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The AI Resilience Report helps you understand how AI is likely to impact your current or future career. Drawing on data from over 1,500 occupations, it provides a clear snapshot to support informed career decisions.
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Somewhat Resilient
Last Update: 5/19/2026
Your role’s AI Resilience Score is
47.4%
Median Score
Meaningful human contribution
Measures the parts of the occupation that still require a human touch. This score averages data from up to four AI exposure datasets, focusing on the role’s resilience against automation.
Med
Long-term employer demand
Predicts the health of the job market for this role through 2034. Using Bureau of Labor Statistics data, it balances projected annual job openings (60%) with overall employment growth (40%).
Low
Sustained economic opportunity
Measures future earning potential and career flexibility. This score is a blend of total projected labor income (67%) and the role’s inherent ability to adapt to economic and technological shifts (33%).
Med
This reflects the reliability of your score based on the number of data sources available for this career and how closely those sources agree on the outlook. A higher confidence means more consistent evidence from labor experts and AI models.
There are a reasonable number of sources for this result, but there is some disagreement between them.
Contributing sources
AI Resilience Report forAir Traffic Controllers
Air Traffic Controllers are somewhat less resilient to AI impacts than most occupations, according to our analysis of 5 sources.
Air traffic control is "Somewhat Resilient" because while AI is genuinely changing how the job works day-to-day — taking over routine data crunching, conflict prediction, and flight tracking — the human controller remains essential for the parts that matter most, like reading a pilot's stress, making split-second safety calls, and managing true emergencies. The role is shifting rather than shrinking: controllers are becoming more like decision-makers who work *with* AI tools rather than doing everything manually, which means the job itself will look different even if it doesn't disappear.
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View analysisChat with CoachLatest newsMore career infoAnalysisChatNewsMoreThis role is somewhat resilient
Air traffic control is "Somewhat Resilient" because while AI is genuinely changing how the job works day-to-day — taking over routine data crunching, conflict prediction, and flight tracking — the human controller remains essential for the parts that matter most, like reading a pilot's stress, making split-second safety calls, and managing true emergencies. The role is shifting rather than shrinking: controllers are becoming more like decision-makers who work *with* AI tools rather than doing everything manually, which means the job itself will look different even if it doesn't disappear.
Read full analysisAnalysis of Current AI Resilience
Air Traffic Controllers
Updated Quarterly • Last Update: 5/14/2026
How is AI changing Air Traffic Controllers jobs?
Right now, AI in air traffic control is being used to support controllers — not replace them. The biggest example is a new FAA program called SMART (Strategic Management of Airspace Routing Trajectories), which Palantir, Thales, and Airspace Intelligence are competing to build [1], and which can spot potential flight conflicts an hour or two before they would happen so a controller can adjust paths early. At an April 2026 summit, the FAA also showed it had built "true digital twins of the National Airspace System" [2] using 20+ years of flight data to optimize schedules.
On the ground, 17 towers have already swapped paper flight strips for electronic flight strips and new surface-awareness systems at 54 airports [3]. Experts told CNN that AI is good at crunching weather and trajectory data, but it struggles to detect emotion or stress in a pilot's voice [4] — a critical safety cue that humans still handle better.
Sources
How fast is AI adoption growing for Air Traffic Controllers?
Adoption is moving faster than it used to because of a serious controller shortage and high-profile safety incidents, plus a $12.5 billion congressional down payment for modernization. The union representing controllers, NATCA, has publicly endorsed the modernization plan [5], which helps social and labor acceptance. But several brakes will keep humans firmly in the loop: extreme safety standards, slow certification of new tech, and the fact that Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy flatly said replacing controllers with AI is "not gonna happen" [3].
Cost is another hurdle — the AI add-ons alone could need $6–10 billion more in funding. The good news for students considering this career: AI is being built to take pressure off controllers, not push them out, so human judgment, communication, and emergency decision-making remain the core of the job.
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More Career Info
Career: Air Traffic Controllers
They guide airplanes safely in the sky and on the ground by giving pilots instructions to avoid collisions and ensure smooth flights.
Parent Careers
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Employment & Wage Data
Median Wage
$144,580
Jobs (2024)
24,100
Growth (2024-34)
+1.2%
Annual Openings
2,200
Education
Associate's degree
Experience
None
Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics, Employment Projections 2024-2034
Task-Level AI Resilience Scores
AI-generated estimates of task resilience over the next 3 years
1
Monitor or direct the movement of aircraft within an assigned air space or on the ground at airports to minimize delays and maximize safety.
2
Conduct pre-flight briefings on weather conditions, suggested routes, altitudes, indications of turbulence, or other flight safety information.
3
Provide flight path changes or directions to emergency landing fields for pilots traveling in bad weather or in emergency situations.
4
Initiate or coordinate searches for missing aircraft.
5
Issue landing and take-off authorizations or instructions.
6
Transfer control of departing flights to traffic control centers and accept control of arriving flights.
7
Determine the timing or procedures for flight vector changes.
Tasks are ranked by their AI resilience, with the most resilient tasks shown first. Core tasks are essential functions of this occupation, while supplemental tasks provide additional context.
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