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How Artificial Intelligence Is Enabling the Next Golden STEVE NORDLUND DR. GREG HYSLOP Vice President CTO and Senior VP of Boeing Engineering, Test & Technology Boeing Horizon X Boeing DECEMBER // 2017 DECEMBER // AI IN THE SKY HOW ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE IS ENABLING THE NEXT GOLDEN AGE IN AVIATION DECEMBER // 2017 IGNITING THE FUTURE. DeepNLP® from SparkCognition™ analyzes natural language to find evidence of money laundering in massive amounts of data, even spotting signs a human might miss. Contact us to learn how surveillance from artificial intelligence is helping the finance industry. The next big thing is out there. At Boeing, we believe that visionaries aren’t afraid to chase the impossible and make it reality. www.sparkcognition.com FEATURES AI AND THE ART OF AIRCRAFT MAINTENANCE Honeywell’s aerospace division is turning to AI to streamline maintenance and cut down on flight delays. BY ERIN RUSSELL 22 BOEING LOOKS BEYOND THE HORIZON IN ITS SECOND CENTURY The 101 year-old company cultivates innovation by investment with its HorizonX division BY AMIR HUSAIN AND MARLA ROSNER 30 THE NEW REALITY OF CYBER THREATS As devices become more connected, they also become vulnerable. Three cybersecurity experts weigh in on the threats we face. BY ERIN RUSSELL 36 CONTENTS 04 DEMYSTIFYING THE BLACK BOX 18 AMERICAN OFFSET STRATEGIES A look at progress on AI’s ability to provide WHAT THEY TELL US ABOUT THE FUTURE AHEAD rationale for decisions, which is critical to its The U.S. will need to innovate if it wants to retain widespread acceptance its technological advantage in armed conflict BY KEITH MOORE BY KEN WISIAN AND MARLA ROSNER 07 THE NEXT SPACE RACE IS ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE 21 COGNITEAM COMICS Short-sighted policies are holding the U.S. back Artificial intelligence saves the day BY GENERAL JOHN R. ALLEN, USMC (RET.) BY MILTON LOPEZ AND AMIR HUSAIN 08 THE HISTORY OF NATURAL LANGUAGE PROCESSING 26 ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE GOES TO FLIGHT SCHOOL A look back at the most important developments In the face of pilot shortages, artificial intelligence could in natural language processing revolutionize pilot training practices BY KEITH ESTES BY JIM FITZGERALD AND ERIN RUSSELL 10 BRINGING AI TO MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL: 28 THE OODA LOOP: WHY TIMING IS EVERYTHING ENDING THE MARINERS’ PLAYOFF DROUGHT AI is revolutionizing the speed at which warfare A Mariners fan searches for hope in AI analytics occurs—and leaving those who don’t invest in the dust BY KEITH ESTES BY WENDY R. ANDERSON, AMIR HUSAIN AND MARLA ROSNER 14 IMPORTANT DATES FROM HISTORY AND TODAY Significant dates in aerospace and AI history Amir Husain Victoria Salas Contributing Writers BY AMY BAEK Editor in Chief Producer Keith Estes John King Milton Lopez Jim Fitzgerald Executive Editor Producer 16 CHINA’S GROWING AI ADVANTAGE Keith Moore Production Director Erin Russell Gen. John R. Allen, With investments and policy, China is trying Jon Coyle Producer USMC (Ret.) to shift the paradigm of warfare towards AI Art Director Staff Writer Designer Amy Baek BY ERIN RUSSELL Marla Rosner Staff Writer 2 COGNITIVE TIMES December 2017 FROM THE EDITOR by Amir Husain AI policy & technology go hand in hand. heads in the sand and avoid the political, policy, economic, Artificial intelligence is too profound a development and and ethical aspects of AI. We choose to not shy away too gigantic a shift to merely be a story about technology from things that seem difficult. It is only in this way that alone. AI certainly represents the epitome of our techni- we can make a meaningful difference. cal prowess, but its implications are far-reaching and go The time for policy makers, political leaders, and military significantly beyond what we would expect solely from a commanders to understand artificial intelligence is now. technological development. If we want to secure future elections, prevent AI-powered In our paper, originally published by the US Naval In- mind hacking campaigns that create social instability, and stitute’s Proceedings magazine, Gen. John Allen and I ward off cyber-physical attacks against our infrastructure, made the case that the application of AI in the battlefield then we must act now. If we want to develop the policies will give rise to what we call, “hyperwar.” In that same that will keep us at the forefront of AI research and allow paper, we stressed that AI would not just drive changes us to apply the benefits of this technology to improve in the way war is waged, but would have profound im- efficiency, safety and grow our economy while protecting plications for our national economy, industry, and even those impacted by automation, the time to act is now. social stability. We cannot hope that bans will protect us in the future. Just two weeks ago (November 2017), the United Nations We cannot hope that even if a ban were in place, all sig- Convention on Conventional Weapons (CCWUN) met natories would respect it. Hope is not a strategy. We need in Geneva. Ambassadors and representatives from over hard work and we need realism. 