AI or Not

E019 – AI or Not – Bill Wright and Pamela Isom

• Pamela Isom • Season 1 • Episode 19

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Welcome to "AI or Not," the podcast where we explore the intersection of digital transformation and real-world wisdom, hosted by the accomplished Pamela Isom. With over 25 years of experience guiding leaders in corporate, public, and private sectors, Pamela, the CEO and Founder of IsAdvice & Consulting LLC, is a veteran in successfully navigating the complex realms of artificial intelligence, innovation, cyber issues, governance, data management, and ethical decision-making.

What if you could harness the power of AI to address global climate change? Join us as we explore this compelling question with Bill Wright, Founder and Chair, Enterprise Neurosystem AI/ML open-source community. Bill shares his inspiring journey from the world of advertising artistry to becoming a trailblazer in tech, offering insights into how humility and curiosity transformed his career during the internet boom. Now, he's channeling his passion into leveraging AI for real-time planetary analysis, envisioning a network that integrates diverse data sources for a comprehensive understanding of climate change's patterns and impacts.

Bill's narrative is a testament to the potential of AI in fostering global equity. Through the Enterprise Neurosystems program, volunteers from around the globe collaborate to innovate for the greater good, using the UN as a platform for international cooperation. Our conversation highlights AI advancements in Tanzania, where technology is empowering farmers with irrigation mapping and early warning systems, supported by UNFCCC and CTCN. These efforts not only enhance food security but also contribute to the conservation of ecosystems and wildlife, emphasizing how open-source technology can promote accessibility and drive equitable solutions.

We also explore the fascinating interplay between AI and nature, delving into projects that investigate the communication patterns of bees, potentially unlocking an "internet for nature." Our discussion underscores the importance of data protection and privacy in AI, with insights into frameworks like GDPR and initiatives aimed at minimizing risks. Throughout the episode, we celebrate the power of collaboration, curiosity, and openness to learning, reminding us all that innovation and responsibility can lead to transformative changes for our planet.

Pamela Isom:

This podcast is for informational purposes only. Personal views and opinions expressed by our podcast guests are their own and not legal advice, neither health tax, nor professional nor official statements by their organizations. Guest views may not be those of the host.

Pamela Isom:

Hello and welcome to AI or Not, the podcast where business leaders from around the globe share wisdom and insights that are needed now to address issues and guide success in your artificial intelligence and digital transformation journey. I'm Pamela Isom and I'm your podcast host. We have a unique and special guest with us today, and that is Bill Wright. Bill is founder and chair of the Enterprise Neurosystem open source community and I certainly appreciate teaming with Bill. Bill, you and I have always done some things together, and I remember the AIM for Climate Conference that I was able to attend thanks to you, and that was really good. I've maintained contact with folks, by the way, and kept some activities going on, but what a wonderful program. So, ill, welcome to AI or Not.

Bill Wright:

Oh, thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate this, thank you.

Pamela Isom:

So you're welcome. As we get started here, will you please tell me more about yourself, your career journey, talk about what drove your decision to establish the Enterprise Neurosystem open source community. Go for it.

Bill Wright:

Oh, thank you. I have a very unusual background going into tech, probably a little unconventional, but that is kind of the story of my career arc, so I guess I can go into that a little bit. I started out after going to college as an artist. I was working at advertising agencies and I was drawing storyboards and I love comic book art. That was my thing. It was pretty classic. For the people that know me it didn't surprise them at all. I was a huge comic book fan and I love to draw, I love to do the art. And after a few years I was working freelance for advertising agencies in San Francisco.

Bill Wright:

But I always had a very strong sciences background. I had an arts, I had kind of that arts and sciences focus, I guess you could say and focus more on astronomy and dabbling in physics and other areas. And one day my brother who was working for a computer company called me up and he said you know, I know you're freelancing and doing these kind of interesting projects, but would you be intrigued if you came over and you started to work at my at this it firm that I'm working for and I like as a contractor and you would help people like reach out to them and do different kinds of interactions to get them to sign contracts and renewals, and I was like, yeah, I'd be happy to do that. That sounds like a lot of fun. And so I started out and did that for a few years and then that led to another job and another job, and another job, and then ended up having a full-blown career in IT. And this was during the internet boom. So I'm dating myself with that as I wave my cane in the air, you know. But I think what's great about it is it really gave me a trial by fire. It was like the classic fire hose everybody talks about. I mean, the internet boom was really spectacular and it was both an amazing ascendance and an incredible fall for the industry. And I was just watching the whole thing from the sidelines, like literally with a front row seat. It was fascinating and it really caught my attention and I've always been pretty diligent about learning and about being curious and taking notes. I get that probably from, I'd say, my brothers, who are both very much the same way, and I constantly would listen to presentations. I would sit down with the architects and the CTOs after the meetings and I would be like, well, tell me about this, tell me about that, how do the pieces work together, how does this work? And the willingness to be of service and the willingness to be humble or have that humility to ask those questions is kind of the key to success, I think, in this industry. And so I just kept doing that over and over again and then eventually get more into the strategy side, the, I guess you could say, looking for new technology movements that might be emerging for companies, something I did at a couple of different firms, and so eventually one of the movements I targeted and this is getting into how I am doing what I'm was in the climate world.

