The Crash of Flight JBU1391

As a break from the horror that is our ongoing, multiple Constitutional crises, I want to discuss the horror that is this thought piece around imitative AI.  The New York Times has a write up of this report from three supposed futurists.  The report is really not well thought out.  It starts with the idea that “ … A.I.s will continue to improve to the point where they’re fully autonomous agents that are better than humans at everything by the end of 2027 or so”.  That is not directly in the report, but the spirit is there.  

By the end of 2027, these so called agents will approach AGI, be advising the President who will become wiser as a result (one wonders at the bounds of the suspension of disbelief) and we will all lose out jobs (us poor programmers are doomed as a species.  Say good by the Majestic T-Shirt Crested Systems Coder.  Extinct, circa 2027).  It is nonsense.  Word calculators that still have a hard time counting letter and are less accurate at math than an actual calculator are not going to produce a super intelligence by 2027 or ever.  The rate of improvement is slowing down, and the idea that throwing more and more data at them to get constant improvement is not working.  And that is before we get to the financial mess that is this industry.

No, we do not have to fear super intelligent machines taking all of our jobs.  Our fear of imitative AI should be tied to how people in power use it, not fantasies.  The real danger is likely to involve more incompetence and ideological blinders than sci-fi fantasies.  So I wrote a little vignette demonstrating how we are more likely to see imitative AI really harm us.  The piece below is fiction, and obviously elides and simplifies some details of airline and FAA practice, but its closer to reality that anything in the report.  And, hey, if bad AI fan fiction is good enough for futurists, surely it is good enough for this failed writer with an allergy to bullshit in tech?

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Imitative Artificial Intelligence in 2027: The Crash of Flight JBU1391

Breaking News Alerts April 12^th, 2027

Two commercial jetliners collided over JFK this evening, at approximately 7:30 PM Eastern. As of this moment, the FAA and New York Port Authority have no comment, other than acknowledging the loss of two commercial planes. Approximately 638 crew and passengers combined were reportedly on the two planes.

Post on Social Network from the President of the United States:

Very BAD at JFK today, home of the nasty lady Governor Hochul. It looks as if a DEI pilot killed many, many people. So sad. WE WILL MAKE AMERICAN SKIES SAFE AGAIN!

Excerpt from FAA Press Conference:

SPOKESPERSON: At this time, we can confirm that the two planes collided as they both continued on the last instructions received from the tower. There are no known survivors from either plane, but fortunately, it does not appear that anyone on the ground was seriously injured.

REPORTER: Where did the planes crash?

SP: I do not have a direct location right now, but I am informed it was largely uninhabited, or at least not populated at this time of night. So far, the injuries we are aware of on the ground are minor injuries to first responders.

R: Do we know why the two places were given instructions that led to a midair crash?

SP: Investigations are ongoing

R: Do we know why the controllers did not notice the impending collision?

SP: Investigations are ongoing

Quotes from the New York Times article the day after the crash:

“… the [expletive] plane just vanished from the screen …”

“This administration illegally fired hundreds of FAA personnel, including hundreds who supported air safety and airport operations. We need to know today, right now, how many of those people were no longer on the job at JFK and precisely what functions were not being done or being done by overworked staff.”

Headlines April 14th, 2027:

SECOND PLANE DISAPPEARED OFF TOWER SCREENS RIGHT BEFORE CRASH

TOWER REPORTS PLANES VANISHED FROM SCREENS BEFORE CRASH

PLANE-LY NOT THERE: WHY DID THE PLANE DISAPPEAR FROM THE TOWER SCREEN?

QUESTIONS LINGER REGARDING TOWER ACTIONS

GHOST PLANE BLAMED FOR ACCIDENT

Post on Social Network by Special Government Employee in charge of DOGE:

Seems the flight control system in the tower bugged out and a plane disappeared from the screen. This is what happens when you refuse to modernize your systems!

Excerpt from Congressional Investigation on Crash of Flight JBU1391, September 2027:

CONGRESSPERSON: Did Mr. Johnson ever express to you why, after all that, he did not resign?

WITNESS ONE: He told me that he thought he could keep them from putting anything dangerous into production. I remember once he said no one wants planes to fall out of the sky.

CP: Did you believe him?

W: Partially.

CP: Partially?

W: [Pause]. His son tried to kill himself in January. The DOGE people told him, they told all of us, that if we were fired, it would be for cause. No severance, no health insurance, no unemployment. I think Mr. Johnson took them seriously.

Headlines April 15th, 2027:

JFK TOWER RUNNING BETA OF NEW FLIGHT SOFTWARE

TOWER RUNNING LATEST SOFTWARE DURING CRASH

SGE’S SATELLITE’S FIRM NEW FAA PROGRAM IN USE AT JFK

SPACE DISASTER: SGE’S CODE IN USE DURING CRASH

QUESTIONS REMAIN REGARDING PILOTS

WAS PILOT TRANS?