100 countries debated—not for the first time—what This issue of Cognitive Times profiles our amazing part- controls should be put in place to ward off the threat ners, Boeing, Honeywell, and other leading companies of autonomous weapons. Unfortunately, the attendees who are committed to building the AI-powered world of could not even agree to a definition of what constitutes the future with us. It is a fantastic journey—and we hope an autonomous weapon. With no consensus at hand, you join us. further discussions were pushed out to next year. Meanwhile, developments in Russia and in China in- dicate that artificial intelligence will make its way into weapon systems very quickly. At the rate things are go- ing, operational AI capabilities will likely be deployed in autonomous weapons in these countries prior to UN ambassadors even agreeing on a definition of what an autonomous weapon really is! De-facto is outpacing de-jure. The fact that bans provide little comfort is precisely what we at SparkCognition have been arguing now for the last couple of years. In my extensive national and interna- tional travels, I have personally met with four-star gen- erals from NATO member states, leaders of allied na- tions, ambassadors, and policy makers. Many members of SparkCognition’s senior leadership team have collective- ly briefed senior officers in the Pentagon and high-level representatives from Allied states. Why are we spending our time doing all this? Because we understand what AI means to the world. We know that if we are to truly lead the charge in building the AI-powered world of the future, we cannot bury our COGNITIVE TIMES December 2017 3 Demystifying THE BLACK BOX by Keith Moore onsider the following scenario: A grocery store em- Now, consider an alternate example. A grocery store ployee is responsible for ordering inventory and employee is responsible for ordering inventory and must Cmust place an order soon. The employee sees that a place an order soon. The employee uses an algorithm that snowstorm is forecasted for the area. Based on experience, factors in a forecasted snowstorm. The algorithm also the employee knows that people act irrationally during notes that the Yen is extremely strong versus the British storms. Over the past few years, every time a storm has Pound. On top of that, chicken fertility rates in Georgia been forecasted, the store runs out of perishable goods. have dropped below their three-year average and the Given this evidence, the employee feels justified in order- hashtag #snowpocalypse is trending on Twitter. Given ing additional inventory of milk and eggs. this evidence, the algorithm instructs the employee to or- If questioned by a manager, there is ample evidence to der additional inventory of milk and eggs. defend the employee’s ordering decision—which is gen- To most people, this decision-making process seems erally required in order to stay employed. There is no completely insane. The employee couldn’t possibly use guarantee that the actions were the absolute best for the it as justification to order more supplies. However, puz- given situation, but a clear, discernable methodology was zlingly, it produces a more accurate forecast for order- followed in order to achieve what the employee believed ing supplies. would be the highest utility. This is an example of heuris- This is the newest problem in the algorithmic world: tic decision-making. explanation and defensibility of a model. We know that This method of defensible decision-making is prevalent deep learning algorithms work, but why they work because it leveraged rational systemic analysis as well as breaks human intuition. This is problematic. Because of intuitive experience. This flow could then easily be inter- this, massive amounts of research have been poured into preted by another person, making it transitive in nature. “explainable AI” to help demystify what is inside of the Unfortunately for human intuition, the world is changing. deep learning “black box.” While this research is ongoing, there are a few highly promising technologies available today that we believe are going to help pioneer humanly intuitive, explainable AI. 4 COGNITIVE TIMES December 2017 Model-Agnostic Methods: Where the End Justifies the Means Instead of spending efforts trying to decrypt what is happening within a neural network, it’s possible to make black box assumptions about what the network is doing given the inputs and outputs. These solutions, deemed as model-agnostic, hope to create some approximation of what is happening within any model and explain the decisions made. The technology leader in this space is an open-source tool called LIME (Local Interpretable Model-Agnostic Expla- nations) from the University of Washington, which takes a model-agnostic approach to determining the “why” behind any decision.
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