The “humans-in-the-loop” part of BluFly’s tagline is my way of describing the ‘complicated’ relationship the publication has with the thorny subject of artificial intelligence (AI). I would like to say it’s not used at all. I’d like to say that, but I can’t. It would be inaccurate and, candidly, quite difficult to implement given how AI has already found its way into so many things we all take for granted and use on a daily basis.

Let’s parse it out a bit, though: for what really matters the most to you — what shows up in the BluFly feed — it is accurate to say “we don’t use it.” Editorial choices are determined exclusively by humans: that was, is and always will be the case.

I believe — and I’m consequently betting the BluFly farm on — the unique and yet undoubtedly flawed human judgement exercised in editorial decisions is the je ne sais quoi you will find interesting and engaging in the first place. I hope it will also keep you coming back for more. Fingers crossed, you’ll also engage with and recommend BluFly to others and the audience will organically grow, over time.

Either that, or everybody will be bored out of their skulls and stay away forever. I am prepared to live with any of these possibilities. Whatever the outcome, I know it will take patience and I’m prepared for that. I’ll only have myself to pat on the back or kick in the ass, as the case may be.

Great publications are made that way, at least in part, by great editing. What is included and, just as important, what is left on the cutting room floor defines any journal’s character and quality. You, fellow humans and members of our esteemed audience, are the only ones who get to decide whether BluFly is routinely achieving this goal such that you want to stick around or tell a friend.

No matter what, however, I’m not prepared to hand this critical and essential role over to any other intelligence, artificial or otherwise, even it can be proven to be a jillion times better and faster than mine. Call me crazy, but I still believe I can do better.

For example — and setting all modesty aside — I don’t think AI would have made the connection between National Bacon Day and the Bacon Super T–6. Unless AI was trying to be too smart for its own good. As opposed to humorous which is what I was trying to be when I made this intentionally silly logical leap.

Beyond these broad statements, well, that’s where the ‘complicated’ part can be found. Okay, if not found, then you can definitely see it from there.

Some time ago, audience members let me know they didn’t like or appreciate AI-generated images being featured in the feed. They felt this way for a variety of reasons. Candidly, I hadn’t thought about it much until they mentioned it. But once I had thought about it, I agreed with them. If I were on the receiving end of this AI ‘art’ I wouldn’t appreciate it, either.

My reasoning was pretty simple: I believe if an artist has invested their time and tears on their work, that’s where I should invest my time, too. This I owe them, at least. With AI ‘art’, there isn’t much if any artistic effort and creativity required. It takes nothing to type in “four engine, jet-powered Tiger Moth”, copy/paste the resulting image and then claim credit for ‘creating’ it. At best, it’s a parlour trick which should be reserved for entertaining bored guests at weddings and bar mitzvahs.

Unless … unless.

Of course, you knew that was coming.

For a long time now, engineering innovation and creativity writ large has used digital design and engineering tools. What’s more, these can and often do provide photo-realistic renderings to illustrate and describe the designs they are used to create. I assert we have all enjoyed and appreciated having our imaginations being fired up by these often beautiful and compelling images of things that do not yet exist. Not to mention these tools also provide an opportunity to test out our magnificent Bacon Super T–7 in a virtual wind tunnel before a single, 3D-printed rivet has been set.

AI has been steadily weaselling its way into these types of design and engineering workflows for years. Not just for aviation but for just about everything designed and perhaps eventually manufactured. So, question for the class: collectively, do we really want to exclude these images and all the other incredible artefacts produced by these types of tools just because they might have some AI assistance along the way?

I didn’t think so. Therefore, they are fair game to be featured in the feed in the future.

AI-generated text, on the other hand, is actually a little easier to handle. Once again, human editorial judgement will be used and if it’s concluded the majority of text has likely been AI-generated, it will not make the cut. For the most part it’s still pretty easy to spot. If some small, unresolvable doubt arises, the author will be asked about it. If they say it’s their own work, this will be good enough. I am a firm believer in working within the confines of the honour system.

Sidebar: Don’t even get me started on the subject of whether the world actually needs a faster, easier and less labour-intensive of text writing. Rather, what’s needed is much more text reading — for understanding. Why churn out even more prose if we seemingly can’t get through more than a hundred words or so of what we already have on hand?

Finally, at least for now on this complex subject, there are the so-called ‘deep fake’ videos. Like AI-generated text, videos faked in any way — deep or not so much — are not welcome on BluFly. Also, similar to text, if something appears not quite right, the source will be asked to vouch for its authenticity. If they do, this is good enough — deep investigative, gotcha journalism is just not what BluFly is about. It’s just too easy to take a pass on something which doesn’t pass the sniff test.

That said, I try not to fall asleep at the switch either. Recently, a video showed up that looked great and the subject matter was such that I really wanted to believe what I was seeing. However, I eventually had to conclude it almost seemed too good to be true: it was just a bit too perfect. This concern was resolved with a series of emails with the source. They were able to convincingly establish the video accurately captured events as they actually happened. That, and I was also able to corroborate the video by independently matching up few data points. The video’s source did not sign their testimony in blood, nor were they asked to do so. The video subsequently ran in a series of posts.

However, after the fact, I took some consolation in learning my editorial spidey sense was tingling for a reason. The source of the video did say there had been some internal debate about how much to tinker with the colours in the video. It would seem the tech guy who liked the fake-ish, vaguely Kodachromy, flight sim look eventually won the day. Too bad, I say. Real is sometimes better than better-than-real. Or they let AI determine what looked best and, well, there’s no accounting for AI’s aesthetic sense. What a shock.

Therefore, like many things, all of this falls into an editorial grey area. It depends on the situation and the circumstances. Maybe this rule-of-thumb is one on which most of us can agree: products of AI which are in service of some other higher purpose, such as described above, they’re okay. AI-generated stuff for its own sake? Not so much.

Which brings me full circle to the images I have chosen for this edition of In The Air and as such, the key image for September, 2024. What I love about them is how delightfully analogue and imperfect they are. They beautifully capture the notion of human beings at work in an earlier and simpler time: people come up with an idea and work out the details with a pencil, paper and slide rule. Notes in hand, they mock up a scale model out of wood and glue. Finally they tote the whole contraption into a real wind tunnel to see how things worked out. They measure stuff with rulers, look puzzled and are clearly using their heads to figure things out.

No AI. No computer-generated renderings. No computers at all, of any sort. Just good old know-how and a laying on of very human hands. It worked back then and would still work today. After all, the last time I checked, history has been pretty kind to the B–25.

By all means, let me know what you think 2 about the September, 2024 edition of BluFly such that it might continue to improve. Do you have a story you would like BluFly to help tell? Drop me a line about this, too — I'd love to hear about it.

That's it for this month's column. Until next time, fair winds and blue skies.

Terence C. Gannon
Managing Editor

Until such time we have our Table of Contents pages up and running, we are providing the most recent posts from the feed: 3

Note that the embedded posts above are from the Bluesky Custom Feed 3 which is the ‘reference’ feed for BluFly. Check out said feed if you want to see what else we posted about this month.