ORLANDO, Fla. — As Orlando prepares to see Waymo’s self-driving cars hit the roads, making sure artificial intelligence software is safe and efficient is becoming more important to tech companies, and the public.
As part of a push to make sure AI consistently works property, a Central Florida company is working on software that will track and monitor it — essentially adding “guardrails” to the technology, said Adam Runnels, Nighthawk Cyber’s director of product development.
What You Need To Know
As artificial intelligence continues to evolve in our everyday lives, there is company in Central Florida that wants to make sure that AI devices are safe and efficient
Nighthawk Cyber has set out to create a program that would essentially give oversight to any type of artificial intelligence software
Company President Seth Wade says the longterm goal is to make sure that people are always in charge of AI
“As of right now, nobody is making anybody put any sort of guardrails in place, and honestly, we think that is a little reckless,” he said.
Residents might have already seen Waymo testing out the technology on Central Florida streets — the company confirmed their autonomous taxis will be available to customers this year, but did not have a date to share.
Mayor Buddy Dyer said he plans to be one of the first to ride a Waymo in Orlando, and while many feel the same, there is some apprehension to try the new technology.
It is that apprehension that Nighthawk Cyber is trying to address with its DATAVARI software — which is still in the devolpment phase.
“Humans, we are inherently flawed — no one is perfect,” Nighthawk Cyber President Seth Wade said. “And then we create AI, which means it is inherently flawed.”
He said his team has set out to create a program that would essentially give oversight to any type of artificial intelligence software.
“How do we monitor and start to verify that things are operating as they should as it continues to proliferate?” Wade said. “Whether it be Waymo — it could be some robot conducting workflow in a restaurant.”
The software is being designed to step into that role as a monitor for AI software.
“We just take the model, we watch how it performs, we understand what success looks like, and then we monitor the performance of your AI asset,” Runnels said.
Wade said that if AI glitches occur, the software alerts the company of the problem and provides a potential fix.
“Then, when necessary, have a human in the loop to take corrective action to get it back on track, or to be able to shut the asset down safely,” he said.
Wade said Nighthaw Cyber is trying to stay ahead AI implementation so their technology is ready when it becomes more prevalent in everyday life.
“We are going to have a lot of AI-based entities out there created by a lot of really brilliant people, and so to have a management layer on top of that can seamlessly integrate it, is really critical,” Wade said.
The company is located in Central Florida at the UCF Incubator.
“We really are in a very special place, where there has been this aggregation of talent and organizations and customers, thinking about these problems and solving these problems,” Wade said.
The DATAVARI program is not on the market yet, but the company received a grant from the U.S. Air Force to continue proving that the technology works.
If they get the green light to keep going, Nighthawk Cyber could get up to $1.8 million in funding to further develop the technology and bring it to other industries to use.