Bill Wright:

There were a lot of different projects that were either competing in different countries, different satellite organizations For example, you have the European Space Agency, you have NOAA and NASA, and you look at all of them and they all collaborate and everybody knows each other and in some ways they do interact and they do interconnect. And in some ways they do interact and they do interconnect. But what was missing to me in my role and where I thought this was going to congeal at some point, was what if there was an over-the-top network for the planet where every external project could plug in and then basically share their data in whatever fashion they decide. It can be completely open. It can be just results of the data that are resident in the country, so they don't have to worry about data privacy etc. Just like the outputs, we're training AI models in that country and then sending them out.

Bill Wright:

There are all sorts of different things you can do, but in essence it was.

Bill Wright:

There is no common framework for everybody to plug in and then apply AI on the back end to look for the patterns across the planet in real time, and not just from a certain subset of satellites, but from the entire picture. So, atmospheric projects, oceanic projects, the one thing that's missing really are the nature-based sensors in different populations in nature, like beehives and mycorrhizal networks and mussel farms, which are usually in the mouths of rivers, right by human settlements where all the pollution comes through. So there are all these interesting species that are really alarm bells for climate change and they really give you a sense of where the impacts may arise in the future. And if you took all that data and you plugged it all together with AI on the back end, grinding those patterns over a 24-7 period, just think about what you could discover, and I think there would be new discoveries there, new recommendations for course correction. A lot of exciting things could take place. So that's my journey and that's where I am today.

Pamela Isom:

Is that what caused you to get interested in artificial intelligence?

Bill Wright:

Artificial. It's funny because AI is it's a very broad term, to be honest, and, as you're well aware, because I know you're one of those kind of very prominent experts out there, I worked in business intelligence for a company a number of years ago maybe 15 years ago and there were a lot of vendors out there very prominent vendors that had these linear algebra applications that would basically track different business metrics and give you predictive analytics, and it was a very interesting area of science or data science, and so I used to actually work with one company to get those applications virtualized and the idea was to put them into these virtualized environments and then understanding their behavior and their performance, and I learned some really valuable lessons as part of that process. I remember going to SAS, the famous company in Cary, north Carolina, and meeting with one of their VPs technology and it was a very funny conversation because I was early to learning about data sciences and I think it was like a good 15 years ago and I sat down and we had a conversation and I was really enthusiastic about virtualizing all their workloads and this is an important point to make. That's why I'm spending time on it. He looked at me and he kind of smiled and he said Bill, you're a great guy, but you don't understand anything about what we're doing. And I looked at him and I smiled and I said actually I don't, that's why I'm here, so why don't you tell me?

Bill Wright:

And he laughed and he said well, when you take our applications and you put them in a container or virtualized environment, which is really just putting a parameter around an application so it can operate with a subset of resources in a server there's a long explanation behind that and I won't go into that. But really what it was was creating a encapsulation of that software application that could reside with other operating systems and software applications in one single server, which really hadn't been done before. And he said well, the problem with that, bill, is that the minute you load our software onto a server and this is what he said at the time it's probably not the case today, given the way the industry has evolved, but I'd have to look into that. He said well, we actually turn on the server when you load our application and it's running all the time. All the resources are active and running and it's programmed and designed in that way for certain parameters. And if you take our resources in that server and you subdivide them into a little tiny box, one of many in that server, you're going to really impact our performance and that's how it behaves and it's really interesting.

Bill Wright:

I didn't realize that there was that whole behavioral and resource subset you really had to pay attention to, and that was a very valuable lesson at that time for a younger person, just kind of getting in the business, and so it kind of all these different experiences kind of came together to create what really is the enterprise neurosystem today, with the help of all of our members. I mean, I'm very blessed to have some incredible, incredible contributors there and you know, all the way from marketing all the way into you know, extreme data science experts. What's neat about that is we have to look at the overall AI environment in a large-scale network like that, in terms of the behavior of the applications, how they interact with one another. It's almost like creating an ecology in some respects.

