Designing Autonomous Systems

Fabio Alonso Da Silva, Chief Technology Officer and Head of Systems at Elletrocrafts Aerospace based in the United States participated in Risk Roundup to discuss “Designing Autonomous Systems.” Risk Roundup Webcast: Designing An Autonomous System The Rise of Autonomous Systems The potential of autonomous systems is exciting many across nations. The reason is autonomy is driving innovations and revolutionizing industries. The emerging innovative possibility of autonomy is enabling entirely new intelligence, exploration, surveillance, and security capabilities for the entire human environment and ecosystem, where direct human control is not physically possible. Depending on the underlying technology design of any potential autonomous system, it will be capable of adapting to changing conditions, learning on its own, surviving, and operating in extreme environments across the entire human ecosystem of cyberspace, aquaspace, geospace, and space. As a result, the new knowledge and technology potential has lifted many constraints and made possible broad objectives to design systems that were not possible so far. Thus, many new ideas and initiatives are emerging rapidly to explore the potential and capability of autonomous systems and the approach and processes to define and design them. When the rise of autonomous systems that exhibit high degrees of autonomy means that they can develop and perform tasks independently from human operators and without human control, clearly, technology, process, and security vision is becoming essential for all autonomous system initiatives. This emerging disappearing role of humans could be a significant security concern if we fail to visualize where the threats could emerge. Designing Autonomous Systems Understandably, the design phase of autonomous systems is vital for their security outcome. It seems there are many different approaches to creating or defining autonomous systems, depending on the designer, objectives, industry, technology, processes, environment, and more. From removing human engagement to augmenting human physical and intellectual abilities, the value of all autonomous systems is going to be bound by how systems were designed to how much data is being collected and what value in terms of intelligence can be extracted from that collected data and what tasks can be performed based on the collected intelligence. Autonomy, the power of self-governance that is being given to machines, along with the intelligence and the ability to act independently of direct human control and in unrehearsed conditions, is transformative. The move from the automated machine world we are used to than the autonomous systems world that we are defining and designing is revolutionary and evolutionary. As a result, it is essential to clearly understand the meaning of autonomy in intelligent machines, objectives, output, and outcome to be able to clearly define and design autonomous systems that would protect the future of humanity. From safety and security; to the prevention of harm and the mitigation of risks to our collective future, many questions are emerging about how to instill ethics, moral responsibility, explainability, and transparency to autonomous systems. Also, questions are arising about governance, regulation, design, development, inspection, monitoring, testing, certification, policies, and values, and more. There is no doubt that machine autonomy can transform the way humans connect to their ecosystem across cyberspace, aquaspace, geospace, and space.  While this will unleash the human power to protect, explore, and inspire because the potential to communicate and collaborate across CAGS domains in real-time can revolutionize everything in the human ecosystem; the time is now to evaluate what will be the meaning of intelligent machine autonomy when clearly human autonomy is still a security threat in itself. The time is now to begin a discussion on all these questions and more as we begin to design autonomous systems! For more, please watch the Risk Roundup Webcast or hear the Risk Roundup Podcast About the Guest Fabio Alonso Da Silva is the Chief Technology Officer and Head of Systems at Elletrocrafts Aerospace based in the United States. He is experienced in the definition of product development and systems engineering, through the following activities: development of the project scope, development and certification plans of the aircraft, systems safety assessment and implementation of processes, evaluation and definition of labs, structuring of the business case, investors relations, mapping of capabilities and resources needs, product life cycle definition and analysis, and technical reporting (design, certification, and maintenance). About the Host of Risk Roundup Jayshree Pandya (née Bhatt), Ph.D., is a leading expert at the intersection of science, technology, and security and is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Risk Group LLC. She has been involved in a wide range of research, spanning security of and from science and technology domains. Her work is currently focused on understanding how converging technologies and their interconnectivity across cyberspace, aquaspace, geospace, and space (CAGS), as well as individuals and entities across nations: their governments, industries, organizations, and academia (NGIOA), create survival, security, and sustainability risks. This research is pursued to provide strategic security solutions for the future of humanity. From the National Science Foundation to organizations from across the United States, Europe, and Asia, Dr. Pandya is an invited speaker on emerging technologies, technology transformation, digital disruption, and strategic security risks. Her work has contributed to more than 100 publications in the areas of science and commerce. She is the author of the books, Geopolitics of Cybersecurity and The Global Age. She writes about Artificial Intelligence on Forbes. About Risk Roundup Risk Roundup, a global initiative launched by Risk Group, is a security risk reporting for risks emerging from existing and emerging technologies, technology convergence, and transformation happening across cyberspace, aquaspace, geospace, and space. Risk Roundup is released in both audio (Podcast) and video (Webcast) format. It is available for subscription at (Risk Group Website, iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher Radio, Android, and Risk Group Professional Social Media). About Risk Group Risk Group is a Strategic Security Risk Research Platform and Community. Risk Group’s Strategic Security Community and Ecosystem is the first and only cross-disciplinary and collective community that is made of top scientists, security professionals, thought leaders, entrepreneurs, philanthropists, policymakers, and academic institutions from across nations collaborating to research, review, rate, and report strategic security risks to protect the future of humanity. 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