Coincidence? FAA Rolled Out New AI Tool Days Before Friday's Groundstop
Days before America’s air traffic was grounded, an artificial intelligence system was introduced to make the Federal Aviation Administration run better.
At about 4 p.m. Friday, officials announced all planes were grounded due to an undisclosed communications issue.
The incident “was potentially caused by an upgrade to new software,” according to a report in the New York Post.
An AI-supported air traffic system was rolled out three days before the nationwide stoppage, according to The Washington Times.
The AI tool was put in place at all 22 of the FAA’s air route traffic control centers
The FAA said the Strategic Management of Airspace, Routes and Trajectories would “shift air traffic management from a reactive approach to a predictive one,” The Times reported, citing the FAA.
The AI tool merges about 200 data streams that include such things as flight paths, weather, and air traffic controller staffing onto one platform with the goal of looking ahead at what might emerge so officials can plan to smooth out potential trouble spots.
Air Space Intelligence, the company that made the system, said it was not to blame for Friday’s ground stop.
“The current ground stop is not based on or a result of the SMART system, any product of ASI or our integration with FAA and ATC,” it said.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said the problem was a “communications issue.”
Speaking Friday evening, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin could not say how long the ground stop will continue, according to the New York Post.
“This was a telecommunication outage throughout FAA. Out of abundance of caution, we have grounded all the flights, and all the flights are accounted for,” Mullin said.
“We have not discussed any time frame,” he told reporters at the White House.
“This isn’t going to just be resolved and turned around within the hour. This is going to take some time,” he said.
Mullin said “there is no indication yet that this was a nefarious attack,” according to The Washington Post.
“The first thing we want to do is make sure we restore the communications. We get all the flights on the ground, and then we get back to normal operations. But we’re going to continue to work to find out what the root of the cause is,” he said.
“We’re not ruling out anything at this point. The first thing is the safety of everybody that’s flying,” he said.
Mullin also said the FAA issue was not connected to the Microsoft outage that caused massive communications disruptions on Thursday.
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