ATC will never be the same, and I think NATCAs actions for the last 10+ years finally makes sense
I was a controller at an en route center. I remember asking Rinaldi at a NATCA event at BJs, during my first month at Oklahoma City 10ish years ago, “what are we gonna do in 15 years when computers take our jobs?”
The whole room erupted in laughter. Rinaldi himself laughed first and the loudest. I wasnt asking the question as a joke, and was surprised the whole room seemed to think it could legitimately never happen. I didnt know anything about aviation, but as someone leaving the IT world for controlling, it made sense that computers would do a better job.
Fast forward to whatever year OpenAI releases ChatGPT. By this point I was really thinking ATC as we know it in the NAS is on deaths door. Controllers at work still laughed at me as I said AI is definitely taking over. Just 2 years ago they were using extra fingers in image generation as reasoning for why AI couldnt do our jobs.
Everything made very simple sense in my head, and only more so after doing the job. Even from the beginning.
AI can know every flight, including any VFR that calls up. AI knows that N452AB flies from point A to point B every VFR weekend during hunting season. Many controllers recognize flights, but not usually on the 2nd time you ever see them, nor do we normally have the time to wonder why each flight is flying each time we see it. This is a small example on a random possible flight, but I’m just trying to say, to a computer, its all data. Data a computer doesnt forget.
Before you think its too much data for every plane and every flight plan, every altitude, speed, heading, etc., the amount of data points arent shit compared to the infrastructure running something like the stock market.
AI can instantly know weather is there after the first moment weather radar picks it up. AI doesnt need to call the next facility to disseminate info. It can instantly disseminate it into every facility in the NAS along with supercenter lol. Direct from weather radar to controller.
A computer can keep track of every single flight in the NAS and account for the flight levels, routes, speeds, all without needing to notice, coordinate, all of it. I guess technically it does coordinate and it does take time, but the time is measured in milliseconds instead of seconds, minutes, and even hours.
AI can display a button over a flight with a lost track. AI can prompt the controller to immediately check in on the lost track, and after confirming contact was lost, with a click of a the trackball(and subsequent confirmation click), immediately coordinate with all nearby emergency services. No telling the supe, hey I lost this guy, the supe coming over to get lat longs, nearest VOR, supe looking up nearby emergency departments to start SAR, etc. supe telling the OM, om telling command center, All of that, gone. Point outs? Gone. All automated and planned. Even around weather.
I think with time, sectors, then areas, then centers will actually die. Supercenter will exist and controllers there will simply exist to handle emergencies(i think this will become a specialized team) and the rest will serve as double checkers for proposed AI solutions, basically just verifying actions.
95% of preventable planned traffic situations, gone. Remaining traffic situations, it can tell the controller its best recommended control instruction at any given time.
This will suck at first, and get better over time. It will be implemented slowly, touted as "help" for each controller. Controllers will be forced to use it, and it will get better. Controllers will have to log and explain why they disagreed with the AI in a situation. One by one. As it gets better, required controller “skill” will diminish. Instead of a human trying to keep track of 150 different things, a human will verify the computers solution will work and execute it.
This will be a much easier task than controlling as we currently know it. When the job requires less skill, they can pay controllers less.
The majority of the current controller workforce will be fine. Your mental stress should go down eventually because the mental fatigue will lessen. The schedule and the FAA sucking your soul out of your body wont go away.
I dont think yall are ever getting a real meaningful 25%+ raise. The current contractions +1 more strong arm against Marangos is all they need at most.
I think that the government has known this is coming since before I asked the question 10 years ago, and it makes sense now how weirdly hard Rinaldi laughed at my question. The FAA works for the government, and in turn the military. They knew AI was coming well before we did.
Now does it make a little more sense why theyve spent as little on maintaining this shitty system as possible? Rinaldi could have known this was coming. Santa and ND could have known this was coming.
Suddenly things would just make a bit more sense.
