The day after the FAA started rolling out its AI tools, what a surprise.
The agency wrote on Nov. 10 that after the D.C. test, it will “now use SMART in the airspace of all 22 centers across the country
ATC has 3 facility types: Tower, approach, and center
Center is for the largest/busiest airspaces. They operate from effectively a bunker in the middle of nowhere, using only instrumentation to track and direct traffic
Centers were the only ones unable to perform traffic separation duties, which is fairly telling
My tower was still operating fine. The center near me was not. They said they have no radar, making IFR traffic separation effectively impossible for them too control
I don’t know if it was this SMART tool or not, but if it was, it’d look just like this
Also of note, the FAA gave controllers very little information about this ground stop. All they gave was an initial downtime estimate of ~7 hours
”The use of artificial intelligence within SMART has rightfully raised serious questions about its reliability and safety benefits, particularly on its potential to interfere with decision-making by experienced air traffic controllers or to hallucinate safety-critical information.”
Excellent use case for AI. An industry where a single mistake can lead to a fiery crash and hundreds of deaths.
We shouldn’t have made fun of the CEO who wanted to use AI to make fake podcasts so he wouldn’t have to talk to his children.
I guess the LLM found the most common way to prevent airplane accidents is to not fly.
yeah the broadcast news is saying its not supposed to do that but isn’t ai not supposed to randomly hack another site and such. haven’t we been innudated with ai going outside its parameters articles?
Big Clarke & Dawe vibes
Hopefully this will help finish popping the bubble
Coincidence. It’s actually because they finally stopped using floppies, but without realising how important they are to aviation safety.
The article is from yesterday, but is that when the rollout actually happened?
From arstechnica:
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) says the $875 million SMART system has helped reroute 180 flights since being implemented in airspace over Washington, DC, on September 21.
It sounds like this story is saying they are increasing its usage now.
the $875 million SMART system has helped reroute 180 flights
Hopefully they’re not going to count the ones that are rerouted into the ground.
My pet theory… Some tiny but critical process holding up the Air Traffic Control network depended on data shared periodically between systems using a python script that emails the info using Outlook. It took 24 hours for the Outlook outage to catch up with the ATC data sync routine.
Icing in on the cake: They fired the guy who maintained the script in June as part of an AI cost savings initiative.
The symptom of the underlying issue is centers not receiving radar data
I can assure you, radar is not tied into Outlook
It will all be fine when ATC becomes ai
That’s a fucking great use case for machine learning. Do you know the burnout rate of atc controllers? Just watch the documentary “Pushing Tin”
SMART will not reduce workload on controllers. It would save some fuel and reduce delays
Want to reduce controller burnout? Pay them more. Train more controllers. Stop shutting down the government
In the way it is being used, it actually really is. But all the articles are presenting as if the pilots are going to be talking with a chatbot. My reply was tongue in cheek going with that.
I’m so tired of the excessive anti-AI hate, because I generally dislike AI but you have to jump on the bandwagon and hate everything NO MATTER WHAT or you get downvoted to fucking hell. I dislike AI, but I REALLY fucking hate the fucking moronic hivemind on this topic even worse.
So it’s worth noting that the system in question DOES NOT CONTROL LIVE AIRCRAFT, but assists with planning. Humans approve the suggestions it gives for FUTURE ROUTE PLANNING, NOT REALTIME TRAFFIC.
So go ahead and hate on it, no worries, I don’t care, but all this fucking misinformation about planes falling from the sky needs to stop. The idiots spouting that sound as stupid as Trump and his stupid word salad. Like remember the people seeking asylum, and because Trump only knows about “insane asylums”, it somehow turns into him thinking it’s crazy people trying to invade? Yeah, that’s what the “AI CAUSING PLANES TO CRASH” spouting people sound like.
Be angry. Fight against the harm excessive datacenters can cause. But be RIGHT and don’t be fucking STUPID.
The ground stop was caused by all, irbnearly all, 22 center facilities in the country losing access to radar and other critical airspace information
Towers and approach were able to continue operating effectively (although can’t do much without center)
The AI tool, SMART was rolled out to centers on the same day. If something went wrong, the doomsday scenario is a nation-wide ground stop
There is no scenario where planes are falling out of the sky. You are the only one I’ve seen to suggest as much. It comes off as a disingenuous straw man
So it’s worth noting that the system in question DOES NOT CONTROL LIVE AIRCRAFT, but assists with planning.
That can describe the SMART AI tool or ATC as a whole. Everything ATC says is a suggestion. Final authority, and responsibility, always rests with the pilot
I should also be clear here. I have no problem with AI tools helping ATC. ML is quite good for that type of work
Where I have an issue is the clearly political nature of this tool. It was rushed out for a cheap political win. If it caused this outage, there should be outrage
Forbthe record, I do also get annoyed with the kneejerk reaction that everything AI = bad. AI is here to stay, even though the inappropriate uses of is are unbelievably frustrating
Considering no one knows anything at this point I think it’s just as crazy to say confidently that there is no connection
The official statement was that some systems got overloaded. Gee, I wonder if having a whole slew of new data going through them has even a possibility of overloading old systems?. Maybe not, could be unrelated, but it’s not like you’re a fucking brainless ape for considering it
Facts I’m confident in are:
The outage only caused centers to be unabke to perform their duties (tower and approach were able to continue operations), due to loss of radar and other instrumentation
SMART AI tool was rolled out to centers on the same day as the ground stop. It is not a tool used by approach or tower
The FAA did not provide any indication of the cause, which is unusual. Previous outages such as the ground stop in 2023, the FAA provided a reason within a few hours (this was the 2nd nation-wide ground stop since September 11, 2001)
As a note: I got this information from talking with my tower, so it’s 2nd hand to begin with. Minor details may be inaccurate, but I stand behind the broad facts
Hey bud, the comment you are responding to doesn’t say that AI is controlling live air traffic or causing planes to crash. Maybe you meant to respond to a different comment or thread, but you seem awfully worked up over what, in the context of your comment, is a straw man argument. We all had a day off from email thanks to Microslop, and it’s at least a funny coincidence that there’s a massive nationwide groundstop that seems to coincide with either Outlook being down and/or the FAA rolling out an “AI” tool. Let’s all lower our blood pressure and have a chuckle at the situation, yeah?
