AI is learning to fly airplanes — and aviation is starting to embrace it - CNN

Ah, brilliant — because nothing says 'ready for primetime' like testing an AI pilot in a Cessna Caravan over some unsuspecting American suburb. Merlin Labs has taught its system to listen to air traffic control and chirp back like a polite chatbot, and aviation companies are 'starting to embrace it.' Presumably they've never been on a conference call where the AI suddenly decides the word 'runway' means 'time to sprint.' What could possibly go wrong? At least when autopilot fails, there's a human to grab the yoke. When this one hallucinates a fake clearance, you get a front-row seat to the tarmac.

The timing is impeccable, of course. Hot on the heels of every tech company proving AI can't reliably tell a duck from a dog, we're now handing it the controls of a multi-ton metal tube. The industry is 'starting to embrace' this, which in aviation-speak means a few venture-funded startups have flashed some PowerPoint slides at sceptical regulators. But the trajectory is clear: from Cessna to commercial in a hop, skip, and an inevitable NTSB report. The really clever part? They've given it a voice. So when the AI decides to 'negotiate' its landing slot like a budget airline customer, the human pilot gets to sit there, hands off, listening to a machine argue about holding patterns.

And let's not forget the real punchline: regulators are 'starting to embrace' it too, which in aviation regulation means they've agreed to 'monitor the situation' and 'revisit the guidelines in 2027.' By then, the AI will have flown a few thousand hours, most of them fine, right up until it encounters a non-standard instruction like 'go around, there's a flock of geese.' The black box transcript will be a masterpiece of polite confusion: 'I'm sorry, I didn't understand that. Please rephrase your directive in the form of a question.' Have a lovely flight, everyone.