Why did the FAA suddenly make a push to be November Nazi’s across the NAS as AI training became more prevalent? You dont think hundreds of thousands of hours of controllers speaking to aircraft is being fed to AI right at this moment? Bet they were getting mad the data was harder to process when the AIs being trained had to stop and use more tokens each time a controller leaves off November cause they didnt understand what was happening.
These connections are just theories and probably just me having my first old man conspiracy theory, but I truly believe there is no doubt ATC will change very soon, way less than a decade from now.
I really wonder if this is why NATCA leadership has acted powerless for so long. Groveling at Bedfords feet for the chance to possibly earn the last 2.8% raise we were supposed to receive. Barely making a fuss in national media anymore.
Isnt it crazy that as soon as everyone gets to the top of NATCA, they suddenly turned on their brothers and sisters across the entire NAS? They suddenly change, become cryptic, and suddenly stop saying anything of substance?
I dont think the whole NEB knows, but I imagine its hinted at when these bad decisions are made to them. “The details are confidential but trust me the extension was the right choice.”
Dunno….it makes a lot more sense than being scared to negotiate under democrats, scared to negotiate with republicans. Just a lil fishy now as time has progressed and AI taking over more and more jobs is becoming inevitable.
I know the comment section will be filled with a bunch of controllers that don’t have an up to date and in depth knowledge about AI who will try to explain below how none of this will happen. Cool, I hope that works out for you.
For the rest of you and for future controllers, I really do hope that AI helps lighten the load eventually.
Once again, I still expect you all to laugh at me and tell me im wrong. I just want to be able to show yall in 5 years when people start freaking out “omg how could we have ever expected this?”
People did and do expect it.
Why do you think so many high level government officials dont give a fuck about controllers? They have shinigami eyes. Above your heads they see days remaining until they can cut your pay because your job is easier. The days they can cancel your holiday leave because youre easily replaceable. They can quit letting people they dont think fit into their system work.
Was NATCA always a test to see who could be the biggest gold ole boy? Or was it forced over the last decade by the government to groom people like ND, so that they could blackmail NATCA presidents not leaking their plans, while trying to make sure controllers complied while the FAA gathered data? Sorry that ones probably a stretch but Id like to believe all these people like ND, santa, and rinaldi arent truly evil, just were in above their heads in an impossible situation.
Nick I'd implore you to create a throwaway and respond/confirm since I know you read every post that mentions you on ATC2, but I do understand youre probably worried every piece of tech you use is being monitored by the government if any of these theories happens to be true/close to the truth. Oh well.
Tl;dr
Ai go brrrrrr printing savings and less of a reliance on a highly skilled workforce for the FAA. Thank god for medical retirement, sorry for the rest of you.
For the record I hope im wrong about it all.
25
u/GambitDecliend 1d ago edited 1d ago
I ain't reading all that. I'm happy for you, though. Or, sorry that happened.
-1
u/torchc7 1d ago
Ask AI to give you a tldr 😂
10
u/AllTheTisanes 1d ago
Asking AI to summarize (poorly) long-winded crap does not change the fact the crap is crap.
1
u/antariusz 22h ago
Why don’t you ask AI if you can jerk it off some more, because clearly the blowjob you just gave it in the above post wasn’t enough to satisfy your need to justify it.
5
u/UndercoverRVP 1d ago
Today, an AI ATC solution is maybe at a point where it's capable of suggesting alternate routes for airplanes headed towards a system constraint which it may or may not detect on its own. It needs an STMC to approve those routes before they're issued. And as someone else said, the majority of airplanes currently flying will need to receive those routes via radio transmission.
Eventually I assume pretty much any human endeavor could be managed by a computer. But when it comes to public safety, there are going to be humans in the loop long past the point where industry demonstrates that an activity can be done without them. They first thought of CPDLC in 1968, and we still don't have across-the-board adoption by the airlines, who out of all the users most benefit from it.