Bill Wright:

And I keep drawing the parallels back to biology, because really, what is a mobile network than a neural system? It extends out. You have these nodes, drawing the parallels back to biology, because really, what is a mobile network than a neuro system? It extends out. You have these nodes, they're very, you know, sensitive. They can tell you your, your health information. You know, on a mobile phone there's ai on most mobile phones today, anyway, at least all the ones that are being sold and so, when you think about it, it's a network of all these different sensors, just like different, like senses in the human body, that really collect and aggregate all that data and then you can use it creatively and productively in different ways.

Pamela Isom:

Right that you were interested, regardless of what it was called. You were interested in neural network type of capability and virtualization and you were at the forefront. So I love the concept of looking at the world from a common lens, right which is what you described so that we can understand global patterns. And that is how we ended up working together, because I liked what Ian is all about the enterprise neural system and I wanted.

Pamela Isom:

I believe in equity, as you do, and I'm trying to figure out what can be done and what can we do to drive and fuel global equity, and I think AI is one of the tools and capabilities. That whole ecosystem, the whole AI ecosystem it seems just right for driving and fueling equity from a global perspective. So that's how we ended up working together and I'm so glad that we did and I'm so glad that you're here today. I want to talk some more about your program. So I said all that to lead into your program, but what I really love is what you said about that whole bringing the nations together and providing nations with the tools that are needed to be efficient and looking at it from that global perspective. So can you just tell me a little bit more about the EM program, enterprise Neurosystems program, where we are today and what do you see as some next steps.

Bill Wright:

It's. I'll take a second to go into that and thank you so much. The enterprise neurosystem now is turning into something pretty unique. It's an open source group of folks from the private sector largely, but also academia and government and some different government agencies, but it's actually I think we've got about 18 or 19 different countries now of folks from those countries. We're all volunteers, so nobody's getting paid, and that's been both. You know, something for us to navigate. That's been tough, but also it's really been core to our mission, because everybody has a day job, everybody does something for a living or, if they have time between you know their jobs, they can come in and work on it, you know, more diligently and then they go back out into the private sector again. However, that works, I think what we're answering is a need for people to want to express their creativity and to do something good for the world, and I think yeah, like the beehive right.

Pamela Isom:

The one that I'm involved with or was involved with, yeah, and there's so many fun different ways to look at it.

Bill Wright:

So what we decided to do was, if we're going to make a global impact, there is one table that attracts all the countries of the world where everybody will gather and talk and not everybody's always going to agree, but everybody's going to have an open dialogue or a active and participatory dialogue and that's the United Nations. And so one day I just sat there and I was like, okay, let me do some research. Okay. And this is when we were starting out early days and I'd already gotten a core group of members together and I just was typing around and I was like, oh, the UNFCCC hosts the COP meet, the big COP conferences, and they're right at the forefront of, you know, really bringing together policies that help the world from an adaptation and resilience perspective for climate change. And I took a look at the different organizations and I reached out to a number of different people in the UNFCCC, tec and the CTCN, some wonderful champions there who really, really like the concept of creating this network where all these different projects could integrate and then basically share data and come to these larger conclusions. But also, in getting to your question, getting to your statement, there has to be a way to help least developed nations and the islands themselves that are about to be, you know that are having challenges with rising sea levels, et cetera. Many of those are in the least developed category, and so the idea also was to make it a very even playing field and to give them the advanced technologies that everybody has or at least many of the nations of the world have and really up-level them quickly so they're at an equity position in terms of technology access.

Bill Wright:

That was the idea, and so, with the United Nations, now we have a couple different tracks underway, three in particular. We have the UNFCCC TEC AI Innovation Grand Challenge, and you can go to the enterpriseneurosystemorg website. You can access the application and the contest site there, and what that is is really just a way to open up the door to all the different innovators, all the different academics, all the students, all the startups around the world and have them submit their ideas. It's just like a paragraph, something we can scan and really get a sense of what the value is, and then everybody gets, you know, everybody gets an evaluation. Some people make it to the semifinals, some people make it to the finals, and then we take the winner to COP 29, where they get incredible access to global leaders and different folks that are working on the forefront of climate technology and also get them engaged with venture capital and all these other different avenues. That's the idea is to really help get these applications off the ground.

