{"id":37754,"date":"2026-11-14T10:15:01","date_gmt":"2026-11-14T17:15:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/?p=37754"},"modified":"2026-11-14T10:29:44","modified_gmt":"2026-11-14T17:29:44","slug":"ai-not-ready-for-prime-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/?p=37754","title":{"rendered":"AI: Not Ready for Prime Time"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"478885D100000578-5207639-image-a-74_1513998468243-2961272345\"<\/a>Yesterday morning a friend sent a gift link to a New York Times article titled Is Air Travel Getting Less Safe?<\/a><\/strong> That afternoon, the FAA imposed an emergency nationwide ground stop<\/a><\/strong> on all flights, triggered by radar and communication outages in the air traffic control system. In addition to stopping takeoffs, it ordered airborne aircraft to land. The grounding was chaotic and lasted for hours, and I don’t even what to think about what passengers had to endure, on the ground and in the air, or how long it’ll be before air travel gets back to normal.<\/p>\n

Had we evolved to the point where airliners are automated, carrying passengers and cargo without human pilots in the cockpit, \u00e0 la<\/em> self-driving robotaxis like the ones I saw in Las Vegas last week, what happened yesterday would have been catastrophic. Happily we aren’t there yet and pilots know what to do when ATC communications and radars go on the blink: maintain aircraft control, analyze the situation, take the proper action. The ATC system may be down, but you’re still at the controls; you can still contact control towers and other aircraft by radio; your own eyeballs, radar, and midair collision avoidance systems still work; the sky is still big. Do what you’ve got to do to get your passengers on the ground safely. If you’re on the ground in a long line of aircraft on the taxiway when a ground stop is imposed, well, good luck finding an open gate and better hope the lavatories don’t overflow, but at least you’re safe for the time being.<\/p>\n

But yeah, chaos. Our air traffic control system looks more and more like a house of cards. Absolutely no one is buying the party-line bullshit Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy put out at last night’s press conference<\/a><\/strong>. While trying to claim improvements to the FAA’s ATC system, namely a new AI tool<\/a><\/strong> to reduce air traffic congestion (just coincidentally implemented earlier that very day) was not the problem, that the trouble lay solely in older computers and radar still in use, he inadvertently admitted that the glitch happened during the process of integrating the new AI tool with the old equipment \u2014 which is the same thing as saying improvements were<\/em> the cause. And then had the nerve to demand an additional 50 billion dollars to replace the old equipment, as if Congress was deliberately withholding money from the FAA \u2014 a Congress fully under Republican control that’ll do whatever Trump wants, as it’s shown again and again over the past two years, a Congress that’ll remain under Republican control until January 2027. Whatever Sean Duffy and the Trump loyalists running the FAA were trying to do with this new AI tool, they fucked it up royally and are trying to deflect blame. It’s all Biden’s fault. Yeah, right.<\/p>\n

\n

\"IMG_1040\"<\/a>It’s time to shift gears. Polly and I mounted the birthday bird feeder to the Palo Verde in our front yard. Thanks, Gregory and Beth, for this wonderful gift!<\/p>\n

As with the older feeder on our patio, it has a proximity-activated video camera Bluetoothed to our iPhones and iPads. Both cameras are solar powered. The one out back gets sunlight all day, but the new one, with all those branches overhead, gets a mix of sun and shade. I worried it wouldn’t get enough direct sun to stay powered, but it’s been recording visiting birds for two weeks now, so apparently enough is getting through.<\/p>\n

The new feeder points toward our house and should record four-legged critters as well as birds. Coyotes and javelina often traverse our yard, taking a path between the Palo Verde and the house. So far, though, the new camera has only recorded birds.<\/p>\n

I can extract still photos from the feedercam videos and often do, sharing them on Instagram and Facebook. The images aren’t that great because the cameras don’t record in HD, so I sometimes enhance them with ChatGPT. This is by way of a confession, because like most of you I dislike the AI-generated images and videos flooding social media. I don’t think using ChatGPT to sharpen and remove glare from photos rises to the level of AI fakery, but some might. It can be tricky. To show you what I’ve done with some of my images, here are two from the new feedercam, the first raw, the second enhanced:<\/p>\n

\"Screenshot<\/a><\/p>\n

\"68F040D9-E3A2-451A-863D-4F904C36C004\"<\/a><\/p>\n

That’s a male house finch in the first photo; a Gila woodpecker in the second. Is that AI? I don’t think so. In any case, when I post ChatGPT-enhanced photos to social media or this blog, I’ll tell you so.<\/p>\n

Stay fresh, cheesebags1 More soon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Our air traffic control system looks more and more like a house of cards.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1960,40,10,3,555,2761],"tags":[4963,4785,4197,468],"class_list":["post-37754","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-air-minded","category-critters","category-current-events","category-flying","category-local-color","category-yell-clouds","tag-ai","tag-birdfeedercam","tag-chatgpt","tag-faa"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37754","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=37754"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37754\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37762,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37754\/revisions\/37762"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=37754"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=37754"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=37754"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}