| Plenary Speech Title: "AI and
Space Exploration"
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ABSTRACT
Humans are quintessentially explorers and makers of things. These traits, which identify us as a species and account for our survival, are reflected with particular clarity in the mission and methods of space exploration. The romance associated with the Apollo project is being replaced with a different vision, one where we make tools to do our exploring for us. We are building computational machines that will carry our curiosity and intelligence with them as they extend the human exploration of the universe.
In order to succeed in places where humans could not possibly survive, these "remote agents" must take something of us with them. They must be self-reliant, smart, adaptable and curious. Our mechanical explorers cannot be merely passive observers or puppets dancing on tenuous radio tethers from earth. They simply will not have time to ask us what to do: the twin constraints of distance and light-speed would render them helpless while waiting for our instructions, even if we knew what to tell them. AI plays a central role in space exploration because there is, literally, no other way to make it work. Our bodies cannot fly in the tenuous Martian atmosphere, endure Jupiter's gravity or the electromagnetic turbulence of Saturn's rings; but our machines can, and we will send them there. Once at distant worlds, however, they must deal with the details themselves. The only thing we can do is to make them smart enough to cope with the tactics of survival.
How clever will these agents of human exploration need to be? Certainly, cleverer then we can currently make them. It will not be enough to be situated and autonomous: they will need to be intelligent and inquisitive and thoughtful and quick. NASA is committed to integrating intelligent systems into the very center of our long-range strategy to explore the universe.
In this talk, I will describe the current and future research directions of NASA's expanding information technology effort with a particular emphasis on intelligent systems.
Abbreviated Biography
Kenneth M. Ford is the Associate Center Director for Information Technology at NASA Ames
Research Center and Director of NASA's Center of Excellence for Information Technology. In
these roles, Dr. Ford has had the honor and responsibility of helping shape NASA's IT
research effort (about $200M effort at Ames, but much larger Agency wide). The Ames
Research Center has about 5,000 employees, of which about a third work in IT
and 700 have Ph.D degrees..
Additionally, Dr. Ford is the Director and Founder of the Institute for the
Interdisciplinary Study of Human and Machine Cognition (IHMC) at the University of West
Florida - a multidisciplinary research unit of the State University System. Since its
founding in 1990, IHMC has rapidly grown into a well-respected research institute
investigating a broad range of topics related to understanding cognition in both humans
and machines with a particular emphasis on building cognitive prostheses to leverage and
amplify human intellectual capacities. While at the University of West Florida Professor
Ford received national and local recognition for teaching excellence and in 1997 he was
awarded the University's highest research distinction, the Research and Creative
Activities Award. Dr. Ford has been on a leave absence from the University to NASA for the
last two years.
Dr. Ford entered computer science and artificial intelligence through the back door of
philosophy. After studying epistemology as an undergraduate, he joined the Navy and wound
up fixing computers among other things. When his Navy stint ended, he earned his doctoral
degree in computer science from Tulane University in 1988. His research interests, among
others, include: artificial intelligence, knowledge-based performance support systems,
computer-mediated learning, and internet-based applications. Dr. Ford is the author of
well over 100 scientific papers and the author/editor of five books. Dr. Ford is the
Editor-in-Chief of AAAI/MIT Press, Executive Editor of the International Journal of Expert
Systems, Associate Editor of the Journal of Experimental and Theoretical Artificial
Intelligence, and is a Behavioral and Brain Sciences (BBS) Associate. In 1995 Dr. Ford was
elected Councilor of the AAAI (American Association for Artificial Intelligence) and is
also Chair of the publications committee. He is past president of FLAIRS (Florida
Artificial Intelligence Research Society).
