Greetings, greetings.
Bill Nye here, CEO of the Planetary Society.
And I'm Robert Picardo, longtime holographically projected
artificial intelligence and board member of the Planetary
Society.
Now, for all of human history we have
dared to look beyond the familiar
and explore the unknown, Bill.
And, of course, that includes the stars and the planets.
It's romantic to think about a human stepping out
of a spaceship onto the Martian surface.
But if you go there, [CHUCKLES] you might find yourself short
of that stuff, that--
I think it's called air, Bill.
Air, yes.
[COUGHING] You would notice that right away.
We humans are fragile, picky creatures.
When we go into space, we want to bring our whole environment
with us.
Food, water, oxygen, gravity.
We are truly planetary primadonnas.
And that's where our artificial intelligence helps.
Machines don't need food, water, air, entertainment,
or even companionship.
You know, Bill, somewhere out there there's a robot watching,
and you just broke his CPU with that comment.
I'm open-minded, but skeptical.
My apologies, of course, to our robotic viewers.
I'm sure you know who you are.
But the truth is, machines just need electricity and commands,
and they'll keep exploring.
But just telling a robot what to do,
is it enough to get it done?
Many variables come into play, including hazards
that appear in the environment.
Just right there before your robotic cameras.
You know, a robot works best when
it has a little self-preservation built in.
That could mean just knowing how to avoid a Martian pothole,
or preventing, you know, a total system failure.
And think about this, Bill, the farther from Earth one travels,
the greater the lag in communications.
Relaying a message back and forth to a Mars rover
currently takes between four and 24 minutes.
So to communicate back and forth once
could take as long as 48 minutes.
So that's where artificial intelligence
steps in once again.
Giving AI the ability to make critical decisions
can keep a rover from getting buried in rubble,
or a deep space probe from veering off course.
Yeah, but it's not just about driving hazards.
Think about scientific opportunities.
These rovers are driving around on planets
no one has ever been to.
Remarkable scientific discoveries
are just around the corner.
But we don't know which way to look for them.
So how do you train a machine to recognize something remarkable?
Well, that's why robots with AI are constantly
receiving updates as newer and smarter algorithms
are developed back here on earth.
We need AI to be able to do our jobs in space with greater
efficiency and safety.
We may not be able to give a robot emotions yet,
but we can update them so they can
identify anomalies and report those anomalies to us as
soon as they can.
It's science, people!
Now, I take a little offense to we can't give, you know,
robots emotions, but never mind.
What do you think about the uses of AI in space exploration?
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So that's it.
See you next week.
Pshh.