Comment by kelseyfrog
3 months ago
I don't know more about ATC, but it looks like a field ripe for disruption and innovation. AI should be able to handle the coordination of flights without the downside of the delays and limitations of the human training pipeline, worker fatigue, and stress - all for less expense. The more I think about it, the more I feel like I could have something tangible at the end of a weekend or two - at least a prototype.
I sincerely hope this is satire (it sure is very HN in nature). "AI" in its current generative incarnation is prone to hallucinations/confabulations that cannot be avoided. In what world is that compatible with a job where a mistake can kill hundreds of people a few minutes or seconds later?
one that you would trust the lives of thousands of humans to every day? It seems unlikely we are anywhere close to a point where we can ensure that any AI won't hallucinate and cause an issue.
Sure, AI can spit out nonsense, and that’s a real concern. But in engineering, we deal with imperfect tradeoffs every day - it’s baked into the job. If we insist on a flawless solution before shipping anything, we’ll never ship. There’s always an optimum where we uphold safety standards without sacrificing forward progress
Yes, however, we need to hold different bars depending on the consequences of the failure. AI in a game that randomly spins around and breaks emersion for a player is fine, an AI that crashes a plane is not fine.
I have zero issues with research into AI research into those areas, but I think it does a major disservice to claim that a weekend is all it takes to get something close to ready for life or death decisions.
Any solution would have to be better than the current one. The last 30 years of the computer industry tells me that is not going to happen.
I would not want a text generator to "handle" anything responsible for human lives.
Could Congress support AI research and innovation by asking AI company CEOs found guilty of overpromising to prove the reliability of their latest technology by flying in AI-controlled airplanes and relying on AI-managed air traffic, instead of using private jets with human pilots and air traffic controllers? /s