Called it
Every source with credibility to comment on this isn’t connecting it to the new AI software, specifically. Even those with incentive to. For example, SA’s sources point to the Trump staffing cuts and a failure of older systems:
CBS News reported that a software update to the private communications system may have triggered a system-wide reboot, causing it to crash.
“It would be unusual for them to do a software update during the day, but the FAA is very short-staffed,” Stilwell says. Department of Government Efficiency-related cuts laid off hundreds of FAA workers last year.
And NPR: https://www.npr.org/2026/11/13/nx-s1-6040403/faa-nationwide-groundstop-airports
And another that addresses this explicitly:
To be clear, there’s no indication so far that the ground stop today was caused by anything related to the AI rollout. Officials haven’t said they believe the two are connected, and they are still trying to find the cause of the communications failure. Still, you can see why the timing might make people wonder what’s up.
Not that AI software deservers to be exonerated, nor that the timing isn’t suspicious, but there is just zero evidence so far.
I am posting this because I am sick of seeing Futurism’s ragebait headlines in /c/technology. Nearly every one is just attention optimized tabloid clickbait, hence I simply do not trust the more plausible sounding headlines like this.
TBH I am close to just blocking few users that post Futurism. As when I bring this up in the more obvious clickbait threads, OP never seems to respond… and I came to Lemmy for better information hygiene in my feeds, not worse.
There IS evidence.
“Failure in older systems” likely means that the new system created so much data it overwhelmed the old system. THAT would be a self-own DOS and poor planning. Therefore, it was caused by the new system rollout.
Agree. Think I’ll block eiker now.
What about the possibility of an Iranian cyberattack?! Uh oh, spaghettios!
why would anyone trust official statements from this current administraton or various hillionaire owned news stations?
Or experts on the topic, like former air traffic contollers? Or software engineers that worked with this stuff? Or news instututions with decades of credibility?
I understand the conflict-of-interest concerns, but I suppose I am an ‘oldschool’ believer in journalistic standards, primary sources, and topical experts
On the contrary, why would I trust the headline of a single for-profit news site, one that regularly posts clickbait? Because it happens to align with a popular viewpoint?
Answer: No.
Duffy literally said what happened.
They tried to run a totally new ‘SMART’ software system on hardware that he said they already knew couldn’t handle it.
Said hardware… then… didn’t handle it.
It then got overloaded to the point that the SMART system was disagreeing, de-sync’d with the correctly functioning legacy ATC systems, such as TRACOM.
Then they panicked and shut down everything, and up untill the press conference*, were issuing vague and nearly meaningless statements because almost no one in charge even understands the vocabulary used to describe components of the systems they are in charge of.
*(DHS Head MarkWayne Mullet was continuing to say nonsensical gibberish during the press conference.)
Ta da! That’s it, it’s that simple, we have incompetent idiot assholes in charge, they did incompotent idiot asshole things.
Now it’s apparently Biden and/or Congress and or the American people’s fault that Sean Duffy does not, right this moment, have $40 more billion dollars to finish installing this… checks notes … cost saving new system.
This is a Dilbert strip plot happening in real life.
This is essentially terrorism/cybercrime/extortion -> we will continue to install and use the system that we know does not work and crashes, untill we recieve $40 billion, which we pinky promise we will use to make the system crash less, maybe, probably… because that is how you save money.
“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,” the company wrote in a statement.
This is a lie, a knowingly false or misleading statement.
“We have no indication that the FAA’s nationwide ground stop is related to any Microsoft services,” [Microsoft] wrote.
This is most likely true.
I doubt that ASI’s SMART system was using Outlook/365 to email all of its internal network traffic to itself. That isn’t strictly impossible, but it’s almost certainly not the case.
You see, Microsoft has their own LLMs, writing their own shitty code, that crashes in its own shitty way.
They recently laid off 1/4 of their staff to continue to be able to afford using their LLMs. Which they also know writes shitty code that blows up regularly.
As a side note:
Looks like the MAGA crime syndicate front known as ASI has a whole page dedicated to energy infrastructure.
So, get ready for this to happen with the power grid as well.
Imagine though, the system trying to send out flight cancellation and rebooking emails to all these passengers - passengers not getting them and being completely in the dark about what to do and where to go because email was out on the same day as a nationwide ground stop…
That… lol, is true and probably happened to some extent.
But yeah those would be the airline’s email servers/systems, which fucking hopefullly are not directly, fully two way integrated into the goddamn ATC systems.
I have to say hopefully at this point because … that would be insanely stupid to do… but we also have insanely stupid idiots running seemingly everything these days.
You’d think it would just be the airline servers/systems just basically get a read only kind of notifcation from the airport sending out somekind of info update, and then the airline systems do their own thing…
But they’re always making better idiots.
