The future of AI was a broad theme at OODAcon 2023 which was discussed not only at a session dedicated to the topic, but in the context of the impact of AI on cybersecurity and autonomous systems.  Find those discussions here.  One of the tactical insights from OODAcon 2023 was related to generative AI.  The advice for organizations and individuals is to just get started using large language model platforms and exploring business model platforms and value creation use cases.  You will find examples here to jumpstart those efforts.  

The Double Exponential Future of Artificial Intelligence in 2024

The Next Generative AI Surprise:  At OODAcon 2022 conference, we predicted that ChatGPT would take the business world by storm and included an interview with OpenAI Board Member and former Congressman Will Hurd.  Today, thousands of businesses are being disrupted or displaced by generative AI. This topic was further examined at length at OODAcon 2023, taking a closer look at this innovation and the impact it will have on business, society, and international politics in 2024 and beyond – with insights from an OODAcon 2023 discussion between Pulkit Jaiswal, Co-Founder NWO.ai and Bob Flores, former CTO, CIA.

The Cyber Risks of Emerging Technologies:  The revolution in Generative AI is one of many factors changing the cybersecurity equation.  OODAcon 2023 examined this topic by bringing together leaders who have been making a difference in this domain for years, including Kristin Del Rosso, Field CTO, Public Sector, Sophos;  Juan Andres Guerrero-Saade, Sr Director of SentinelLabs, SentinelOne;  Sarah Jones, Senior Threat Intelligence Analyst, Microsoft; and 
Visi Stark, cofounder, The Vertex Project.  

Robots, Autonomy, and Automation:  From Amazon warehouses to military conflict in Ukraine we have become increasingly dependent on automated and autonomous platforms. This OODAcon 2023 session explored the current state of the field with a specific focus on the impact to national and economic security.  Following is a summary of the insights and takeaways from the session, which inclided panelists Matthew Steckman, CRO, Anduril Industries, and  Duyane Norman, Defense Innovation Unit (DIU).  

Generating Value:  Business Models, Value Creation, and Use Cases

The New Era of Personal AI – Experiences Building a LLM Based on Matt Devost: tldr; There is a large language model trained on me. It is increasingly capable of responding to questions on cybersecurity, international security, counterterrorism, technology, and entrepreneurship. You can access it here: ALTzero Project – MattGPT. 

Rise of the Robots: Breakthroughs in Humanoid Robotics and the Dawn of Embodied AI:  Is your head still spinning from all the AI news of late? It will all seem so quaint when the useful humanoid robots arrive.  This post tracks some of the recent breakthroughs in humanoids, with a focus on the humanoid robots with Embodied AI.

As Two Billion People go to the Polls in 2024, Foundational LLMs and Misinformation are “The Perfect Storm”:  Early warning systems are flashing red – indicating a growing “perfect storm” of all the unintended consequequences we have experienced to date based on:an unregulated tech sector coupled with cyberwarfare tactics and kompromat innovation   This time out, it will all play out with exponential speed, scale and volume over the course of 2024.

Lessons Learned from a Year of Building AI Enabled Applications: In December 2022 we wrote about how many in the OODA network had been examining the new capabilities of ChatGPT, concluding that we seemed to be witnessing another inflection point in how computers support humanity. To help accelerate our community’s ability to consider which use cases new LLMs are best at addressing we began exchanging information with leaders in the intelligence community on things ChatGPT could do. Additionally, we created a web application that leveraged the OpenAI APIs called Unrestricted Intelligence.

The State of AI Today: The November 2023 OODA Network Member Meeting Conversation with Dr. Amr Awadallah:  The November call was held on Friday, November 17, 2023. The OODA Network was joined at this month’s meeting by OODA Network Member and CEO of Vectara Dr. Amr Awadallah to lead a discussion designed to help us all better understand the state of AI today, ways to quantify/measure the likelihood of hallucination in a LLM and ways the community is building solutions to mitigate risk, and details about how Vectara is enabling developers to make AI safe for the enterprise. 

Applying GPTs and LLMs to Scenario Planning: Jake Sotiriadis, Ph.D. is the Director of The Center for Futures Intelligence at the National Intelligence University.  Sotiriadis and his co-authors have penned an impressive article on the potential for the use of generative AI in scenario planning and foresight strategy – including a simulation run by the authors to inform the insights of the article which was published in November in the Harvard Business Review.   

The Future of Privacy Forum Releases a Generative AI Internal Policy Checklist: Since the release of ChatGPT in October of last year, the signal to noise ratio re: solid, credible business strategy resources has been daunting. If your organization is still in the mist of a Generative AI sprint to put a baseline company culture and formal policies in place to empower innovation – while mitigating company-wide risk – the Future of Privacy Forum (FPF) is a vetted, sophisticated, and thoughtful resource. And sometimes checklists are good, even if used only to initiate formative conversations and frame core issues for decisionmakers on your team. Find the FPC’s Generative AI for Organizational Use: Internal Policy Checklist here.

Large Language Models (LLMs) and the Future of Work:  Large Language Models (LLMs) based on deep learning have been a part of the technological landscape since approximately 2018. However, their existence was initially unknown to the general public, with their usage largely confined to a few technical disciplines such as data scientists and software engineers. This all changed in late 2022 when ChatGPT, a Generative Pre-trained Transformer (GPT) from OpenAI, exploded onto the scene with more than 180 million users in its first year.  The following year, in 2023, several related capabilities emerged, including Google Bard, Anthropic Claude, and X Grok.  Is this just another passing fad like bitcoin, metaverse, or blockchain? In short, no. LLMs are postured to have a profound impact on knowledge work and how people interact with computers now and in the future.

