- I love artificial intelligence, and I've also saw that you've enjoyed the movie Space Odyssey, 2001, Space Odyssey. Let me ask the question about Hal 9000. That makes a few decisions there that prioritizes the mission over the astronauts. Do you think, from a high philosophical question, do you think Hal did the right thing of prioritizing the mission?

- I think our artificial intelligence will be smarter in the future. For a Mars mission, it's a great question, that is the reality of it. For a Mars mission, we need fully autonomous systems. We will get humans, but they have to be fully autonomous, and that's the most important concept, because there's not gonna be a mission control on Earth.

20 minute time lag, there's just no way you're gonna control it. So fully autonomous, so people have to be fully autonomous as well, but all of our systems as well. And so that's the big design challenge. So that's why we test them out on the moon as well, when we have a, okay, a few second, three second time lag, you can test them out.

We have to really get autonomous exploration down. You asked me earlier about Magellan, and Magellan and his crew, they left, right? They were autonomous. They were autonomous, they left, and they were on their own to figure out that mission. Then when they hit land, they have resources, that's in-situ resource utilization, and everything else they brought with them.

So we have to, I think, have that mindset for exploration. Again, back to the moon, it's more the testing ground, the proving ground with technologies, but when we get to Mars, it's so far away that we need fully autonomous systems. So I think that's where, again, AI and autonomy come in, a really robust autonomy, things that we don't have today yet.

So they're on the drawing boards, but we really need to test them out, 'cause that's what we're up against. - So fully autonomous, meaning like self-sufficient, there's still a role for the human in that picture. Do you think there'll be a time when AI systems, just beyond doing fully autonomous flight control, will also help or even take mission decisions like Hal did?

- That's interesting. It depends, I mean, they're gonna be designed by humans. I think, as you mentioned, humans are always in the loop. I mean, we might be on Earth, we might be in orbit on Mars, maybe the systems, the landers down on the surface of Mars, but I think we're gonna get, we are right now, just on Earth-based systems, AI systems that are incredibly capable, and training them with all the data that we have now, petabytes of data from Earth.

What I care about for the autonomy in AI right now, how we're applying it in research, is to look at Earth and look at climate systems. I mean, that's the, it's not for Mars to me today. Right now, AI is to eyes on Earth, all of our space data, compiling that using supercomputers, because we have so much information and knowledge, and we need to get that into people's hands.

We need, first, there's the educational issue with climate and our changing climate. Then we need to change human behavior, that's the biggie. So this next decade, it's urgent that we take care of our own spaceship, which is spaceship Earth. So that's, to me, where my focus has been for AI systems, using whatever's out there, kind of imagining, also, what the future situation is.

What's the satellite imagery of Earth of the future? If you can hold that in your hands, that's gonna be really powerful. Will that help people accelerate positive change for Earth, and for us to live in balance with Earth? I hope so, and kind of start with the ocean systems.

So oceans, the land, the air, and kind of using all the space data. So it's a huge role for artificial intelligence to help us analyze, I call it curating the data, using the data. It has a lot to do with visualizations as well. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music)