Pamela Isom:

Now, I was involved with that one before At Aim for Climate.

Bill Wright:

Yeah, that's the UP.

Pamela Isom:

Yeah, yeah yeah, give me an example of one of the winning ones.

Bill Wright:

So that was incredible. Agrospace is a group of technologists out of Chile and Spain who came up with a great idea for satellite monitoring of plastics on beaches, but then also irrigation and water patterns as well, and so they were the winners of the Aim for Climate Grand Challenge, and it was very difficult to decide. We had some great entries. We had another entry that was basically a giant global database of all the different plant species and their genetic information to basically look for resilient strains of plants in the face of, like, a higher heat environment, and also crops that could withstand heat, but also ways to merge the genetics of different plants to create crops that would really withstand a heating planet. You could say, and that was another great idea, and that was, I mean, so hard to decide because there were so many great ideas.

Pamela Isom:

It was hard.

Bill Wright:

I'm telling you and you remember, there was some really creative thought there.

Pamela Isom:

Yeah, you wanted them all to be the winner.

Bill Wright:

Yeah, that was the idea, and we definitely kept in touch with many of them, and we've still got folks engaged to this day. Rocky, who was one of the finalists as well, he actually is working with us on the new project and he's basically going to assist us with the Tanzania project that we will discuss in a second here. But we've kept them engaged, as will AgroSpace, as a matter of fact, they will be working on that as well. So the neat thing about this is we're trying to take these innovators forward into new projects that we uncover and that we can involve in. We want to create a community around this, and so now the second stage, beyond the UNFCCC AI Grand Challenge, is the AI application hub, and the idea there is to provide an area where any nation but really we want to target those developing nations and least developed nations and get them engaged to basically go and download open source AI applications free of charge and then basically use those applications to assist them in dealing with whatever climate crisis they're facing, and so to make those free of charge and to get them into the hands of everybody quickly is really the idea. And again, we are a nonprofit. This is free of charge. We're here to assist the UN with their mission or the UNF CCC with their mission.

Bill Wright:

The third thing I'll mention. That's the second thing. The third is basically through the UNF CCC. Ctcn, that's a great organization, that's the project arm, or rather the climate project arm of the UNF CCC from that particular perspective, and they have a variety of different projects that they have that they bring people together to help and basically provide technology, and much of it is done. You know they'll give a little Kickstarter or a reasonable Kickstarter to get things moving, but then you know these external companies come together and try to help and make contributions as well to the projects, and so it's really a nice kind of synergy that they create with this environment, and many of the projects are covered by their budget, and other ones you require more funding.

Bill Wright:

So one of the neat things is we've been working with the government of Tanzania and the NDE, or the representative of that country from a sciences perspective, and he's a wonderful person, and we've had a really, really good experience. We've been working with them on a irrigation I guess you could say mapping and early morning system for the farmers in Tanzania, and so what's neat about this is we'll be using AgriSpace for taking a look at the irrigation levels around the country, you know, in terms of actually mapping the width of rivers and different like tributaries and what's going on there. We'll be looking at the groundwater as well and that'll be through the GRACE satellites that basically look at the groundwater, the gravimetrics of the groundwater underneath Tanzania and mapping where it's moving and where it's located, and then also putting in riverway sensors to understand, I guess almost from a Doppler radar perspective, what the speed of the river is if it's rising, what the levels are, how quickly it's rising, et cetera. And then you take these three different areas and you map them together and you get a very accurate sense of what's happening.

Bill Wright:

But then there are other things you can do. You can actually plug into different species around the rivers, you can plug into species near the agricultural areas, you can begin to understand the impacts on multiple levels of a country and that is the Neurosystem concept is getting a sense of what that entire picture looks like in real time, not two months later, eight months later, et cetera, but in as close to real time as you can reasonably get and then send warnings out to the populace, the farmers, to the governments, letting them know. Hey look, this is coming in three weeks and eight weeks tomorrow and this is what you may want to take a look at and do, and that can be an AI recommendation system as well. So there are different ways that we're looking at assisting. But that project in Tanzania, we've got the proposal finished, we're working with the government right now, we're getting the adaptation fund engaged and we'll see where that goes, and it's been very exciting so far.

