Cited on HN 4 times, 2017–2021, never outright recommendedscore 0
Years with an HN recommendation, 2007–2026
Used as a concrete example of automation successfully saving an incapacitated pilot.
Declassified HUD footage of an F-16 whose unconscious pilot is saved by the Automatic Ground Collision Avoidance System. It shows the aircraft pulling out of a dive on its own.
That's an excellent point. Even if it's not the people, the stick or manual control inputs are also a point of failure. So if suddenly your stick does something strange, and your flight computer allows it (thinking human knows best) you are in big trouble. The opposite of this is the ground collision avoidance systems, where the humans are one of the weakest parts of the aircraft (due to G-loc). [this video]
Example of ground collision avoidance saving an incapacitated pilot
Not an expert, but in military planes there are systems which kick in exactly when the plane is outside it's normal regime. Auto-GCAS Saves Unconscious F-16 Pilot: [this video]
Example of automation kicking in when plane leaves normal regime
Assuming we're talking about the typical example ( [this video] ) - in the HUD, altitude is the right-hand vertical tape. (The left one is airspeed.) It looks to bottom out around 4400 feet during the AGCAS recovery.
Typical Auto-GCAS recovery footage with HUD altitude readout
Skunkworks: omg this kid has replicated our Auto-GAS system using only computer vision Lockheed Martin CEO: So what the fuck is this youtube video? [this video]
Video list and Hacker News comment labels from HackerTube (prompted by @karpathy), released under ODC-By 1.0, built on the open-index/hacker-news archive. Hacker News data is provided by Y Combinator; comments remain the work of their authors. Video titles, channel names and thumbnails belong to their creators and are shown via YouTube. HackerTube Watch is an unofficial edition. Data export of 2026-10-31.
4 Hacker News comments
From the HN archive; up to 20 kept per video, favoring different commenters. Recommendations first.