EUROCONTROL organised a new edition of the FlyAI event about artificial intelligence end of April and I was lucky enough to secure a seat. The two days event was the opportunity to get updated about the status of AI in ATM and things are moving forward on many fronts.
If you think that AI in ATC means replacing controllers with AI, think again. This is one potential application in the very, very long term but it has so many implications and raises so many questions that it is not even close to happening. One take-away is that AI has many applications in the ATM context and not only in the tactical provision of separation between aircraft.
The number of applications presented at the FlyAI forum goes beyond this blog post but here is a short list to give you an idea:
There were more topics and subtopics. For example, speech recognition itself is used for various use cases: prototypes of read-back confirmation, clearances analysis for safety and statistics, pseudo-pilot for autonomous simulation training and transcription of communication for incident investigation.
Different solutions are at different levels of maturity, some are very close to being operational - or could even be in operation by the time you read this - and other are still at research and development level.
I wrote in the first paragraph that provision of separation, so replacing the ATCOs, is not for today not for tomorrow. There are multiple reasons for this, ranging from handling failure of AI to job interest but also liability and teaming with humans. This last factor triggered some interesting discussions. If AI becomes an assistant, looking over a human's shoulder and nudging them when something is not correct, how to make sure that this interaction does not come in as a disturbance?
When humans are trained to become ATCOs, they learn much more than maintaining separation in an efficient way. They learn communication, human interaction and so on. That being said, a human assistant can also be annoying to an ATCO but they know instinctively when an intervention is ok or not. And if they fail at this, they usually adjust quite rapidly when the see the reaction of their colleague, just because they are humans. AI will have to learn about this interaction too, to become a valuable "partner".
Another less exciting but nonetheless super-important topic that was discussed is the legal framework and the certification. There is progress there too and the following hierarchy of European Union has been presented and discussed:
This progress is important to make sure that when more advanced and tactical applications of AI will become more concrete, the legal framework will be ready.
The FlyAI forum was a great opportunity to get updated on those topics but also to discuss them. Some time was given to the participants after each topic and this resulted in lively discussions.
Thanks to EUROCONTROL, not only for organizing and running this forum but also for making it open and available to smaller organisations like FoxATM.
A full recording of the event is available here.