However, the National Air Traffic Controllers Union (NATCA) said it has not been “involved in the design, testing, or implementation of SMART and therefore cannot speak to its effect on the air traffic control workforce.”

“NATCA believes any new technology should complement and not replace the experience, training, and professional judgment of air traffic controllers who are responsible for the safety of the National Airspace System,” the union said in a statement.

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rurp 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

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.

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tpmoney 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Option 4 would be internal discovery / knowledge of a new vulnerability with a perceived need for immediate patching. We're on week 3 or 4 of every IT department across the country having to patch pretty significant newly announced vulnerabilities across many systems. It's not unreasonable to think that there are vulnerabilities that the government has advance knowledge about that they're quietly patching in their systems before the vulnerabilities go public.

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llama052 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

"SMART is a cloud-based system that centralizes 200 data streams – including weather patterns, flight paths, traffic flow, and controller staffing metrics – into one platform."

What could go wrong really...

	▲	rsoto2 an hour ago \| parent [-]
		Just generate more slop on top of critical legacy system and overload it. no mistakes.

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NewsaHackO 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

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.

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macintux 6 hours ago | parent [-]

Even assuming they don’t care about public safety at all, their members are still going to have to work with it, and happen to be among the world’s leading experts in air traffic control, weirdly enough.

	▲	6 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		[deleted]
	▲	NewsaHackO 5 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		To me, it’s like asking the hand weavers worker union about the benefits of incorporating mechanical weavers in their workflow. They are the experts of weaving, but still…

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edoceo 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

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