AI: Why a Systems Engineering Approach is Essential

Abstract

Artificial intelligence (AI) is already turning industries on their head, and the technology is poised to make an even greater impact on the world in the years to come. Doctors are using AI tools to help with diagnostics, carmakers are working to make autonomous vehicles a widespread reality, and nearly all of us each day view online or mobile advertisements that were selected specifically for us by an algorithm. Too often, though, business and IT leaders take a limited view of AI. They often focus almost exclusively on machine learning (ML) - sometimes even using "ML" as a synonym for "AI." But AI technologies are, in fact, key enablers to complex systems. They require not only ML technologies, but also trustworthy data sensors and sources, appropriate data conditioning processes, and a balance between human and machine interactions. Bringing all of these disparate sub-components together requires a system engineering approach - an approach that is, unfortunately, lacking in many organizations' views and implementations of AI.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Jun 30, 2020
Accession Number
AD1147535

Entities

People

  • David R. Martinez

Organizations

  • MIT Lincoln Laboratory

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Autonomy

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Air Force
  • Algorithms
  • Artificial Intelligence
  • Autonomous Vehicles
  • Cognitive Systems Engineering
  • Complex Systems
  • Emerging Technology
  • Engineering
  • Facial Recognition
  • Graphics Processing Unit
  • Human-Machine Systems
  • Learning
  • Machine Learning
  • National Security
  • Quantum Computing
  • Relational Databases
  • Supervised Machine Learning
  • Systems Engineering
  • Teamwork
  • United States
  • Unsupervised Machine Learning

Fields of Study

  • Computer science

Readers

  • Defense Acquisition Program Management
  • Distributed Systems and Data Platform Development
  • Geospatial Intelligence and Artificial Intelligence Analytics

Technology Areas

  • AI & ML
  • AI & ML - DoD AI Strategy
  • AI & ML - Neural Networks
  • Autonomy