There are a couple broad categories of artificial intelligence. The more narrow type is an expert system. Expert systems apply rules to solve problems and can work well within their domain. Back in 1998 and 1999, I did some contract programming for Compaq to help them implement the Compaq Crash Analysis Tool (CCAT). CCAT used an expert system language called CLIPS to diagnose the causes of operating system crashes. It worked well. On a more space related note, the DS-1 spacecraft had an expert system onboard to diagnose system malfunctions and implement repairs without human intervention. It worked well, too. Not only that, but DS-1 had the ability to navigate itself, a pretty cool capability.

True AI involves systems that learn, often using a technique called neural networks that mimic the brain on a small scale. Last week, I attended a meeting at Aerospace Corp where some prototype AI applications were demonstrated. One application could automatically monitor a satellite's telemetry, determine the number of out of limits values, and use a neural network to determine if the out of limit values were due to normal events (e.g. battery reconditioning or an eclipse) or something else. They were developing a collection of such systems to fuse several types of data to generate Space Situation Awareness. One cool application (SAS - Satellite As a Sensor) could derive space weather conditions from ordinary satellite telemetry. It also uses neural networks. There are some other applications that we discussed at the meeting that I can't talk about here due to classification issues.

AI has been overhyped for decades. At the same time, there are some really good space-related developments underway. One thing that's helping is the radical reduction in cost for massive data storage and super computing capability. Aerospace showed me one of their computer rooms. It featured a 22 CPU Beowulf cluster (small by today's standards, yet capable of far more calculations per second than a Cray 2 supercomputer) with a 3 terrabyte (3,000 gigabytes) RAID array. The Beowulf cluster was created using inexpensive CPUs and the drive array cost $2000.