pwr_april-2024 - 5

SPEAKING OF POWER
AI Is Not Only a Thing of
the Future, It's Also a Thing
of the Present
Aaron Larson
A
rtificial intelligence (AI)-based platforms
have taken the world by
storm. Perhaps the best known of
these is ChatGPT. OpenAI, the company
that developed the innovative chatbot, released
the tool widely to the public in November
2022. Analysts have said ChatGPT
crossed the million-user mark five days
after launch. Less than three months later,
it had more than 100 million active users,
making it the fastest-growing consumer
app in history. Other similar platforms,
including Google Gemini, Microsoft Bing
Bard, AI21 Studio, Mesa, and Cohere,
have also experienced rapid growth.
" We are on the verge of the most
profound industrial revolution in human
history, " Zack Kass, a self-proclaimed
AI futurist and the former head of Goto-Market
at OpenAI, said during a
presentation given at DISTRIBUTECH
in Orlando, Florida, in February. " It is
very clear that what is about to happen
is probably more important-more
seminal-than the invention of fire, the
wheel, aqueducts, the electrical grid, the
internet. It's almost certain that AI will
move the human experience forward in
ways that those experiences did not. "
Further Along Than Most People
Realize, but Much More to Come
Kass noted that the technology people are
using today on their computers and phones
was proven in scientific papers 18 to 24
months ago. He said there are reasons for
the lag, but what's important to understand
is that the technology is much further along
than most people realize. And, yet, we are
also much earlier in the evolution of AI than
most people can contemplate.
" Today, people are already studying
3D, olfactory, major, major movements in
robotics that are coming out in published
papers, " Kass said. " There are early,
early signs that suggest the transformer
is going to get us in much further than
we previously expected, and ultimately,
the argument here is that we are-humans-beginning
an exponential journey
together, which is really exciting. "
The transformer model Kass menApril
2024 | POWER
tioned can translate text and speech
in near-real-time. IBM explains that
text-based generative AI tools such
as ChatGPT benefit from transformer
models because they can more readily
predict the next word in a sequence of
text, based on large, complex datasets.
Transformers process input sequences
in parallel, making them highly efficient
for training and inference, and requiring
less training time than previous recurrent
neural network architectures.
Kass also said artificial general intelligence
(AGI) could radically change the
way the world's problems are solved.
AGI theory suggests that, at some point,
perhaps sooner than we think, AI will become
smart enough to help itself make
novel scientific discoveries. With that in
mind, Kass said he would argue that AI
was the last technology that humans will
ever invent on our own.
" We are about to have a wave of scientific
breakthroughs, " Kass predicted. " I
think it is basically certain that we will cure
cancer and neurodegenerative diseases,
probably within the decade. We will almost
certainly solve fusion within the decade-
nanotechnology, quantum computing, diabetes-this
is going to happen. "
How the Power Industry Is Using AI
Yet, ChatGPT and other generative platforms
are not the only AI use cases.
Companies serving the power industry
are using AI and machine learning (ML)
models today in real-world applications
to solve a variety of problems.
For example, Locana, a TRC company,
is working with a number of utilities on
AI/ML-based pilot projects that address
power industry challenges. " The combination
of AI/ML and location intelligence will
give utilities the ability to solve complex
problems that are at the heart of grid modernization,
decarbonization, graying of the
workforce, and accelerating risks related
to climate change, " Jeff Haight, CEO of
Locana, told POWER during an exclusive
interview at the DISTRIBUTECH event.
" This combination of technologies will
drive problem-solving and foster efficiencies
that solve many of the strategic and
www.powermag.com
operational challenges that utilities face,
but companies need to have the right strategy
and be focused, " said Haight. " In every
meeting we are having with utility leaders,
we are advising something different-use
case-driven projects that harness the power
of AI/ML and location intelligence to address
specific pain points. "
Haight shared some examples of work
Locana has done. " We're partnering with
several utilities to do implementations
that are showing immediate results, " he
said. " An example of that is a pilot project
that allows higher-precision vegetation
management and wildfire risk mitigation,
using a combination of AI/ML technology,
geospatial data, and mobile devices. "
Another example he cited involves using
a ChatGPT interface to give non-expert
users across an organization access to
geospatially driven insights that turn infrastructure
projects that would typically take
months or years into projects that take only
days or hours. The last example Haight
mentioned leveraged reality capture technology
at substations. He said it provides
much-needed detail about the as-built assets
that are often a blind spot for utilities'
infrastructure models. Haight noted, " With
the right partner and the right focus, these
use case-driven projects will enable utilities
to quickly turn the potential of AI and ML
into reality in areas of great need. "
Anything Is Possible
According to Kass, the most exciting thing
about the future is that each new discovery
or invention that AI makes will represent a
" Wright brothers moment, " that is, an eyeopening
breakthrough that causes people
to start looking toward previously unimaginable
ideas. " In the same way that the
Wright brothers flew a plane and then we
went to the moon 60 years later, there's a
non-zero chance that these inventions give
way to all sorts of new ideas and things
that we weren't even considering today-
problems that we haven't even considered
solving, " Kass said.
" With any AI, it's truly, the sky's the
limit, " said Haight. ■
-Aaron Larson is POWER's
executive editor.
5
http://www.powermag.com
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