UC hosts an aerospace conference on artificial intelligence

Aerospace experts from across North America will be coming to the University of Cincinnati this week for a conference on artificial intelligence.

UC hosts the North American Fuzzy Information Processing Society’s annual conference in UC’s new Digital Futures building. This is an international research conference that will bring aerospace experts to Cincinnati to share the latest information on artificial intelligence as it relates to drones, aviation, space exploration, and other applications.

One of the conference sponsors, Thales, a France-based international holding company involved in the manufacture, marketing and sale of systems for the aeronautical, naval and defense sectors, recently entered into a five-year research partnership with UC.

The conference demonstrated how Ohio has continued to play an influential role in aerospace since the Wright brothers and Ohio native Neil Armstrong, the first humans on the moon to teach aerospace engineering at UC after leaving NASA. Ohio ranks as the fourth best state in the nation for new aerospace manufacturing.

Topics covered at the conference included using AI to refuel spacecraft, predicting passenger density at airports, and creating drone collision avoidance systems. These systems rely on a type of artificial intelligence known as fuzzy logic that relies on degrees of truth rather than binary true-false dichotomies. As a result, this artificial intelligence is explainable and transparent.

“They came to Cincinnati because we are the center of the fuzzy universe,” said Kelly Cohen, a professor of aerospace engineering at UC’s College of Engineering and Applied Science.

Cohen said technology experts are increasingly warning about the risks to artificial intelligence systems that cannot be easily explained.

“Just last week the White House was talking about the huge potential of AI,” Cohen said.

The Biden administration announced a roadmap to focus federal investment in responsible AI research and development, solicited public comment on mitigating AI risks while protecting individual rights and safety and releasing a new report on AI in education identifying the potential benefits and challenges of this. developing technology.

“Artificial intelligence has to be responsible, like it can be trusted. And trustworthy is defined as, ‘Can you explain your decision?’ Fuzzy really explains what goes into decision making,” says Cohen.

“Mainstream AI is a mess because it can’t be trusted. It’s a black box. It’s fragile. You can’t use it to make decisions that could put people’s lives at risk,” Cohen said.

Several UC students and graduates will be presenting their AI research at the conference ending Friday, June 2.