What’s Next?

The growth of technology is
everywhere. What’s next for
the security industry? I think
the next innovation poised to
transform the security industry
will be deep learning or artificial intelligence
(AI), which is a system that learns by
looking at masses of data.

Look at it this way: it is a child in grammar
school, soaking up as much information
as possible, and once digested, some of the
most amazing things will take place.

Three decades ago, I interviewed an Air
Force general at the Air Force Logistics
Command at Wright Patterson Air Force
Base, and he was all gung ho on AI. He predicted
that before long, AI would be the normal
accepted practice of gathering information,
not the exception. He was right.

The key to future command control is
speed, and that speed will come from automation,
according to Gen. Stephen Wilson,
Vice Chief of Staff of the Air Force.

The Air Force must look to the latest innovations
in automation from industry and
younger airmen to maintain its superiority
across domains, he said.

“How do we sense the environment?
How do we understand it? And how do we
become able to [implement] effects on the
globe across all domains...it’s about speed
and speed will be helped by the automation,”
said Wilson, speaking at the 2017 Defense
One Summit.

Automation in the Air Force is being
implemented both in its own right and as a
step in the process of developing artificial
intelligence (AI). Automation uses software
algorithms, but it does not have the “learning”
and predictive capacities of AI.

Deep learning and AI are pushing the
boundaries for a wide range of uses, including
physical security. There seem to be three
factors, beginning with Big Data, which we
have heard about on many occasions long
before now. This includes multiples of sensors,
including video cameras, where a mass
of data is produced on a daily basis, and
where systems can be trained effectively.

Second, there will always be an abundance
of new algorithms, which train neural
networks at a much quicker pace, and finally,
we already know there is no shortage of
computer hardware capable of understanding
and processing calculations rapidly.

While this isn’t breaking news, I feel certain
that attendees at the April ISC West
will be entertained by the newest and latest
trends in AI, deep learning and neural network
computing. All these things are currently
available on computers, embedded in
edge devices and are in the cloud.

Wilson really nailed it when he said it is
the younger airmen who bring this to the
forefront. The leading role that the newest
generation of airmen play will be in automating
the Air Force.

“The young people are already [technologically
empowered] … airmen will reach
out and say ‘check out this app that I wrote’
or ‘this code that does this’ ‘I was doing this
and it took a long time, and it was very labor
intensive, so I wrote my own app that did this’
and that’s the fact of this innovation,” Wilson
said. “It is a groundswell from the bottom
that we’ve got to be able to unleash.”

This article originally appeared in the March 2018 issue of Security Today.