As the US federal government rolls ahead with its controversial plans to deploy an AI air traffic control system across some of the nation’s busiest airports, one former air traffic controller is speaking out about the unprecedented risks involved.
In an appearance on News Nation, 13-year air traffic control veteran Todd Sheridan Yeary made it clear that the new system — called the Strategic Management of Airspace, Routes and Trajectories, or SMART — is little-understood, as the aviation community is still asking basic questions about how it’s actually going to be used.
“The first that comes to mind is, what is the tool going to be used for?” Yeary asked. Whether SMART is used as a predictive tool or a prescriptive stand-in for human decisions remains an open question, and the answer is incredibly important for anybody worried about aviation safety.
“If AI is going to be more prescriptive in terms of how you resolve these conflicts at airfields, particularly busy airports… that’s a different question, because air traffic control is a dynamic environment,” Yeary said. “You cannot just put data in and expect that that data is still going to be good, because the conditions of air traffic control are constantly changing. So I want to see how they want to use it, but I’m a little suspect, and very conservative about its utility right now.”
