“There’s a lot of risk with AI, because if it’s employed in ways that are not for the betterment of humankind, then it could be disastrous,” these words of the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Nasa) administrator Bill Nelson during an AI town hall the agency held with its employees on May 22 sums up pretty much everything about artificial intelligence. AI technology is advancing rapidly. The burgeoning field could help Nasa make transformative discoveries, but there are potential pitfalls as well.
“AI can make our work more efficient,” Nelson explained during the livestreamed event, while stressing that when used correctly, AI can accelerate the pace of discovery. AI can “open new possibilities in our ability to land on celestial bodies, navigate to them, and peer into the vast corners of the cosmos, and even in the search for life. But that’s only if we approach these new tools in the right way, with the same pillars that have defined us since the beginning: safety, transparency and reliability,” he cautioned.
Nasa has been using AI in various capacities for decades, as Nelson pointed out. But AI’s capabilities are improving rapidly these days, so Nasa is stepping up its efforts to understand the tech, as well as properly develop and deploy it. The bottom line is that Nasa will keep safety front of mind while harnessing the ever-growing power of AI. Just a few days ago, for example, Nasa announced the appointment of its first-ever AI chief — David Salvagnini, who had been serving as the agency’s chief data officer. And he and his colleagues aim to get Nasa’s entire workforce more AI-literate soon. “Part of what we’ll be doing — and you’ll see the announcement soon — is the ‘Summer of AI,’ which is a training initiative where everyone at Nasa is going to have an opportunity to learn more about AI,” Salvagnini said during the town hall where he also discussed AI safety. Responsible use of the technology begins with a mindset that keeps humanity central and accountable, he said.
Indeed, Salvagnini said that he’d prefer the term ‘assistive intelligence’ over ‘artificial intelligence’, as it keeps us in the driver’s seat. AI “is a resource that I now have access to that can help me in my decision process,” Salvagnini said. “The AI is not accountable for the outcome. The person is; the human is.” He pointed to weather forecasters’ modelling of possible hurricane tracks as an analogy for the responsible use of AI. Modellers present multiple potential tracks, because they’re aware of the limitations of the datasets they’re analysing. In other words, they’re using their judgment. On the subject of deep fakes, Salvagni said Nasa plans to “keep an eye on” the misuse of its images and where it posts content but noted that AI is pretty good at authenticating Nasa imagery to prevent deepfakes from circulating.
As Nasa chief information officer Jeff Seaton said, observing the Moon and Mars with surface imagery features, communicating with spacecraft from large distances, and traversing rovers on surfaces further and faster will only become more accessible with generative AI. We will have “a trove of information we can now learn from using mathematical models that can generate responses to our questions,” Seaton observed.
The town hall also saw Nasa deputy administrator Pam Melroy stating that “AI is going to help us in so many areas.” She cited the technology’s power to sift through huge amounts of information quickly and efficiently — a capability that could lead to big discoveries in heliophysics, Earth science and astronomy. AI could increasingly take over mundane, labour-intensive data-analysis tasks, freeing up Nasa employees to tackle more difficult and complex problems. While agreeing that AI is a powerful, ingenious and very exciting tool, she cautioned: “But if we don’t manage it responsibly, we’re going to open ourselves up to a world of risk that jeopardises our credibility and our mission.”