Leadership Voices With WWT's Jamie Milne

Stellar AI: An Astrophysicists Guide to Getting Started

Of the 7.5 billion people on Earth, fewer than 600 have ever blasted through the atmosphere to make it into outer space and only a dozen set foot on the moon. Yet, through the study of astrophysics, we can calculate with certainty which elements make up the planets and the stars. 

That's not magic—it's math. 

To astrophysicist and WWT's Big Data Engagement Manager Jamie Milne, this is also a metaphor for artificial intelligence.

You cannot merely reach out and touch it. You are tasked with making observations and trying to figure out the universe from that data. This is precisely what WWT is doing for our customers: we are given a set of data that an organization thinks can explain their world; and we use that data to understand what they are trying to do and make it work for them.

Moving forward, emerging technologies and government policies will continue to shape the way federal agencies and private industries use their data, and artificial intelligence is sure to be a relied-on technology leveraged to optimize data analytics, answer implementation challenges, and develop solutions that produce worthwhile results.

In the latest installment from GovExec's Leadership Voices series, Jamie applies his skills as an astrophysicist and his understanding of how best to analyze and apply big data to provide a helpful guide to getting started when it comes to artificial intelligence.