Agency officials stressed that NASA will always keep safety in mind as it utilizes the increasingly powerful capabilities of artificial intelligence.
Artificial intelligence (AI) technology is evolving rapidly, as evidenced by the emergence of tools like ChatGTP. The emerging field could help NASA make groundbreaking discoveries, agency officials say — but there are also potential pitfalls.
“AI carries many risks because if it is used in ways that do not serve the best interests of humanity, it could have catastrophic consequences,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said today (May 22) during a town hall meeting on AI that the agency held with its staff.
“AI can make our work more efficient,” he added during the livestream. “But that will only happen if we approach these new tools correctly, with the same core pillars that have defined us from the beginning: security, transparency and reliability.”
Related: How AI could help in the search for alien planets and asteroids
AI is no stranger to NASA. The agency has been using the technology in various fields for decades, Nelson emphasized. But AI capabilities are improving rapidly these days, so NASA is increasing its efforts to understand the technology and develop and deploy it properly.
Last week, for example, NASA announced the appointment of its first AI chief: David Salvagnini, who previously served as the agency’s chief data officer. He and his colleagues hope to make the entire NASA workforce more AI-savvy.
“Part of what we’re going to do – and you’ll see the announcement soon – is the ‘Summer of AI,’ a training initiative where everyone at NASA will have the opportunity to learn more about AI,” Salvagnini said during today’s town hall meeting.
“It’s a campaign in the truest sense of the word,” he added. “There will be a wave of training opportunities, so to speak.”
Salvagnini also spoke about the safety of AI. Responsible use of technology starts with a mindset that puts humans at the center and in charge, he said. In fact, Salvagnini said he would prefer the term “assistive intelligence” to “artificial intelligence” because it puts us in control.
AI “is a resource that I now have access to and that can help me in my decision-making process,” Salvagnini said. “The AI is not responsible for the outcome. That is the person, that is the human.”
He pointed to weather forecasters’ modeling of possible hurricane paths as an analogy for the responsible use of AI. Modelers represent multiple possible paths because they are aware of the limitations of the data sets they are analyzing. In other words, they rely on their judgment.
“So how can we protect ourselves from that?” asked Salvagnini. “We understand our responsibility as the ultimate responsible person in relation to our work products. And then if we use AI as part of creating a work product, that’s fine, but we need to be clear about its capabilities and limitations.”
However, AI safety was not the only topic at today’s town hall meeting; agency officials also spent a lot of time praising the promising technology.
“AI will help us in so many areas,” said NASA Deputy Administrator Pam Melroy.
She pointed to the technology’s ability to sift through vast amounts of information quickly and efficiently – an ability that could lead to major discoveries in heliophysics, earth sciences and astronomy.
“We don’t even know what new insights we will gain by using these new techniques to look at old data in new ways,” Melroy said.
Some of those insights could provide an indirect benefit from the technology, she and other speakers at the town hall said: AI could increasingly take over mundane, labor-intensive data analysis tasks, freeing NASA employees to tackle more difficult and complex problems.
Melroy concluded her prepared remarks today with a qualified endorsement of AI, striking a similar tone to Nelson and Salvagnini.
“Finally, I just want to stress that this is a powerful, ingenious and very exciting tool,” she said. “But if we don’t use it responsibly, we open ourselves to a world of risks that put our credibility and our mission at risk.”