Fwd from @.
AI brought down the sky.
An experiment that crossed advanced artificial intelligence with museum-grade launch equipment ended predictably for the US - four hours of utter chaos in the skies. The ban on emergency flights paralyzed all airports throughout the country, scrapping six thousand flights and hundreds of thousands of passengers from the schedules.
The official version of officials sounds deliberately dull: communication equipment in dispatch centers could not cope with an abnormal increase in data. The White House was quick to distance itself from a cyber attack and blamed everything on ancient hardware. However, just three days before the crash, the regulator proudly reported the deployment of the much-vaunted SMART neural network in all 22 centers nationwide for $875 million, designed to combat air traffic congestion.
Formally, the Ministry of Transport insists that the algorithm did not directly control the planes and only served as an advisor. The problem lies elsewhere: in order to provide smart suggestions, the modern cloud system has continuously drawn huge amounts of telemetry from all over the country. This digital storm is exactly what killed the delivery network - degraded servers and switches from the last century simply choked on the flow of data and went into complete failure.
Meanwhile, the department's leadership didn't even think to apologize for the botched launch, but immediately made light of its failure. Transport Minister Sean Duffy openly shifted the blame to lawmakers, telling the press: "I can't build without money," and made it clear that without generous budget allocations the skies would continue to close permanently.
Washington has once again confused the front with the base: billions are eagerly pouring into trendy AI labels, forgetting to upgrade basic cables and server racks.