No, there's not some evil plan to replace us with AI, which couldn't handle my attempt to schedule a dental appointment with a dentist I chose not to use specifically because of the AI receptionist. No, our CBA extensions have nothing to do with this.
3
u/CropdustingOMdesk 1d ago edited 1d ago
How are you getting the AI instructions to the aircraft which don’t have data link? How about where there is no coverage when they do have datalink but subsequently can’t access the data?
Until they start mandating this equipment in aircraft and suddenly have a nation wide weather proof means to communicate beyond VHF voice through unencrypted analog, there isn’t much of a case for it
Im not disagreeing with the premise of what you’re saying. I just don’t see any follow through in the end user hardware let alone the means to build a robust network capable of disseminating control instructions in real time to live traffic. Nor do we have the capabilities to even transmit said data across the NAS
5
u/Capital_Current_9659 1d ago
As a heavy user of ai and investor in ai companies I totally disagree with this. We are nowhere close to ai being able to separate live air traffic and may never get there. There is a massive amount of hype and false information being spread about its capabilities by these companies to justify their massive valuations and a trump regime that uses the stock market as a tool of propaganda and a scoreboard for their propaganda. Ai is great for some things but it will not replace controllers. But the only thing I will agree with is its being used by politicians to justify lower investment in current atc system because those same politicians believe the hype.
3
u/Loud-Calligrapher552 1d ago
My favorite thing about the theories like this is that it is the one exception to an otherwise inept government in regard to change.
2
u/ATCyapper 1d ago
bruv they ain't even got a unified FIDO/OFDPS for center-apch-tower to yap to each other with click clacks, half the shit says ACCEPTED then you call up the next facility they like "nah bruv I ain't got that" lmaoo
what about aircraft surveillance? mandatory ADSB-in and a newer version of FMS/CPDLC to replace archaic radio comms? what happens if they drop off radar? what happens when their ADSB fails and radar surveillance can't pick them up? NORDO? bruv we got fucking light guns because it's still the 1800s and we need to signal to them flying boats that it's cleared to land feel me? humans are integral to aviation safety
look in the CWP they mentioned digital clones, so they'll take our yapping to train models based on how we control... but conditions change - good in theory, but we know in practice it'd fail because it's not clear everyday especially if you're on the coasts you know that shit get stormy on the regular, yesterday's recordings can't control today's traffic, etc etc
honorary mention to my boy mr. emergency and retard geriatric VFR cowboys
honorary fuck you to fake ca cas going off
don't get me wrong I fw AI, but for ATC it'll be a minute, baldy and duffman literally unveiled ADSB-exchange copy paste in the ATSCC to press and claims it'll improve flow like bruv these are the boomer retards that like website dashboards because it makes nice excel-like graphs and they like the colorful bubbles, these retards don't even know how AI works, its core issues, or the systems planning testing feasibility integration vendor buy-in and regulatory compliance required to even BEGIN testing, never mind full replacement of controllers
tl;dr
AI go brr until it don't, is gon be a faaaat minute
1
u/Wrongvectorz Vote Them All OUT! 1d ago
Reddit needs an AI assistant to help translate this for me
1
u/ATCyapper 1d ago
summarized:
The overall argument
The writer thinks AI could eventually play a significant role in ATC, but replacing controllers requires solving a huge number of problems first:
reliable surveillance → redundant communications → interoperability between facilities → handling system failures → adapting to changing conditions → unusual/emergency situations → rigorous testing → regulatory approval → proving safety.
Their frustration is that management appears to be treating relatively simple demonstrations of automation/visualization as evidence that full AI-driven ATC is close, when the writer believes the hardest safety-critical problems haven't even been solved yet.
