Comment Re:What is the failure mode of this "smart" system (Score 1) 25
This is by fare the most pregnant question to ask when dealing with such critical systems. It is all good it can do better than humans in specific situations. But we need to know exactly how it fail, in what cases and what is the course of action when it fails.
This is important, because flying is basically like 99.99% boredom, but the 0.01% is really, really exciting, and not in a good way.
AI handling the utterly boring bits is easy. It's what happens during the abnormal bits that is really important.
AI could be extremely useful if used in a predictive method - for example by analyzing the instructions being issued, compare it with the existing positions of every plane being controlled and present and produce an alert if there's a potential conflict being created. It can also analyze existing movements, instructions issued, and compare the two and if there is deviation, issue a potential deviation alert, and if it could lead to a disaster then escalate to an emergency alert.
Most incidents involving ATC usually are of ATC forgetting where a plane is, leading to an accident, planes not obeying instructions, or accidentally putting two planes on the same path. AI could serve as someone who can double-check all instructions won't lead to conflict, as well as making sure planes are following the instructions given.
In an emergency, AI could even analyze the airspace and offer suggestions on where to route planes to clear a route for an emergency landing. This can even include clearing runways of aircraft about to take off which may have become forgotten because of the emergency.
And yes, AI needs to be used because the AI should be more of a monitor - so it needs to understand ATC instructions being issued and communications received and verifying that everyone is doing the right thing. ATC shouldn't need to interface with it - it should figure it out on its own and only provide information on potential conflicts or suggestions on how to clear airspace.