AI almost sent hazmat train barreling toward 'catastrophe' in Eastern WA
https://www.spokesman.com/stories/2026/aug/28/ai-almost-sent-hazmat-train-barreling-toward-catas/
Discussion
AI almost sent hazmat train barreling toward 'catastrophe' in Eastern WA
https://www.spokesman.com/stories/2026/aug/28/ai-almost-sent-hazmat-train-barreling-toward-catas/
So a race condition bug between a constraint satisfaction algo and a human dispatcher? Guess the Butlerean jihad is a go, folks.
@lauren AI is routing trains? That's worse than self-driving cars on the public roadways.
There is simply too much dark territory for the railways to be playing games like this. If nothing else, the protocol for a train accident will tie up the routes for days.
Remember Sandworm? It dorked shipping so badly that hospitals ran out of medicine. This has that same downside risk.
@lauren so uh, toctu bugs are a real thing for automated dispatch systems too?
Is there any evidence that the automated system had anything to do with "AI" besides marketing buzzwords? The problem space doesn't seem very amenable to other things typically called AI these days...
@PaulM Even the AI reality is hype, much less the actual hype!