Pamela Isom:

So, yeah, it's been a lot of fun that fish in the water streams were suffering and the farmers were trying to understand what was it that is causing the issues with the fisheries and with the fish themselves, and so I remember that that one was kind of near and dear to my heart because of food and safety. You know, food, food security and food safety is important and and fish is is healthy for us, and so as long as the fish is healthy, right. And so I remember paying attention to that, because we've not only got the issue with the rising sea levels and then in other places around the world is dry as a bone, right. But then we also have this. We have this situation, and I distinctly remember some of the officials pointing out that this is a concern.

Pamela Isom:

So I'm hoping that this discovery from the Tanzania efforts will start, start to identify how best to preserve wildlife and some of our marine life, right, ocean life so, and river life and whatever you call it right. So I hope that this will help with that, because we definitely need that. That's part of our honestly part of our food supply chain. But even if it wasn't, say, you're a person that is not necessarily a fish eater, it's also part of just nature and letting nature exist and thrive in a healthy way. So it's a wonderful project and program, and so I'm I. As I said, I'll be back, I'll be back.

Bill Wright:

Excellent, we'd be really excited to have you too. That would be a lot of fun, seriously.

Pamela Isom:

Yeah, and you mentioned open source and I'm thinking that part of the rationale behind open source is for the accessibility. And, going back to the equity discussion, this is a part of that equity playbook as well, which is why we're pushing the open source, is that?

Bill Wright:

correct? Oh, that's totally correct. Yes, if you think about it, open source is usually a community of developers who come together, build applications that are needed in either the enterprise or for public good or different parts of, I guess, any walk of society, when you think about it wherever it's needed and provide those software applications free of charge and support them as a community, and then some companies will take them on and support them in their own I guess, flavor, you could say, and make a very good living at that, and then others will basically take whatever the free version is and use that as they need to. So there are different offerings in the open source domain in terms of what is supported and how that support is delivered. The thing that's interesting to remember, though, is a lot of the open source developers who are out there also work in the private sector and are very competent. They're writing really strong applications in many ways, and so it isn't as fraught with peril, I think, as some people make it out to be.

Bill Wright:

In some ways, and in other ways, you have to be careful with open source. You have to be diligent about the code that is used and the support and maintenance of that code. That's really critical. The neatest way to get it out there is kind of a IP, I guess a looser IP perspective to get it out. You don't want to have to worry about those constraints. You want to be able to develop things and customize them if you need to, if you're a user. But also you can engage somebody and contract them to customize them as well and enable that support.

Bill Wright:

It's a very dynamic environment and some of the greatest creativity taking place in AI is in the open source domain Because, if you think about it, a private company has its own roadmap and has its own direction and resource allocation. Hey, we'll work on this feature for this amount of time. We'll get to that feature much later and that's all good. That's part of a very programmatic way of doing business and it's very logical. And then in open source it's very dynamic. It's okay, so-and-so needs this particular feature. How long can we get that done? Oh, it might take 30 days. And then somebody goes out and codes it. They do the requisite testing and then they just push it out and they get it out there, and so people are doing it in their spare time. It can be academics. There are all these different people that work on these projects, and so it's a much more kind of I guess you could say fast-moving environment from that perspective.

Bill Wright:

So open source, the fast-moving nature of it and the advances that take place so quickly, probably cause some people a little concern, but honestly, it is where the most interesting work is being done. The greatest innovations, largely, are coming out of open source. Many private companies come up with great ideas too, don't get me wrong, but I think it's a great petri dish for a lot of creativity right now in technology, and so some of the greatest ideas in AI are popping literally out of open source. And you've seen all the stories in the news about open source and some of the constraints and the regulations that are coming in. And the regulations, you know, in many ways are a very good idea and you don't want to constrain the creativity, but you also don't want to put things out that could, you know like, cause some imbalance, and so you have to look what that looks like and be rational about it.

Bill Wright:

And in the enterprise neural system I'll wrap our data is climate data and our sensors are listening to beehives, you know like, and watching the planet from above, like riverways and things like that. Our data is relatively benign. We're not looking for personal information. We're not. We're listening to bees. We're not listening to people. That's the whole idea.

Pamela Isom:

Why the bees, since you've mentioned it a couple of times and I know I was involved with that, but you can tell the story better than me.

Bill Wright:

So you can tell it too, but I'll give it a try, yeah.

Pamela Isom:

I'll chime in, but talk about the bees.

