The James Silberrad Brown Center for Artificial Intelligence is a new hub of AI research that San Diego State has established. The director informed me that the studies conducted in the past, which were labeled as “big data,” will join forces under this center.
Center director Aaron Elkins says:
“We were working in this field of research that was multidisciplinary. Statistics, machine learning and engineering coming together. But we didn’t have a good name for it.”
“AI has become the brand of it now.”
SDSU’s artificial intelligence uses cameras and sensors to build a data set depending on the context. Elkins, a management information systems professor, discusses this AI implementation.
ChatGPT, as opposed to such systems, utilizes a computer-based AI which gathers and breaks down data passively from the internet. According to Professor Hopkins, combining this process with signal-processing techniques can produce more accurate results.
Elkins went on to say:
“They just go onto the web and grab pictures and grab websites.”
“Wikipedia is just dumped into it and it’s learned from. Which is awesome. But we work on the kind of problems you can’t get any other way than getting into the environment and capturing those data.”
Drawing on artificial intelligence, Elkins and his team have provided services for the Department of Defense and Homeland Security. The work includes a plethora of research initiatives.
Sailors aboard Navy ships can now utilize virtual reality headgear to fix not-working mechanisms on a ship. Through this system, they can focus more effectively on the broken part and get it functioning again.
A border enforcement system employs the same concept of Artificial Intelligence (AI) interacting with the environment and evaluating possible security threats. AI is utilized to scan for danger using a variety of sensors and detectors that evaluate the surroundings for potential risk or harm.
Elkins draws attention to a robot featuring a human-like face projected on its screen, which can be used for interviewing individuals demanding to cross the border.
Elkins continues to say:
“It talks to you. It’s engaging you in dialogue like Alexa does, but at the same time the sensors are measuring your behavior and it’s kind of assessing the interview for a decision to pass it along to another human for an intervention, or to clear you.”
Not only Elkins but also students power the SDSU AI center. One student at the center spoke of her involvement in a big data project with Baylor University, hoping to use artificial intelligence to identify factors and patterns that could lead to bipolar disorder.
Karenina Zaballa oversees student research at the AI center, where she is the lead.
Karenina Zaballa says:
“To find relationships with (the kids’) comorbidities, past health history, their medication. That kind of thing.”
Saul Garcia has been spending some time with the mascot at the center: a white, 3-foot-tall robot known as Pepper. Utilizing ChatGPT technology, he is trying to make Pepper into a robot with whom it is possible to converse.
Garcia says:
“With ChatGPT the responses are very natural. They don’t seem robotic at all. So people will be more comfortable sharing information with Pepper.”
The new research facility for AI at SDSU represents a significant step forward in the development of this transformative technology. With access to cutting-edge resources and a collaborative environment, researchers at this facility are well-positioned to make significant contributions to AI and help shape the future of this rapidly evolving technology.
Source: KPBS Public Media
