Ugh... I... Are you serious? Sure, in some sense AI is a computer and the fancy state machine that compensates for inherent flight instability is a computer also. But to equate the two is ridiculous.
It's a fair comment given that they'd just been talking about how the AI might control the plane - will it give inputs to the state machine or have direct control over all flight systems? One would strongly assume the inputs must be to the state machine. ..but oh boy wouldn't it be interesting to just hand it full systems control!
The gist of my reason for commenting was more musing about how the AI might interact with the digital flight control computer (i.e. are its inputs mediated by software in the same way a human's are).
If the AI is a neural network then, in some sense, it's just a fancy lookup table, too.
No. Not in the aerodynamical sense.
The Boeing 737 MAX is stable. In this sense: "The term stability refers to the tendency of an aircraft to remain in, or return to, the trimmed flight condition after a disturbance." It means that if there is a tiny gust of wind which buffets the aircraft and the pilot doesn't have their hands on the controls the aircraft will return to the original flight path, or keep the new flight path, as opposed to turning belly up and then crashing out of the sky.
Examples of unstable aircraft (in the aerodynamic sense): F-16, F-22, B-2 Spirit, etc
With these if a gust of wind upsets them, the aircraft needs to adjust control surfaces to don't fall out of the sky.