Bill Wright:

Well, you were in the middle of that, so I and you're funny, I you could tell it better than I could. But I think what's fascinating is there are a lot of species in nature. Right now they're applying AI to sperm whales is one, and there was a big news article about that and how they've finally begun to decipher the language between whales by using ai and listening to you know how they communicate and there are many, many species in nature that do communicate, like how do bees communicate and get to the different locations where all the pollen is located and then bring it back again and if there's a new source, how do they communicate that? And they have different ways and modalities of doing that. But one of the suspected ways of doing it is through acoustic information. Acoustic patterns in a beehive are very interesting and beekeepers on occasion have used stethoscopes to listen to their beehives if they're in distress or if they're getting ready to swarm or do something else like that. And again, I'm not a bee expert, but this is how I've learned about it is from people that do this for a living, and I think what's really interesting about it is on my side.

Bill Wright:

It was like a natural thing to to talk to my friends that are in the community and we all came together and this was the idea of somebody named Dennis O'Connell, who worked at a at time at Yahoo, was the head of the performance engineering lab there, and he was like, oh, we should use beehives as environmental sensors, and it was a brilliant idea.

Bill Wright:

And then Ryan Coffey, who works at Stanford Slack, was like, oh my gosh, in addition to working in the physics domain and in AI, I'm also a beekeeper. And we had this dynamic conversation that led to this stream of research, and I give them full credit for it. And dynamic conversation that led to this stream of research, and I give them full credit for it. And what was neat about it was we began to realize you could probably take ai and apply it to a species, and ai runs around the clock and it's listening around the clock. This is what's great about it and, and taking in all the different patterns of communications of that one, particular clustering and then exactly, and then over time, it's oh, we're seeing patterns.

Bill Wright:

And then you could take an AI powered camera and you could identify the species and their communications and what their behaviors are in relation to those communications. And you cross, correlate it, you begin to look across those data patterns. It's like, oh, when they issued this communication, this is the next action. And then you start to get a sense of what that dictionary is. And then you're creating an effect, an internet for nature. But you're also potentially and I don't want to get ahead of my skis here, but you could create a rosetta stone for nature and begin to understand how nature communicates.

Bill Wright:

And so, yeah, and that's the outcome of all the different people in this community. I mean, I, I just got the ball rolling at the top of the hill, but everybody has been incredible, like you know, and the ideas come from all these different corners, like from you and from Ryan and from Dennis and everybody. And so what's neat about it is that's the power of an open source community. You get this brilliant preponderance of ideas and we just throw them against the wall fearlessly, because we're just not afraid of looking bad. We're all friends and we don't care if it works or if it doesn't. Let's just try it and see where it goes, and if it works, then we've got another step further, you know.

Pamela Isom:

Yeah, and we're using the acoustics from the bees to help with farming, to give some clues to farmers, also to help to influence how we address weather patterns, Because I think that the acoustics help us understand what is coming. It's kind of like when you work with, when you listen. I don't know if you like dogs, but I like dogs. Right, I love dogs.

Pamela Isom:

And dogs hear everything Like they don't miss, they don't miss, and long before you hear it, they hear it, and so they give you a warning. And so what we're doing is and what I enjoyed about the work with the acoustics from the bees is it's giving us a different type of warning, but it's a warning Right. But it's a warning right, and we're studying the data to understand what the warnings would be, and we're wanting to use it to guide farming and things around the weather, and I don't think they want me to say too much more than that. But it is an open source initiative and it's fun, right and so, but it's a great program. The EN is a great program in itself, so, if I build on top of that. So now we're talking about a global program framework that helps us understand what's happening and what are some commonalities and patterns around the globe.

Pamela Isom:

Okay, so then let's talk about regulatory requirements. So we're dealing with AI. There's emerging regulations, there's regulations that already exist, like GDPR, which really isn't about AI, but it's about data, which makes it about AI, because all this is about data. But are there anything in specific, like for the Tanzania initiative? I know we were talking about data protection Are there legal frameworks around the data protection space specifically for Africa that we should be considering or that you're looking into.

Bill Wright:

Yes, africa has a data framework that they've enacted that basically acts as the foundation of a lot of what they're looking at from an AI perspective, as is the EU, as is North America, the White House, the White House. There are a lot of different initiatives that are dealing with data protection, privacy and also how it's utilized, how LLMs, large language models, are taking data, you know, scraping it from all over, if it's copyrighted or not. How do we deal with that? All these are very kind of large, open questions, but the initial data protection frameworks are I don't want to say largely in place, but many are already in place and they're putting new ones in every day.

Bill Wright:

So there's a lot of I guess I'd say prudent caution around that. I think it's actually a very good thing in many respects. You don't want to inhibit the creativity, but you also don't want to create a wild west scenario. You want to be able to apply some good, orderly guidance to the whole process, and so I think that's what's happening at the governmental level, and I've been seeing some really good things coming out of that. And I'm not saying that to be, you know, to just say the right thing. I mean literally. I think it's a great idea.