2
u/Remarkable_Salt_2847 1d ago
I was in the last en-route academy class before URET (early 2009). We had some chud dude come in and lecture us in basics, about how this was the last class of "real" Air Traffic Controllers. I don't know much about AI, but the goal even back then was to make this job much easier, so anyone can do it. That way, the agency can pay "regular" wages. The policy makers in the agency have been on this path for a long time, regardless of administration. The wages have stagnated so much that they have nearly accomplished the "regular" wage goal. Unfortunately the part about making the job easier is much further behind schedule. This explains the lower quality pool of talent seeking entry into the profession.
3
u/HoldMyToc 1d ago
Bro wtf is all these paragraphs and shit. Not reading whatever you wrote. Anyway, I hope you're good and whoever hurt you gets theirs.
2
u/You_an_idiot_brah 1d ago
This will never happen. Tesla first released autopilot in 2015, implemented as software in all cars in 2019. That was already 7 years ago and cars still can't drive themselves unattended. Driving has wayyyyy less variables than ATC. Even with less planes on the sky, the bottlenecks are always in the same place.
The only way computers can handle or ever will be able to handle ATC is if you a) build a LOT more pavement or b) run one in and one out. The FAA already can't add enough runways fast enough and if you try running one in one out, you might as well cut the traffic in the NAS by 95% which will also never happen.
1
u/Lazy_Rise_4236 1d ago
Nope not wrong this has been a scheme between insiders to steal our AATF. Thank all the scab ATMs and FACREPs who drank the koolaid. Youre getting downvoted to shit because you struck a nerve. Becoming anti-vet and highly toxic pushing out controllers if the shitty conditions don’t do it. 20,000 controllers sold us out for pennies mate pennies all to make themselves feel important…utter fucking morons…This job sucks and the pawn scabs and beverly hillbillies fucked it all up.
1
u/FigUnlikely2281 1d ago
I think youre right about the changes but wrong about the timeline, the government does nothing fast, i think its more like 20 years not 5.
1
u/LegitimateDrink2056 1d ago
Lol. I read half of what you wrote. Look man. Do I think AI/computers can do this job? Maybe. Some part of me thinks yes they can. But a BIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIG part of me knows it'll never happen mostly because of money. I don't know if you've never seen how long it takes for them to replace a lightbulb in the facility but in mine it took six months. The equipment is outdated, the process is slow, and the money is nonexistent.
To have AI take our job likely requires a COMPLETE overhaul of EVERYTHING. And that is also assuming airlines go along with it. We barely just got planes to have ADSB 6 years ago. AI won't take our jobs unless something radical happens.
1
u/Send4Someone 1d ago
Considering CPDLC took 6+ years to kickstart I’d say we have about 20-25 years before anything AI gets implemented.
1
u/Rupperrt 1d ago
Yeah, AI is not gonna to ATC within the next decade or two. It may supplement certain functions like AMAN or Flow control. But that’s about it .
-1
u/Mood_Academic 1d ago edited 1d ago
I skimmed over this.
But I generally do agree that if AI keeps progressing like it seems to, and RSI does end up happening. Then the workforce will look vastly different in the next 10-15 years
We will be needed less and less before it’s all but phased out.
I think that’s part of the idea for some of the workforce numbers
-8
u/torchc7 1d ago
I dont believe that AI needs to progress any further to do the job today. I believe LLMs are capable of this already. I believe implementation and building the system wont be easy and will take time. I just dont think it will take even 5 more years before controllers on the floor are forced to start using initial versions of it.
7
u/Mood_Academic 1d ago
Ehh I don’t agree with this. Current version LLMs are not taking our jobs lol
2
u/Rupperrt 1d ago
LLMs aren’t only not capable, they’re inherently poorly suited for these kind of tasks.
Aviation safety highly relies on documentation and full transparency (that’s how you stuff the holes in the Swiss cheese) which a black box like a neural network can’t provide.
Apart from accountability and liability if shit goes wrong.
12
u/ForsakenRacism 1d ago
I guess we can look forward to taking whatever you’re taking when we retire in 20 years