NYT: "In a social media post on Friday, the company [ASI] said, 'The current ground stop is not based on or a result of the SMART system, any product of ASI or our integration with FAA and ATC.'"

Wait, the FAA wants to own a portion of the company? As in, the government believes it had the authority to own the means of production?

Is this more common than I realize in US executive deparyments and agencies?

The whole setup is worrisome.

It would be super awesome if I could hop on an airplane without getting my insides x-rayed, my belongings sorted through or damaged, worrying about the windows falling off or the plane's systems flying itself into a crash, or some tech bros' bid to be a billionaire telling what an understaffed ATC controller what to do.

Did you see breaking bad? The guy schedules two planes to collide. Humans can also make mistakes, as long as you have a good harness underneath that can capture the mistakes it should be fine to just send it.

I think it depends on what it’s doing and if backup systems exist. Scheduling and prioritizing certain flights for landing seems like a reasonable application as an example. Anything realtime dependent or near realtime it shouldn’t touch. But there seems like lots of less critical applications it could provide some value.

We can use Chinese models? (I am referring to the LLMs).

Personally I fail to understand how we could possibly benefit from a non-deterministic AI system, when normal computer systems are more than capable of managing a 3-dimensional airspace using nothing but basic math. Smells like pork for sure :/

Curious where the people are who said AI will be doing x in y months (for their valuations) - it never will. Where are they hiding?

Sure, but the tool needs to get information from the communication systems, and if it's badly written maybe it could overload some system components.

That's just a scenario off the top of my head, it could be a lot of stuff. Plugging something new into an old, complicated system isn't risk free.

That would make me feel better if we could trust a damn word from this administration and I wasn’t on a plane waiting to land.

Until it got out of its sandbox…

If only routes didn't affect air safety.

If it's working correctly, anyway

Well done.

"You're absolutely right! I misunderstood the intended use of the word taxi. I made an assumption, and then ran with it. Would you like me to open a PR to start flights again?"

"You're right, you were clearly referring to electrical current grounding, my mistake!"

That seems like pretty important context actually, and is a surprise to me.

Seems like there are three plausible causes right now given the extremely limited communication from the govt.

1. The AI system rolled out yesterday had more access than publicly claimed and managed to break things.

2. The ongoing large scale equipment upgrade went wrong.

3. General incompetence from a department run by an unqualified realty show actor, within an administration that is actively hostile to expertise and experience in the federal workforce.

I don't see why they would care about the NATCA's evaluation of the system. As a union, they have a vested interest in protecting the employment of traffic flight controller workers more than public safety.

Smacks of: I built a fully functional MVP now just need a co-founder to sell it.

Has anyone in the history of government estimated that for anything?

Perhaps it's using the same communications channels and has overwhelmed them?

> That system just makes suggestions and isn't actually integrated in any ATC system. This is a telecom issue.

Is there any evidence for this beyond a single statement from the govt? This administration hasn't exactly developed a reputation for fully accurate and truthful reporting.