Aviation begins to use artificial intelligence to fly planes; understand

The little Cessna Caravan speeds down the runway and takes off, while the pilot next to me keeps his hands off the controls.

"Let's see those free hands", jokes Tim Burns, technology director at startup Merlin Labs, over the plane's intercom from a back seat.

On this flight, test pilot Matt Diamond, sitting on the left next to me, is not controlling the plane at all. Much of normal piloting tasks are being performed by artificial intelligence.

I am, legally speaking, a test subject - even the plane is labeled "experimental." The Merlin Pilot system does much more than a traditional autopilot, using a natural language processing model to listen to instructions from a simulated air traffic controller and responding over the radio with a computerized female voice. Test pilot Diamond says "Authorize" and the plane begins to turn toward a new course.

As a pilot - and, I admit, a bit of a perfectionist - giving up control to a computer didn't come naturally. But the demonstration is important as more and more aviation companies are turning to AI to usher in a new evolution in air transport, using it to automate pilot tasks and, perhaps one day, enable fully autonomous flights.

Our flight comes at a time when airlines around the world are facing a growing shortage of pilots. Boeing estimates that carriers will need more than 600,000 new pilots over the next two decades. At the same time, aviation safety authorities are dealing with increasing pressure on an already overburdened air traffic control system following a series of high-profile near-crashes and fatal accidents in recent years.

The move toward AI-assisted aviation is also gaining support in Washington. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy has been promoting artificial intelligence tools as part of the Trump administration's broader effort to modernize the nation's aging air traffic control system.

"We will never outsource national airspace to AI tools," Duffy told CNN in a recent interview. "The controllers will control the airspace, but we can make their job easier."

Duffy said the government sees AI as a way to reduce controller workload and improve efficiency in increasingly congested airspace.

Merlin argues that artificial intelligence could eventually help solve some of the same problems on the flight deck. "Eighty percent of aviation accidents are still caused by human error," Merlin CEO Matthew George told CNN. "If we can reduce that, it's a very useful use of our time."

The idea remains controversial. Commercial aviation has steadily incorporated automation over decades, reaching today's fly-by-wire systems, in which computers interpret pilots' commands even during manual flight.

"Modern cabins already feature a lot of automation, but that automation is within a narrowly defined scope," said Mykel Kochenderfer, whose research at Stanford University focuses on autonomous systems and aviation safety. Kochenderfer said the latest AI-assisted systems are designed to handle a wider range of unexpected situations than traditional rules-based automation.

"Our experience shows that this can be a very promising way to increase security," he said, "but the industry still has a long way to go to further improve the technology and establish the trust necessary for its acceptance."

Changing pilots' mentality may not be an easy task. Today's flight automation systems put the pilot at the center, allowing him to intervene when necessary. Captain Jason Ambrosi, president of the Air Line Pilots Association, which represents more than 79,000 pilots in the United States and Canada, says automation and AI should support pilots, not replace them.

"Technological advances can improve aviation safety, but they will never be a substitute for pilots on board an aircraft," Ambrosi said in a statement to CNN. "The most important safety feature on every airline flight will always be two well-trained, well-rested pilots in the flight deck."

Merlin emphasizes that completely pilotless passenger flights are still a long way off. "We're not going to flip a switch to have unmanned planes," George said. "It's about putting AI alongside human pilots and building trust."

The company says it has completed hundreds of test flights as it works to obtain certification from the Federal Aviation Administration. These standards are among the most rigorous in the transportation industry, often requiring years of testing and redundancy analysis before new systems are approved.

The military could provide the system's first major proving ground. Merlin recently secured a contract worth more than $100 million from the US Air Force to eventually bring the technology to C-130 cargo planes.

As the Merlin system lines us up on final approach, it begins a gradual descent toward runway 34 and maneuvers the controls to maintain the flight path, despite a light crosswind, until touchdown.

"It's a challenging problem for automation," test pilot Diamond tells me as we taxi back to the Merlin hangar. "But once you solve it, things get a lot easier for the pilot."

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Source: CNN