Bill Wright:

It's a balance you have to strike between the creativity and between the protection of individual rights and individual creativity and copyright and freedoms. I think there's a very careful way to do that and some major companies are being very bright about that, very smart. I know that IBM has basically gone ahead and they've created these large language models only trained on data that doesn't have any copyright issue whatsoever, and they'll actually indemnify the use of those models from that perspective, and so you see a lot of the private sector companies taking those kinds of approaches to get ahead of that, to basically not take the companies they work with down that path, and so there's been some really good work from that perspective. I've seen out there and I yeah, I think it's good to really think through the whole arc of the use of AI, from the data to the systems, to the populations that will be affected. All those things need to be part of that broad view and I've seen some great thinking around that and some great policy enacted.

Pamela Isom:

And the use cases, because the reason why I said that is because earlier you mentioned that, hey, we're just looking at sensor data from bees, right, and so one would think, well, okay, so maybe that's not a reason to look at the various use cases, because it's all going to depend on how we use the data, how we use the sensors and how we apply the AI. What kind of decisions is going to be making? So I just kind of wanted to say that in order to bring that point home. There's HIPAA, there's the GDPR, right, so the data protection most of it is about data protection and then there's the AI in Africa. I think we said it's called the has something to do with Malabo, which I don't know, so I won't say any more than that.

Bill Wright:

That is the framework, I believe.

Pamela Isom:

Yes.

Bill Wright:

The privacy and protection framework that they've enacted, and that's across the continent from what I understand. But I think, yeah, it's very, very nice to see all the countries of the world taking it seriously but also embracing it at the same time. Okay. And.

Bill Wright:

I think that's what's been neat to see, because the benefits far outweigh the liabilities. With every new technology, you normally get both, and so in this case, this is one way for just understanding what's happening in nature around us with climate change in a very rapid fashion and getting to solutions that much faster using data that's largely non-controversial. So this is an easier one to tackle, I'd say, than many other, I guess, industries or verticals where you'd have to apply AI. In this regard, I think it's eminently doable.

Pamela Isom:

I guess you could say I think for the Tanzania initiative and the whole irrigation system and the analysis, and then the, the bee example, but there's others, right, the, the award-winning innovation, uh, what's it called?

Pamela Isom:

agro tech or yeah yeah, yeah, yeah you still have to be careful with, like the surveillance, but so I still think that they're good use cases and they're things that we want to be mindful of. So my message to myself would be don't underestimate the implications, the use cases. Make sure you fully understand them and look into them so that we are mitigating any potential risks. So, no matter how simple they may seem or are non-invasive, let's make sure we double check. But I agree with everything that you've been saying. I want to know.

Pamela Isom:

There's a couple of things that I was looking at, and one of them has to do with using AI to detect disease, which we didn't mention that in the Tanzania effort, but it could be right Using it to detect disease in the water or in the water supply, and I was talking to someone and they were discussing using AI to detect disease in poultry. So I was just looking into that further, and so that may be something that we dig into a little bit more to support the effort that we have going on. So I'm going to throw that out there as food for thought. Is disease detection in the farmland, in support of some of those initiatives that we have. I know we're doing it to some extent, but I'd like to bring that to the forefront.

Pamela Isom:

I usually ask my guests to share words of wisdom or experiences for the listeners, but usually before I want to know, before you do that, is there anything else that we wanted to talk about? Is there anything else that you wanted to share or anything else that you wanted me to discuss during this talk with you, before you share your words of wisdom?

Bill Wright:

Oh, certainly, and all I would say is I really appreciate the opportunity to share in this kind of a forum. I mean, this is really exciting. But also, if any of you have an idea that you'd like to get into the world from an AI climate perspective, please go to the Enterprise Neurosystem website. It's EnterpriseNeurosystemorg. There's a kind of a banner at the top of the website. Click on that banner. That'll take you to the page that basically acts as the contest page. You can submit your ideas there. We really encourage everybody to submit their 250-word proposals from that perspective. So I would say that and otherwise glad to take it from here.

Pamela Isom:

Okay. Well then, I would like to know about your words of wisdom or experiences that you want to share with the listeners, so that they can take it away with them and kind of ponder over it and apply to their daily lives and it's for me as well.

