Will intelligent AI agents take on the job of capsule communicator in future missions to the moon, Mars and other space destinations?
It could happen, says James Burk, the executive director of the Mars Society.
“One of our advisers did a really deep dive on how the Apollo astronauts interacted with each other and with the CapCom back on Earth, and he came to the insight that the Apollo 17 astronauts were using CapCom almost like an AI bot — because the CapCom knew everything,” Burk said during a panel discussion focusing on the intersection of artificial intelligence and space ventures.
“You can imagine having an AI edge device which could be like a rover following the crew around, walking around the moon or Mars,” he said. “It’s watching them and taking stock of how everyone’s doing.”
This week’s panel was a crossover session presented at Madrona Venture Labs by the Washington Technology Industry Association for Seattle AI Week, and by Space Northwest for Seattle Space Week. “When you think about the kinds of megatrends of our time, two of the big ones are space and AI,” said Mike Doyle, Space Northwest’s president and co-founder.
Putting AI into space adventures isn’t exactly a new idea: The best-known sci-fi example is HAL, the AI who goes psycho in “2001: A Space Odyssey.” There’s also the no-nonsense computer voice in the Star Trek saga, or Marvin the Paranoid Android in “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.”
But the real world isn’t science fiction. Yet.
