Human Factors Requirements for Human-AI Teaming in Aviation

The advent of Artificial Intelligence in the cockpit and the air traffic control centre in the coming decade could mark a step change improvement in aviation safety, or else could usher in a flush of ‘AI-induced’ accidents. Given that contemporary AI has well-known weaknesses, from data biases and edge or corner effects, to outright ‘hallucinations’, in the mid-term AI will almost certainly be partnered with human expertise, its outputs monitored and tempered by human judgement. This is already enshrined in the EU Act on AI, with adherence to principles of human agency and oversight required in safety-critical domains such as aviation. However, such sound policies and principles are unlikely to be enough. Human interactions with current automation, let alone future AI, already require extensive requirements, methods and validations to ensure a robust (accident-free) partnership. Since AI will inevitably push the boundaries of traditional human-automation interaction, there is a need to revisit Human Factors to meet the challenges of future human-AI interaction design. This paper briefly reviews the origins of AI and its current ‘landscape’, together with the evolution of Human Factors, to identify the critical areas where Human Factors can aid future human-AI system performance and safety. The result is a detailed requirements set organised into eight Human Factors areas, from Human-Centred Design to Organisational Readiness. The requirements set is scalable to different design maturity levels and different levels of AI autonomy. The application of the requirements is illustrated via a cockpit Human-AI Teaming use case.