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It is being modernized through the Next Generation Air Transportation System (NextGen). This will take decades and a huge amount of funding. https://www.faa.go
by nradov 2y ago
It is being modernized through the Next Generation Air Transportation System (NextGen). This will take decades and a huge amount of funding.
https://www.faa.gov/nextgen https://www.faa.gov/nextgen
They accept public comments so all of the armchair aviation experts on HN should probably send them an email and explain how they can solve all the problems by connecting ChatGPT to a controller console.
- hooo 2y agoWhy does it have to take decades? That sounds insane
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- taeric 2y agoTo modernize a running system, you have to duplicate everything so that you can someday do a switchover. For commerce tech, you switch, see what breaks, switch back and adjust for next try. You may have lost some sales. But probably just inconvenienced people. When doing travel systems, something breaking is likely a lot of deaths.
- MichaelZuo 2y agoHave you read the various reports that are available right there on the web page?
- wongarsu 2y agoA wide variety of decades-old aircraft, and even newer aircraft are often modernized versions of ancient aircraft models. All of them built and operated with the motto "if it ain't broke, don't fix it", because every change brings risk (and costs money). There was also a lot of resistance to the idea that every aircraft should broadcast its position, heading, etc. because of privacy concerns. And as long as there are holdouts the tower can't rely on the information being available
- hkpack 2y agoLarge infrastructure projects always take decades. Look at the railroad development in EU for example. You have to invent a lot of tech (signaling, communication between trains, interoperability with old systems), build a lot of infrastructure, train a lot of people and roll it out at scale with the goal of zero accidents. It is just impossible to do quickly.
- giantg2 2y agoYeah, but some of the next generation upgrades have already been successfully tested at some facilities and it's just a problem of updating the rest. Sure it will take years, but it shouldn't take a decade after successful testing in the field.
- SoftTalker 2y agoSo AI has come a long way since NextGen was conceptualized. Training an AI on the historical flight activity for an airport seems .... doable? Would it be better than human controllers? We know it would not be subject to fatigue or emotional stress, and the domain is so limited that hopefully hallucinations would not be a problem. How realistic is it to have ATC performed by an AI?
- sangnoir 2y ago> How realistic is it to have ATC performed by an AI? Not very. For safety-critical systems, you probably want something deterministic, and doesn't break when faced with novel situations. Solvers are probably a better solution than ML approaches, but they can't capture every possible constraint, such as airplane that can only make left-handed turns because of equipment failure.
- SoftTalker 2y ago> For safety-critical systems, you probably want something deterministic, and doesn't break when faced with novel situations. Humans are not deterministic and can break for many reasons. It's not plausible that an AI could handle "route this aircraft for landing without any right turns" ?
- sangnoir 2y ago> Humans are not deterministic and can break for many reasons. Yes. Humans can also self-evaluate about their state, and have culpability. It not surprising that non-humans are held to a different standard.