Getting smart: artificial intelligence and aviation

It is on your smartphone right now, and is likely to be in your aircraft cockpit soon. Artificial intelligence (AI) could be the next step in improving aviation safety, or perhaps the technology that banishes the human pilot from the cockpit. Artificial intelligence can loosely be defined as computers doing things that used to be done by people. But definitions of artificial intelligence are fluid, and the subject has instilled a sense of unease since the premiere of the play Rossum's Universal Robots, nearly a century ago. Capabilities once associated with artificial intelligence, such as calculation, optical character recognition, or indeed, the ability of an autopilot to maintain straight and level flight, have fallen off the definition, as they become commonplace.