Post on Social media by POTUS, April 15th, 2027:

The new software should have been GREAT and Made American Fly Again! But a nasty, DEI hire screwed up and PLANES CRASHED! Should never have been allowed to happen! He will be fired immediately! WE WILL MAKE FLYING GREAT AGAIN!

Exchange on social media (identifying information for Mr. Johnson has been redacted), April 15th, 2027:

This appears to be the Willie Johnson who ruined the FAA software and crashed those planes. Be a shame if people let him know what they thought of him

[Finger Point Up Emoji] Interesting.

Excerpt from Congressional Investigation on Crash of Flight JBU1391, September 18th, 2027:

CONGRESSPERSON: When did you leave?

WITNESS ONE: When they drove out Ms. Kaur

CP: Why would her departure cause you to leave?

W: She and Mr. Johnson put together a plan to do the upgrade. It was really, really well done. Took them a solid month of design work and analysis, but they had a solid plan that would have allowed us to upgrade the system with no risk. Testing, code standards, people who were responsible for each area, who owned each set of requirements – everything. Probably the best plan I have ever seen.

CP: And then?

W: And then she and Mr. Johnson met with the DOGE leadership. They were in that conference room for less than thirty minutes.

CP: Do you know what was said?

W: I wasn’t in the room but could hear raised voices. When they were done, Ms. Kaur walked past me to her office, then walked out carrying her purse and some photos. I never saw her again.

CP: And what happened from that point?

W: The next day, the DOGE team called a meeting and told us that they had a plan. We were going to redo the whole system in less than six months, under their guidance. When someone asked how, they said we had to be “hard core” and not be afraid to use AI to make us “ten times programmers.”

CP: AI? Even after what happened at the Social Security Administration.

W: Yes. That was why I left. They were going to get people killed, and I didn’t want to be a part of it.

Headlines April 19th, 2027

MAN ARRESTED AFTER ATTEMPTED SHOOTING OF FAA PROGRAMMING HEAD

ASSASSINATION ATTEMPT ON FAA EMPLOYEE FOILED BY D.C. POLICE

HEAD OF FAA PROGRAMMING ESCAPES MURDER ATTEMPT DAYS AFTER OUTING ONLINE

NEAR MISS: GUNMAN FAILS TO KILL FAA PROGRAMMING HEAD

CONTROVERSIAL FAA PROGRAMMING HEAD ASSAULTED OUTSIDE HOME

DID DEI HIRES AT FAA SABOTAGE DOGE WORK?

Post on social media by POTUS April 22nd, 2027

I am giving a FULL AND COMPLETE PARDON to the great American Nick Headmen! He lost his daughter in the crash DEI JOHNSON caused! His actions were understandable! EVERYONE would do the same if they lost a DAUGHTER!!! MAKE FLYING SAFE AGAIN!

Excerpt from Congressional Investigation on Crash of Flight JBU1391, September 19th, 2027:

CONGRESSPERSON: How long have you worked at DOGE?

WITNESS TWO: Approximately two years.

CP: You were in charge of the FAA’s rewrite of its air control system?

W: No, congressperson. Mr. Johnson was.

CP: Let’s unpack that. Who approved the code changes, the so-called “pull requests”?

W: Ultimately, that was Mr. Johnson’s responsibility.

CP: Is this email from you? And I remind you that you are under oath.

W: Yes, it is.

CP: Can you read starting from the first line?

W: “You shouldn’t be declining pull requests – none of your people should. We discussed this. Given your team’s unwillingness to move quickly and to use appropriate tools, you are to be SMEs for us, nothing more. I better not see another pull request killed by you or anyone else on your team.”

CP: Thank you, that is enough. Would you still say that the new system was being built under the auspices of Mr. Johnson?

W: He was ultimately responsible, yes, even if others had more day-to-day operational responsibilities.

CP: How can a person be responsible for a thing they cannot approve or disapprove? That was a rhetorical question. This is not: were the “appropriate tools” generative AI?

W: That phrase referred to several innovative products the FAA programmers were reluctant to adopt out of a fear of the future.

CP: Yes or no: did those “innovative products” include generative AI tools?

W: [Pause]. Yes.

CP: Thank you. Are you aware that several studies have shown code generated from such tools can be bug-filled and have security flaws, and that the code quality of such programs is lower than that of experienced programmers?

W: I have seen no such studies, and human programmers make mistakes as well. A thorough code review process can mitigate those failings, whether generated by humans or artificial intelligence.

CP: A thorough code review process, such as the one that you forbade Mr. Johnson and his experienced staff from conducting?

W: [Consults with representation] Under advice of counsel, I am going to assert my Fifth Amendment rights.

