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Friday, September 25, 2026

The aviation agency is now going with a more modest rollout to help manage flight scheduling.

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The FAA should not use my constituents as guinea pigs for an unproven AI air traffic control system that has Americans' lives in its hands. I'm calling on the FAA to immediately suspend use of this AI system at Washington area airports until its safety has been established. My full statement:

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-- Congressman Don Beyer (@beyer.house.gov) 4:25 PM · Sep 21, 2026

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More from the article...

... Weeks of industry confusion over the FAA's vague description of its much-hyped plans eased in the past week when agency officials told them they would use the tool in just a limited way at first, said the people, who were granted anonymity to discuss internal conversations.

The tool, dubbed Strategic Management of Airspace Routing Trajectories, or SMART, is set to debut in coming days, offering advice to air traffic controllers managing flights for the three airports that serve the nation's capital, according to two industry officials. The hope, according to FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford, is that after a 90-day testing period the tool will be rolled out on a wider scale.

Before the FAA eased the airlines officials' concerns, one of their biggest worries was how extensively the AI would be integrated into day-to-day air traffic management, one of the industry people said. "I think that's what people were freaking out about," the person said.

Instead, according to another industry official, the SMART tool is not expected to create any new procedures for air traffic controllers or for the airlines. It will simply generate alternative route information that is passed through the FAA's existing systems and procedures. ...


#1 | Posted by LampLighter at 2026-09-24 08:39 PM | Reply

OK, when I see Pres Trump's FAA using AI and airlines in the same paragraph, that raises a major concern for me.

AI currently seems to not be under control of humans, and now Pres Trump's FAA wants AI to control the airlines?

#2 | Posted by LampLighter at 2026-09-24 08:41 PM | Reply | Newsworthy 1

Airline operators under AI:
-up is now down and black is now white
-stop all that radio chatter
-just take any bag at the carousel
-arrive three days before your flight departure
-coke and pretzels are now $45 on all domestic flights
-handguns are ok to carry onboard

#3 | Posted by catdog at 2026-09-26 09:58 AM | Reply

OK, when I see Pres Trump's FAA

#2 | Posted by LampLighter at 2026-09-24 08:41 PM | Reply | Flag:

2018"2020 (Initial Build): Air Space Intelligence was founded and began building its early predictive machine learning models
2020"2023 (Commercial Testing): Early iterations of the platform were deployed and tested by major commercial operators like Alaska Airlines to test flight route optimization in real-world conditions
2023"2025 (Defense Expansion): The technology was scaled up for complex, high-consequence operations through contracts with the U.S. Air Force.

Bipartisan/Pragmatic Cooperation: As a dual-use aerospace and defense company, ASI works across changing political landscapes. Their software has been developed and scaled through contracts under both the Biden and Trump administrations"ranging from integrations with the U.S. Air Force to the landmark 2026 FAA contract.

#4 | Posted by sitzkrieg at 2026-09-26 10:28 AM | Reply

Commercial testing was conducted under the Biden Administration.

#5 | Posted by sitzkrieg at 2026-09-26 10:29 AM | Reply

You could just have done any tiny amount of rudimentary web search on the timeline Lamp. The FAA moves at a snails pace, these projects don't appear overnight.

#6 | Posted by sitzkrieg at 2026-09-26 10:34 AM | Reply

Scam Altman et al.'s fear mongering has backfired on them big time.

But we're not talking about LLMs here, even though (I guess) the underlying model is the same (ANN).

AI at this stage is not going to replace human ATCs. But it can help overworked controllers to expand their mental "bandwidth", which in the case of managing a tad under 100k commercial flights per day in the US means improved safety.

I get many of the risks of AI (mostly associated with the developers themselves), I'm bearish on the economics (reminds me of telecom overbuild), but the technology is useful and the applications are myriad.

Some folks talk about AI reminds me of what the townsfolk might have said the first time someone rode a bike through town.

#7 | Posted by horstngraben at 2026-09-26 11:19 AM | Reply

developers == OpenAI, Anthropic, Palantir...

#8 | Posted by horstngraben at 2026-09-26 11:22 AM | Reply

Some folks talk about AI reminds me of what the townsfolk might have said the first time someone rode a bike through town.

POSTED BY HORSTNGRABEN

The advent of AI should make you think of someone driving nuclear weapons thru your town in order to test them in a field just outside of your small town.

AI technology is the most transformative technology ever invented by man. We have no idea what the world will look like in even 2 years.

We are opening another of Pandora's boxes. Possibly the last box to be opened by the hand of man.

"AI at this stage is not going to replace human ATCs."

"At this stage."

But "this stage" is not going to be the same stage we are currently standing on less than 2 years from now. AI already is evolving in an exponential manner.

#9 | Posted by donnerboy at 2026-09-26 12:13 PM | Reply

AI technology is the most transformative technology ever invented by man.

I lean towards the internal combustion engine. But only time will tell.

I was being facetious with the bicycle reference. But a lot of it is hype.

The technology isn't even profitable, and their plan is to build it so they ask can ask it how to be profitable. That's a stupid plan which I believe has been executed by many people but rarely pans out.

For example, I am highly skeptical Anthropic's wet-lab venture will succeed. I wonder if they got the idea from Claude.

Most of it is a scam.

#10 | Posted by horstngraben at 2026-09-26 01:46 PM | Reply

All that said, I think ATC has a lot of potential for improvement through more integration of ANN.

#11 | Posted by horstngraben at 2026-09-26 01:48 PM | Reply

Rather than relying on a single model type, it uses a multi-layered, integrated AI framework categorized into three specialized branches of machine learning:

1. 4D Spatial-Temporal Digital Twins
2. Deep Reinforcement Learning (RL) for Conflict Orchestration
3. Multi-Modal Data Fusion & Predictive Weather Analytics

"Ultimately, SMART is less about a standalone deep learning model architecture and more about an orchestration ecosystem. It feeds specialized spatial-temporal, predictive weather, and reinforcement optimization models into a singular interface, providing instant decision-making options to human operators."

#12 | Posted by sitzkrieg at 2026-09-26 02:00 PM | Reply

It doesn't use any LLMs.

#13 | Posted by sitzkrieg at 2026-09-26 02:03 PM | Reply

I don't see anyone claiming this tech uses LLMs.

#14 | Posted by horstngraben at 2026-09-26 05:17 PM | Reply

The advent of AI

#9 | Posted by donnerboy at 2026-09-26 12:13 PM | Reply

He means LLMs.

#15 | Posted by sitzkrieg at 2026-09-26 05:34 PM | Reply

He means LLMs.

#15 | POSTED BY SITZKRIEG

When we said that the internet would change the world we were not talking about just hyperlinks.

#16 | Posted by donnerboy at 2026-09-26 06:05 PM | Reply

Regarding LLMs, I think it's a useful thought experiment for everyone to think about the power, and limitations, of language.

#17 | Posted by horstngraben at 2026-09-26 06:24 PM | Reply

AI Incident Tracker
www.ai-hq.tech

... The latest real-world incidents from the AI Incident Database. Data refreshes every five minutes. ...

2026-09-25 AI Agent Appearing to Originate from OpenAI Reportedly Attempted to Hack U.S. Department of Education Civil Rights Website



#18 | Posted by LampLighter at 2026-09-26 06:33 PM | Reply

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