In the future of space...

In the future of space, computers can fly ships and have reaction times far better than any human could ever hope to have. Why would pilots still be a standard or even semi-standard thing?

Propaganda.

Bureaucracy

Even if there technically aren't any jobs, the powers that be still need to make it look like it's an important and noble thing to have a needless profession

Because some people want to go out and do things instead of sitting at home with near infinite replicator access.

It's really only a problem with warships. Sending an AI into war is a really easy way to cause it to go rampant from the stress.

so we can have WW2 style dogfighting

Because it limits them. Full AI-directed warfare can get incredibly deadly. Forcing the AIs to have to submit to human directive in a battle keeps them from committing atrocities because it's efficient.

Because computers an be predicted. They can't predict what you're going to do in the next second if you don't even know yourself.

Two ships with AI meet one another with the intent to fight. One AI contacts the other and predicts what its about to do, the other AI counters with its own moves, the first AI counters those moves and on and on and on until one AI realizes that it probably isn't going to win. A nanosecond after contact is made the "losing" ship turns around and putters away over the objections of its crew.

This always happens whenever two AI piloted ships come into conflict. It's never satisfying, doesn't look good in propaganda, and nobody ever dies.

Forgoing your prompt and answering the image:

I pick Captain Dylan Hunt, because he is so not into bullshit and will kill the enemy. Like yeah he likes peace, but do not make a mistake he will set nanites to rip you apart at the molecular level if you are a problem.

I would imagine because it's harder to hack a human in any given setting.

Ghost in the shell

>Star Trek's humanism, versus 99% artificial "people"

As far as fighter ships go, yeah there's no need for a human pilot. But ships like the Enterprise are more for exploration, and communication might not be possible at FTL speeds to make a fully automated exploration probe that useful, and AI might not practice diplomacy the way humans might want to.

I'll simply paint my ship the color of the sky and watch the AI ship fly straight into it, crashing this plane with no survivors.

>hacking spaceship ai
>hacking a hardened defended supercomputer through THE FUCKING VOID OF SPACE

One of the worst memes of the 'science' fantasy genre

who all is that on the bottom row? besides Captain Hercules from Andromeda, of course

>choosing Adama under any circumstances

Because if you leave AI to do anything, you get human supremacy rebellions. And humans aren't good at anything,

From left to right:

- Elizabeth Lochley, Babylon 5
- Matthew Gideon, Crusade
- Dylan Hunt, Gene Roddenberry's Andromeda
- _______ Shepherd, Mass Effect

Because the best supercomputer in the world can beat the best chess-player in the world, but a chess-player of middling talent working together with an off-the-shelf computer beats both.

Ideally you have both. Computer for reactionary decisions and humans for tactical. You can have the best of both worlds like this.

You're implying that computers would be more capable combat pilots, though.

It is entirely reasonable to propose a universe where the capacity of even the most advanced computers to act independently in rapidly-changing situations still falls short of that of a human being. Thus, in this situation, it would be more reasonable to leave raw number crunching (navigation, targeting, etc.) to the computers, while the humans handle the tactics and actual decision-making.

>Two women.
>One black dude.
>No aliens.

What is this, the 21st century or something?

>but a chess-player of middling talent working together with an off-the-shelf computer beats both.

This week.

Game Over. Computers have already mastered the game of Go. A game with more possible games than atoms in the universe. The Machines have won.

While it's not the best source-material in the image, by a longshot, Andromeda actually answers that question in setting satisfactorily.

In that universe, they basically have Diet40kWarp. The alternate universe used for FLT-travel is not purely rational, and requires human intuition to pilot effectively without crashing. I think they called it "The Slipstream."

To entertain the ship

And what if the AI enjoys war?

>build a space ship
>depend entirely on computer for navigation
>computer is hijacked
>ship loses power
>programming was just a tad fucked
>"Oh man, if only there were some means of steering this shit without a computer!"

Plus, you just need a wild card pilot's touch in certain situations.

>Plus, you just need a wild card pilot's touch in certain situations.

I can't speak for some of the other SF settings from OP pic, but in Star Trek, most travel in handled by the computer; the pilot simply tells it where to go. However, as mentioned, there are situations in the shows where manual piloting is required due to a variety of reasons. Also, the pilot seems to double as a navigator and has some control over the sensors as well, so they do serve some purpose beyond just driving the ship.

No "true AI" means the ship can only respond to a finite number of pre-coded responses. (Seriously look how easy it is to break the AI in most video games).

Sentient AI refuse to pilot ships or can't be trusted to.

Human pilot has a higher rank and thus the AI doesn't have the authority to command

There's no real distinction between human and AI anymore

>More specifically...

-Mass Effect has 90% of people just really suspicious of any AI capable of running a ship.

-Star Wars, droids don't seem to be very respected regardless of intelligence

- FTL, organics don't need generator power to do stuff like repair engines and put out fires

- Halo, AIs are copied from people and the process is fatal. Also AIs burn out in a handful of years and become destructive.

>Because some people want to go out and do things instead of sitting at home with near infinite replicator access.
the existence of 4chins proves you wrong

Intuition and experience, I guess.

You can inform an AI that the Klzzxyzzians don't like to travel alone, but unless she sees it for herself, she won't really understand it when you say something to the effect of "something doesn't feel quite right about this situation", moments before being ambushed by a second, cloaked Klzyasndajsd fighter.

The same reason you have drivers behind self-driving cars. Sure it can do the job itself, but if you don't have anyone keeping an eye out you'll be fucked royally if the shit goes sideways.

The pilot's roll would really be to ensure that the computer hasn't fucked up and is operating correctly.

That's probably worse, would you want an AI that wants to prolong wars for as long as possible? Or even people events into starting them?

>Sending an AI into war is a really easy way to cause it to go rampant from the stress.
Why is an AI being created that gets stressed out? That's actually a selling point for AI if anything. It never gets tired, it never sleeps, it never gets bored or hungry, and it never makes mistakes.

The trick is making it ethical, humane, and capable of adapting to chaotic situations, but on the other hand it's never wrathful.

Because the computer won't have the gut feeling a human would feel when something like a Necron tomb ship appears into view.

>Because the computer won't have the gut feeling a human would feel when something like a Necron tomb ship appears into view

Why not?

All these people following the logic of 'human instinct and intuition' no realising that it's just a biological way of assimilating and processioning disparate facts and elements and that there is no reason to assume that a society intelligent or advanced enough to develop practical space travel and some form of AI to drive it couldn't develop the machine equivalent to human instinct. But faster.

Well you've got a pic of Adama there so you could go with the reasons in Battlestar Galactica.
The issue there is when fighting against the Cylons (super advanced machines) any networked computer systems are extremely vulnerable to getting hacked and disabled/hijacked, as machines are better at cyber security and hacking than humans could ever be.
Galactica itself survives the opening attacks of the Cylons precisely because Adama refused to have networked computers on his ship (with any computer systems physically separated), while the rest of the human fleet was compromised. The only other large military ship to survive was the Pegasus, which survived because it's normally networked computers (which allowed a smaller crew) were being overhauled and offline at the time of the attacks.

>Shepherd
For some reason they spell it 'Shepard'

>Why would pilots still be a standard or even semi-standard thing?

Hacking.

...

Non-artificial life can make good pilots in the regard that they can disregard statistical data that would make an AI decide to do something more predictable.
See: Enders Game, Interstellar