FAA releases its first AI roadmap, aligning with position of industry leaders

The Air Current
Elan Head
13 August 2024

With its safety-focused AI roadmap, the FAA joins others in the aviation industry who are looking past the AI hype to concentrate on the technology.

More than four years after the European Union Aviation Safety Agency released its first artificial intelligence roadmap, the Federal Aviation Administration has done the same, signaling its alignment with the emerging industry consensus on how to approach AI in commercial aviation — with an emphasis on treating AI as a tool, not a human.

There are no real surprises in the roadmap, which was quietly released at a meeting for subject matter experts on July 24. The 31-page “living document” describes how the FAA plans to develop methods to assure the safety of AI and identifies seven guiding principles, all of which support an incremental, safety-focused approach to deploying the technology within the existing aviation ecosystem. This methodical approach stands in striking contrast to many other, less regulated industries, which have rushed to adopt AI without careful evaluation of the potential consequences.

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