Bill Wright:

So what you got, I think you know the power of the individual is overlooked a lot in the technology business, so it was the hot startup or the big companies that get all the attention. But a very small community or group of individuals can make a real big difference. If you get the right people together with the right, with the right heart, you know the right kind of feeling around how things should go and unfold. And I was very fortunate to be surrounded early on in the creation of this community by people just like that. And I started the community and I'll just try to wrap it up because one day my son and I I was already doing work on this area at the company that I was, that I'm at, and working on AI, for I guess you could say mobile networks and networking technologies and I remember looking outside the window right out here in the next room with my son at that time, who was about four years younger, and it was the day that those wildfires created those really deep red skies. I mean literally horizon to horizon in the Bay Area. It was like a Martian landscape. You just looked out the window and the sky was actually like fire engine red Pictures you saw I have to add this the pictures you saw that came out later, like on Facebook. Those were like the iPhone filters that kicked in and made them orange. It was actually red, it was really and looking out the window at that, my son just looked at that and he just had this kind of stunned look on his face. And then he looked up at me and he goes dad, what are we going to do about this? And you know from you know it. Just, he's a lot smarter than I am, cause I I mean, that was the first thing he said and I'd looked at him and I was like that's a really good question and it was like the heck with it. Let me call up my friends, let's try to do something. You know, and I can give my, my son, credit for that, you know honestly, because if he hadn't asked that question, it would have taken me a much longer time to get to that.

Bill Wright:

But so what's neat about this is you just don't know where this inspiration is going to come from. You have to always give people the credit they're due and just be humble and open to learning, because there's so much to learn about nature that I just I'm learning every day. It's fascinating. You know all the different ways species communicate and how you can listen to them and how you can track them. It's like and understand. You know what we can do to help them. And, yeah, it's, if you just get the right people together, there's a lot of neat stuff that can happen. And so have faith in I'd say to the listening community, have faith in your own abilities. It doesn't matter if you're coming out of whatever, whatever area of you can contribute and you can get things moving. You know, that's what I've learned.

Pamela Isom:

I think that's really good feedback and really good insights. I'll just say I remember being at Energy, so you know we've been involved. You and I will stay connected. We'll keep doing things.

Pamela Isom:

I remember being at the Department of Energy and I remember getting involved with many things pertaining to equity and equitable outcomes through the use of AI, from the water supply to energy. But I distinctly remember the wildfire situation, and you just made me think about that. So in the wildfire situation, there were helicopters. The wildfire situation, there were helicopters and via the helicopters, they wanted to be able to zoom in on what's happening on the ground from the bird I'm going to call it the bird. So from the bird, zoom in on what's happening on the ground and be able to detect the trajectory of the wildfire as well as where are the triggers or the fuel loads. They called it. And I was so honored to be involved with that effort. I was involved with the Department of Defense, the Department of Energy, and I was the leader of the effort from an AI perspective.

Pamela Isom:

So we had to look at how we could use AI and the cool thing was it's like what your son says like what are we going to do about this? Because it's irritating to me that we deal with this wildfire situation every year and we know that it's going to happen every year, and we know that it's going to get worse every year. Every year it gets worse and worse and worse. So we started looking into what could we do to address this problem. And so kudos to your son, because he is right, it's a problem, and I can remember living in Colorado and the ashes from the wildfire was so bad until it was resting on the furniture inside the homes right when the wildfires would break out for whatever reason sometimes it was man caused and sometimes not, but I can remember that.

Pamela Isom:

And so it is good to look at engineers, look at what to do to solve problems. I don't know an engineer that doesn't see a problem and doesn't want to do something to fix it. So kudos to your son and kudos to you, and tell him that there was work going on at Energy to help solve these types of problems, working with the US Forest Service, and we ended up disallowing controlled burns because that was not helping, because you got to get some good practices in place when it comes to controlled burns and all that and examine the fuel loads and what's the trigger. And so he's absolutely right and I hope you will encourage him to continue that mindset because you must recognize and I know you do, just like you have it that's that engineering in him. So I'm happy and there is work going on and I know there was probably when he mentioned it to you and it has to continue and we're using AI and data science to help address some of these challenges.

Bill Wright:

Couldn't agree more. No, and I'll pass that on to him. Actually, I'll be seeing him right after this call.

Pamela Isom:

Couldn't agree more. No, and I'll pass that on to him. Actually. I'll be seeing him right after this call and thank you for the words of wisdom because it is up to them. We should not put limits on ourselves, never, and we should never think that a problem is too small or de minimis. So a very good point. So thank you.