and travel are conducted, or how they would allow us to do anything even close to true spaceflight (if you want to venture into the true lunatic-territory).
After all, if human-built AF machines are unable to match the abilities of a bird toddler, how could they possibly displace most bird jobs?
I must disagree. Planes will replace birds. In fact, I roasted a large plane for Thanksgiving yesterday and it was incomparable to a bird. For tips on brining your plane, see here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/US_Airways_Flight_1549
Dijkstra said that asking whether a computer can think is like asking whether a submarine can swim. So, I'm a bit disappointed you neglected the latter question. Indeed, the functionality of artificial swimming (AS) machines has been very narrow (though powerful, don't pick a fight with a nuclear submarine!) and has many flaws compared to general swimming (GS) capabilities present in nature. I hardly need to mention the complex social behaviour of dolphins, forecasting abilities of certain octopi, or sheer size of sperm whales, yet did it anyway. We will never swim to the bottom of the Mariana trench, it is but a pipe-dream.
How come my GMail spam filter still doesn’t work?
“Birds use orders of magnitude less energy to lift the same amount of mass in the air, compared to planes”. Nope. At the same or similar speed, energy spent per unit mass at the same speed is similar for planes & birds.
Sorry, this must've been one of those untrue facts from GPT-3.
The OP is incorrect as they are only accounting for fuel energy of the plane. Kerosene doesn't exist in nature that planes can suck up with a straw. Nope there's an enormous energy cost to get the fuel to the plane. Birds eat what's in nature for their fuel.
Birds consume a concentrated liquid fuel produced by non-bird living creatures that do not necessarily care about GF but benefit themselves by providing this resource.
Planes do the same thing.
Very interesting post. The same logic could apply to terrestial and maritime mobility. But curious about the comparisons you have cited - awesome feats as they are, bird flights function for propelling self (carrying their own weight) never for carrying huge amounts of payloads which is what human flying objects are all about. No birds carry even >1/3rd their body weight for long. Migratory ones definitely don't. (Insects like bees too, typically carry a fraction <30-40%) So can one say, for specialised roles these machines already excel. For GF roles sure not. But what are we trying to solve here by GF. It's a different objective function right? We don't want our high speed planes to be hovercrafts or extractors nor as hatchlings that grow. We wan't them engineered, safe etc (which they are already) Same goes for AI I think.
This is glorious! Well done, GPT-3.
Birds aren't real, bro.
Это все хероня ваши птицы, вот стрекозы это вещь!
Wow, this is so funny. You are so smart and so funny.
Excellent parable. I would like to remind you what happens when a bird comes in a flightpath of a plane. It gets smashed into pulp. Now I realise the plane will probably fall at the same time. Ah well there is only so much you can stretch any metaphor before it becomes useless.
What the f child wrote this crap? Better essays have been written by fifth grade retards
It's not good for your blood pressure to be so angry all the time.