Are Computer Chip-based “Chokepoints” the Future of AI Compute, National Security and American Competitiveness?:  National Security policy and cybersecurity innovation at the physical layer  – to solve some of the vexing security issues and as a strategic opportunity for technological advantage and American competitiveness – is starting to show an interesting sensemaking pattern across a variety of industry sectors and think tank sources. Take a look here.  

The Latest Developments from DARPA’s AIxCC and NATO’s DIANA: As we discussed at OODAcon 2023, historically unprecedented technological disruption is now well underway on an exponentially accelerated timeline. The challenge now is activating positive outcomes while mitigating risk (ideally, with an eye towards proactive containment of unintended consequences by way of preventative strategies). Grand Challenges and Innovation Accelerators will be central to these global efforts. Following are the recent developments from DARPA’s AI Cyber Challenge (AIxCC) and NATO’s Defence Innovation Accelerator for the North Atlantic (DIANA). 

How AI-Driven Digital Twins are Transforming Healthcare:  A quick survey of academic and commercial developments in the industry sector – healthcare- that remains at the tip of the spear in the hybrid development of applied technologies in AI and Digital Twins. 

Before OpenAI’s ChatGPT, There was Google DeepMind’s Alphafold:  While the release of ChatGPT and enterprise-level deployment of Large Language Models have been impactful, all organizations should also be digging deeper into recent AI and deep learning history and ask the question:  “How is Deepmind’s Alphafold representative of the future architectures, ecosystems, platforms and value creation opportunities in our industry sector and subsectors?” 

The Future of AI-based Gene Sequencing:  An analysis of the latest Alphafold breakthrough  – Enformer, a neural network architecture that accurately predicts gene expression from DNA sequences – and the What’s Next? of the future of AI and Genomics.

AI-based Predictive Analytics and Participatory Science are the Future of Pandemic Preparedness and Response: Global Health Security is a research theme we continue to pursue here at OODALoop.  Featured here: promising innovations in global and U.S.-based  pandemic preparedness and response by way of Artificial Intelligence-based Predictive Analytics and open-source participatory science.

Assessing LLM Opportunities and “Highly Consequential” LLM Use Cases:  Two “straight no chaser”, best-in-class explorations of how best to implement LLMs within your organization.  The Carnegie Mellon Software Engineering Institute (SEI) and the Special Competitive Studies Project (SCSP) – in collaboration with the John Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (JHUAPL) – explore LLM use cases in software engineering and acquisition and “a framework for identifying highly consequential AI use cases”, respectively. 

Ten Noteworthy Global Developments in the Double Exponential Growth of Artificial Intelligence: 2023 has been marked by what some are characterizing as the double exponential pace of artificial intelligence innovation and commercial deployment.  Following are some of the most prescient developments from Q3 and Q4 of 2023. 

Will the “Double Exponential” Growth of Artificial Intelligence Render Global AI Governance and Safety Efforts Futile?:  Major global, multinational announcements and events related to AI governance and safety took place last week. We provide a brief overview here. In an effort to get off the beaten path, however, and move away from these recent nation-state based AI governance efforts, two recent reports are framing some really interesting isues: How Might AI Affect the Rise and Fall of Nations? and “Governing AI at the Local Level for Global Benefit: A Response to the On-Going Calls for the Establishment of a Global AI Agency.” 

The First $500M, 10,0000 GPU, AI Sovereign Territory – with Nation-state as a Service Offerings?:   Vice News best captured the import of this story: “But there’s one glaring issue: Del Complex is not a real AI company, and its barge is similarly fake.” Apparently, certain media elements to support the story are AI-generated, including “some of the images on its otherwise convincing-looking website have the hallmarks of being the product of AI-generation, including garbled text and strange facial features.” So, it is all a fictional scenario – which is also highly effective use of storytelling to point out the potential future of “technological sovereignty” – and the future unintended consequence of organizations looking to skirt global regulation efforts.  As our readership knows, we often run analysis of real-world stories and projects which map to the future world described in Kim Stanely Robinson’s Ministry of the Future (MotF). But this story even transcends the potential networked states as laid out in the MotF….

Additional OODA Loop Resources

Technology Convergence and Market Disruption: Rapid advancements in technology are changing market dynamics and user expectations. See: Disruptive and Exponential Technologies.

The New Tech Trinity: Artificial Intelligence, BioTech, Quantum Tech: Will make monumental shifts in the world. This new Tech Trinity will redefine our economy, both threaten and fortify our national security, and revolutionize our intelligence community. None of us are ready for this. This convergence requires a deepened commitment to foresight and preparation and planning on a level that is not occurring anywhere. The New Tech Trinity.

AI Discipline Interdependence: There are concerns about uncontrolled AI growth, with many experts calling for robust AI governance. Both positive and negative impacts of AI need assessment. See: Using AI for Competitive Advantage in Business.

Benefits of Automation and New Technology: Automation, AI, robotics, and Robotic Process Automation are improving business efficiency. New sensors, especially quantum ones, are revolutionizing sectors like healthcare and national security. Advanced WiFi, cellular, and space-based communication technologies are enhancing distributed work capabilities. See: Advanced Automation and New Technologies

Emerging NLP Approaches: While Big Data remains vital, there’s a growing need for efficient small data analysis, especially with potential chip shortages. Cost reductions in training AI models offer promising prospects for business disruptions. Breakthroughs in unsupervised learning could be especially transformative. See: What Leaders Should Know About NLP