Answer: No. Duffy literally said what happened. They tried to run a totally new ‘SMART’ software system on hardware that he said they already knew couldn’t handle it. Said hardware… then… didn’t handle it.
So… the answer is actually YES? SMART is literally the AI system in question, and the question was whether the rollout led to the shutdown.So. Yes.N/m- dumb brain
I am answering the rhetorical question in the title of the post/article.
In common casual speech, a ‘coincidence’ is merely a coincidence, just a coincidence, ie, the implication is that there is no actual causal relationship between the two coinciding things or events, they just happen to be nearby in space and/or time, but are otherwise unrelated.
This is not the case, they are directly, causally related.
So, the correct answer to the rhetorical question is ‘no’, as in ‘no, this is not merely a coincidence’.
Ah- I’m an idiot. Not sure why I translated that to “is it related?”
Carry on!
No problem! =)
They have a company named ASI? The whole industry is hype, knowingly pushing out a rushed product guaranteed to fail at some point to replace working systems. AND it’s built in to always need updating regularly to keep those who buy into it coming back.
LLMs could have been a useful tool to gradually train properly and grow into some systems slowly. But the money was too enticing, and now there’s no way backwards to fix all the issues and ethical problems. So dumb.
the fascist mode of production was never gonna be useful for anything but attacks.
So, get ready for this to happen with the power grid as well.
if there was every a time to get solar…it was 10 years ago before trump destroyed the rebate system for installing solar.
now your only choice is a 7-10kw generator. hope you don’t mind the price of fuel 🫠.
personally, I have converted my generator over to biofuel. I siphon the gasses from my MAGA corpse pit and power my home from the rotting flesh of my MAGA neighbors as they die of exposure and starvation one by one.
literally said
That’s kinda the only way to say things.
You can literally say things figuratively.
Be so for real right now, I can’t even.
EDIT:
Is the above quip of mine literal, figurative, or both, or neither?
The super intelligence is intelligencing.
I just don’t get what AI is doing in this context. Build normal fucking algorithms.
I saw that the average savings was 10 minutes and $375 a flight. For a system that cost $1billion. It won’t pay itself off until 2.6 MILLION flights have completed.
What a farce.
There’s 29,147 flights a day in the US according to this website
https://www.airportia.com/flights-monitor/united-states/
That wouldn’t take that long. 90 days pretty much
Route optimization is a great use case for AI.
Should’ve stuck to the floppy disks.
Hear that clicking? That means you’re in.
I hope other governments sue the fuck out of the states for causing business delays by beta testing live ai stuff. I read Australia lost a lot.
They fucked up, but they didn’t just throw this shit out without thought and testing. The first stage of the SMART rollout has been working fine in DC and parts of Florida since September.
If SMART was the cause, it had been online for 3 days without issue.
The press conference they said themselves that the AI overwhelmed the router because it was “too old” I’m pretty sure they know the cause
Cite a quote please. I’m pretty sure that’s not what they said.
Slop code AI edition coming to critical services near you.
From the “we didn’t audit the code people”.
ai is flatout dangerous. it must be stopped while we still can
You are absolutely right, there was another Boeing 737 on that runway. And this is my fault. If you want I can list 10 other big air traffic catastrophies.
I seethe in rage at this comment. Well done!
SMART only suggests optimized routes which humans must approve.
And of course(!), knowing how professional and responsible humans are that use LLMs, they will absolutely review everything carefully before approving… /s
It’s Biden’s fault.
Thanks, ObamA
It was that dastardly Martin Van Buren!
trump only has a short time to really fuck with the country before the level-headed try to set it right again. Watch for more hijinks and chicanery coming to a local streetcorner near you!
The AI rollout might be innocent, but deploying a billion dollar system into critical infrastructure days before a nationwide ground stop is spectacularly bad timing.
It was absolutely the implementation of slop services in place of well-understood, unbroken, functional technology.
wow, bigotry against the fascist mode of production which is also my waifu. reported.
Yes but, have you considered we could lay off 75% of the employees if the AI thing works because we should totally run government like a profit driven business?
(/S)
Lol, yeah but we’re at the “if the AI thing works” stage, and it does not
That’s really stretching the words “unbroken” and “functional”.
They just tested to see how fast they could ground everyone, and how panicked everyone would be and for how long. This is valuable data for martial law soon.
See also testing a massive email infrastructure outrage.
I don’t doubt any of these disruptions so close to each other are planned for by malicious intent.
911 service was down as well. To many important systems all going down same day? Come coucidents don’t happen that well.
Okay I know so many people on Lemmy like to overreact but seriously, that’s so off. We already have that data. It was called 9/11, happened 25 years ago, and they brought the entire country to a stop pretty damn quick. So no, they didn’t need the data as a test run, it already exists.
America, the most free, rich land of idiots.