Headlines April 28th, 2027:

FAA SOURCE CODE LEAKED

HACKERS CLAIM LEAK OF FAA SOURCE CODE

FAA SOURCE CODE APPEARS ONLINE

FLY FREE: HACKERS STEAL, RELEASE FAA SOURCE CODE

BREACH OF FAA SYSTEMS REPORTED

TRANS SWIMMER FINISHES FIFTH IN MAINE HIGH SCHOOL MEET

Post on Social Network by Special Government Employee in charge of DOGE, April 28th, 2027:

That’s not the source code! [Cry-laughing emoji] [Cry-laughing emoji]. Who wants you to believe otherwise?? [thinking man emoji]

Post on social media by POTUS, April 29th, 2027

The TERRORISTS who stole our precious, beautiful FAA code WILL BE FOUND!! Once we find these CRIMINALS, we will deport them to our strongest ally, El Salvador, where they will GET THE TREATMENT THEY DESERVE! KEEP AMERICA FLYING!!!

Excerpt from Congressional Investigation on Crash of Flight JBU1391, September  18th, 2027:

CONGRESSPERSON: Do you know what happened to Mr. Johnson’s son?

WITNESS ONE: [Muffled sounds of crying] [Pause]. He killed himself a week after Mr. Johnson lost his job. I’m told that his psychiatrist cancelled an appointment the day before because DOGE TOOK away his insurance.

Post on social media by POTUS April 30th, 2027

NO CODE HAS BEEN STOLEN! Our servers are the greatest, safest in the world!! MAKE AMERICAN SECURE AGAIN!!!! We will keep DEI hires like JOHNSON away from our precious code and make sure FLYING IS SAFE!

Headlines May 3rd, 2027:

JOHNSON, FAA PROGRAMING HEAD, MURDERED

JOHNSON GUNNED DOWN IN D.C. SUBURB

JOHNSON, HEAD OF FAA PROGRAMMING, KILLED

GROUNDED: FAA PROGRAMMING HEAD SHOT, KILLED

FAA PROGRAMMING HEAD DIES

WOMAN REFUSES TO PLAY TRANS OPPONENT IN POKER, STANDING UP FOR WOMEN

Excerpt from Congressional Investigation on Crash of Flight JBU1391, September 25th, 2027:

CONGRESSPERSON: And have you come to a conclusion about the cause of the planes disappearing from the radar screens?

EXPERT WITNESS: I believe so, yes. And I have attached affidavits from several computer science and artificial intelligence professors and professionals corroborating my findings. My full report has the technical details, but the human-readable version is that generative AI introduced a subtle bug that was not found before the beta test.

CP: And you are certain of your conclusions? Certain that AI was the cause?

EW: As certain as I can be, given that the FAA has not confirmed that the released code is in fact the version that went live. However, they have not denied it, and we have sworn testimony that a breach did occur on the relevant servers. As for AI, I am as certain as I can be. In addition to the code in question being called out as generative AI by every AI detection tool I am aware of, the code in question is overly complex, uses different patterns and structures than the majority of the code base, lacks comments, has a different style than the majority of the rest of the code, and is overly modular. These are all signs of AI code.

CP: And the bug that caused this disaster is in that code?

EW: It is. Again, the full details are in my report, but the code produced an error under certain conditions involving the day of the week, the number of planes on the screen, and the designations of those planes. That error, in turn, would cause planes to briefly but definitively disappear. The confusion and crowded airspace led to the crash, per our interviews with air control experts from this country and Canada. I will defer to their expertise for the full chain of events, but the ultimate cause, the trigger, was two planes disappearing from the radar screens under the worst, most crowded conditions. And those disappearances were caused by a bug introduced by generative AI and never found or corrected.

CP: Would it be fair to say that a more thorough review process would have caught the bug?

EW: Perhaps. It is a subtle bug, and I suspect only someone deeply familiar with the system would have caught it. If I hadn’t been looking for a flaw in that area, my team might not have found it either. AI is good at being confidently wrong, and you need to fully understand both the programming language and the context of the program to catch its confident mistakes. More time to test and review, of course, would help. But the point of generative AI, at least the way the DOGE team has been described to me, is to produce code quickly with little human intervention. Generative AI, on the surface, makes that possible. Scratch that surface, however, and you find flaws. Flaws that lead, this time, to over six hundred deaths.

Excerpt from the Washington Post story on the murder of William Johnson, former head of programming at the FAA:, May 5th, 2027

Witnesses say that the woman, now identified as Martha Karennes from Bentonville, Arkansas, approached the ball field holding the rifle and crying. Mr. Johnson, who at the time was in the dugout of the Little League team, was waiting for their turn at bat. Ms. Karennes advanced across the infield toward the dugout.

“Bill stood and told the lady not to fire, to let him get away from the kids,” said a witness. “He loved the kids, and after Kyle’s death, I think being around them kept him sane. A couple of families didn’t like it, but most of us have experienced DOGE. We knew who really ran that show. He walked out to second base, keeping the gun away from the kids. She’s screaming about how he killed her daughter, and he just shook his head. ‘I know how you feel,’ he said, ‘and I hope that after you find out who really did this to your daughter, you can forgive yourself for what you’re about to do.’ She fired three times before she hit him. He saved those kids.”

Mr. Johnson was pronounced dead at the scene.

Post on social media by POTUS May 7th, 2027

America MUST win the WAR FOR AI!!! We cannot let CHINA steal our AI! MAKE AI AMERICAN!!!