STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Some other news now - the federal agency in charge of air traffic control wants artificial intelligence to help manage the nation's airspace.
MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Yes. The Federal Aviation Administration is preparing to launch its $875 million software overhaul as soon as today. Regulators and airlines hope the AI-enhanced tool will make flying more efficient. Critics question whether it will live up to the hype.
INSKEEP: We have a human being to cover this story - NPR's Joel Rose. Good morning.
JOEL ROSE, BYLINE: Hey, Steve.
INSKEEP: And it is really you, not a chatbot, right?
ROSE: As far as I know.
INSKEEP: OK, good. Is a chatbot going to manage my next flight?
ROSE: Safe to say no. They're not going to put a chatbot in charge of your flight. Leaders at the FAA and the Department of Transportation have gotten a lot of questions about how this will work. They say it is not intended as a replacement for human controllers. It is just a tool. But it is supposed to make controllers' jobs easier by reducing congestion and conflicts in the air before they happen.
INSKEEP: OK. So how would that work?
ROSE: So this tool is called Strategic Management of Airspace, Routes and Trajectories, or SMART for short.
INSKEEP: (Laughter).
ROSE: Here is the FAA administrator, Bryan Bedford, talking about it at a Senate hearing earlier this year.
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BRYAN BEDFORD: The way we manage traffic today is chaotic, and we can do better. We need to manage that at the FAA rather than rely on commercial airlines to simply schedule however they want.
ROSE: Bedford says this SMART system will help optimize the airspace. Basically, it will look at all of the airline flights on the schedule, as well as weather, wind, other variables, and tweak those flight plans to reduce the number of conflicts. The FAA is tapping a relatively small company called Air Space Intelligence to build it. This company has built some AI-enhanced dispatch software for Alaska Airlines and other carriers, but this is going to be a bigger and a much more high-profile test.
INSKEEP: What do the air traffic controllers think?
ROSE: You know, it's hard to say exactly because current controllers are not allowed to talk to the media. The union that represents controllers told me they were not involved in the development of this system and they do not have anything to say about it. I did talk to a former air traffic controller named Dave Riley, who retired in 2020 after more than 20 years at the FAA. Let's listen to some of what he said.
DAVE RILEY: The fears of AI killing us all in the next 10 years - I don't think this platform is going to be about that. It won't replace humans. It'll be another tool in the toolbox. But, of course, when you call it AI, it gets a lot of attention.
ROSE: Riley does not seem worried about this tool going rogue because human air traffic controllers will still be in charge of keeping the planes safely separated. But Riley is skeptical that this is going to be the game changer that FAA leaders say. He says it might improve operations, but it's not going to solve the bigger problems in the air traffic control system, particularly the staffing shortage. The FAA is still thousands of controllers short of full staffing, and that forces many to work mandatory overtime and really grueling schedules.
INSKEEP: So when does this new software roll out?
ROSE: We have heard it could come as soon as today. That is according to a government official and an airline industry executive who are not authorized to talk publicly about this plan. They said the rollout will start just in the Washington, D.C., area before gradually expanding to the rest of the country. The trade group that represents the big airlines seems thrilled to see the FAA finally moving to modernize the nation's airspace, which many people say is an important goal. And the trade group is bullish on what this technology can do. We are expecting more details about how this is going to look from the FAA as soon as today.
INSKEEP: NPR's Joel Rose, thanks so much.
ROSE: You're welcome.
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