K
HOLY FUCK. That’s nearly unprecedented. What the fuck is going on.
Microsoft’s big outage is beginning to affect more and more systems.
Turns out that even things which don’t seem to depend on Microsoft can actually only last for a limited time if it goes away
No. There is no chance this is related to the MS outage
The ground stop was caused by center losing radar information. Most systems still use floppy disks, I can assure you they do not have a critical dependency on M365
It’s likely going to be a bad system update/change, which could be related to the new AI SMART tool
Or it could be the recently announced phaseout of their floppy disks and they’ve announced they’ll be using “more AI” (whatever that means). It could be either of those too
The floppy disk phaseout is targeting 2028. They aren’t even going to start preparation until the next fiscal year, and won’t actually make changes until 2028
I was watching a doomer AI video about how it would hold us hostage by infiltrating all our medical transportation and energy infrastructure.
It’s not a superpowerful AI. It’s just Microsoft business as usual
They rolled AI tools out nationwide at the FAA just yesterday. Go figure.
the first thing AI did was ground all flights.
They have been using them since September 21.
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) says the $875 million SMART system has helped reroute 180 flights since being implemented in airspace over Washington, DC, on September 21.
Guessing it did not scale well.
Over Washington as a test installation, yes. Nationwide deployment was Nov. 12.
The SMART test installation managed to save 84 gallons of aviation fuel during this test…
A… I… wanna ask you a question.
Actually less scary than if, say, Obama was president. (or even a Bush really)¹
Cuz a trump admin having a major shutdown could just mean his admin hired a Christian straight white cis male “DEI Hire” that was incompetent and flipped off a switch and shut the whole thing down.
---
¹Cuz if it was a “status quo president”, you know shit hit the fan (i.e. war or some shit), not just an innocent mistake
They announced yesterday that they were rolling out a new AI ATC tool nationwide.
It went super well. No complaints. I’m definitely going to miss my upcoming flight, but this is definitely the best thing to happen to aviation in the history of aviation.
to avoid future collision the AI grounds all flight, cant have accidents if there isnt flights.
Actually, it happened just 3 years ago.
Their all-knowing AI probably couldn’t solve some minor issue (because a lot of tech there predates their mass scraped ‘knowledge’) and made it worse, but they also can’t beg their fired employees to return by mail because MS fucked up their service (who wants to take a guess how THAT happenend? 😜)
It’s what happens when you put nut jobs and idiots in positions of power and control over a country
Lmao I am having the WORST (forced, extended family) vacation. Everything that could have gone wrong, went wrong. And this is the cherry on top. My return flight was gonna be tomorrow lol. At least I have an excuse for my boss. Pray for me, everyone.
Always best to be prepared, couldn’t hurt to check and see what other forms of transportation you may be able to take home. I missed a flight once, renting a car got me home faster than waiting for the next plane
Google Maps: Kayak across the pacific ocean
I was stuck in Tortola during hurricane Lenny in 1999. When I got back 4 days late, I found out that I had been part of a mass layoff.
Happens to me in 2002, I finally got a flight scheduled and a coworker called me to say, “don’t bother rushing back, we’ve all been laid off”.
They will probably have it sorted by then, hang in there.
Thanks for the positive energy :)
dUFFY demands 50bn from congress so this “doesnt happen again”
On Friday the thirteenth
I read that with a lisp
From your link:
Duffy said the outage is part of an ongoing problem with outdated technology that air traffic controllers rely on across the country.
“Many of our towers are almost 100 years old,” Duffy said. “Our air traffic controllers have leaky roofs. Air conditioning doesn’t work … their elevators don’t work.”
That is a blatant fucking lie and misdirection. Towers were operating fine. The issue was with centers, which operate underground
The fact he’s lying tells me it was very likely related to their new SMART AI tool
of course my prefered local news is showing judy justice but abc is live with it. sounds like the automated air traffic control systems are having problems.
“You’re right to be mad at me, I shouldn’t have directed the two Boeing supermaxes to fly into eachother, my mistake!” -FAA AI
My condolences to those at DFW. I had a 14hr delay in October and stayed at the airport because the hotel voucher selections were crusty as fuck. I … despise DFW.
This is a fair and unbiased opinion. DFW is trash.
This reminds me of when our entire management team got stuck in France because of a volcano with a name you can’t pronounce.
Somebody pulled another duffy
I wonder if any countries use Linux on their ATC systems?
Linux hadn’t been invented yet when most of these were built. They’re running software on bare metal for most systems
Israel wanted to use TempleOS but the creator wasn’t racist enough for them.
They’ll probably go with Omarchy.
The one from DHH?
I would be impressed when a lot of those systems don’t predate Linux…
Bet money Norway & Holland do.
