Aerospace’s SeedTECH AI team thinks they can.

Dreaming is a natural human behavior that helps the brain consider novel ideas. The ability to create, imagine, and daydream is highly correlated with the brain’s ability to conceptually categorize, exemplified in the way a child can see one or two images of a cat and instantly have the ability to recognize all cats. In today’s AI, our state-of-the-art deep learning systems require tens of thousands of images to recognize a cat with high certainty and often can still can be fooled. An artificial intelligence system that can incorporate unbounded creativity in the learning process could revolutionize our approach to future challenges. 

Aerospace’s SeedTECH AI team has taken on the grand challenge of designing an artificial intelligence platform that can dream these new solutions today rather than tomorrow. By creating a new way for AI to learn concepts by allowing the system to mix seemingly unrelated concepts together, we can create new out-of-the-box solutions.

Due to this groundbreaking, patent pending (3 US, 1 International) work, the SeedTECH AI team is one of 147 teams selected to advance to the second round of the prestigious IBM Watson AI XPRIZE competition, a global AI and cognitive computing competition.  Of the 59 teams continuing on to the second round, SeedTECH AI is the only team that is focusing on developing artificial general intelligence, which mimics the reasoning and problem solving skills of a human being.

What is SeedTECH?

Through iLAB, Aerospace’s research and innovation center, SeedTECH is an after-hours, corporate initiative made up of over 200 employees from The Aerospace Corporation. These innovators volunteer their time to develop technology for the greater good. Founded by Terence Yeoh and Donald Yang, SeedTECH leverages the experience of proven experts to explore challenges that range from the clandestine to commercial, and apply these insights towards greater challenges that define and shape humanity today.

The SeedTECH AI Team

Terence Yeoh holds a doctorate in materials science and engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His thesis focused on self-assembled quantum dots for optical computing. Throughout his career, Terence has promoted interdisciplinary collaborations in support of developing technologies and providing insights that benefit the greater good.

Nehal Desai holds a doctorate in mechanical engineering from North Carolina State University. His thesis focused on reverse engineering of empirical equations that govern the multiphase fluid mechanics of sand particles. He enjoys working on deep-learning applications for visual and contextual perception.