Page 15 - Artificial Intelligence for the Internet of Everything

2 Artificial Intelligence for the Internet of Everything

As presently conceived, “Humans will often be the integral parts of the IoT
system” (Stankovic, 2014, p. 4). For IoE, IoT, IoBT, IoMT, IoIT, and so
on, and so on, will manifest as heterogeneous and potentially self-organizing
complex-systems that define human processes, requiring interoperability,
just-in-time (JIT) human interactions, and the orchestration of local-
adaptation functionalities as these “things” attempt to achieve human objec-
tives and goals (Suri et al., 2016). IoE is already impacting industry, too: the
Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT). 2
Presently, there are numerous practical considerations: whatever the sys-
tems used for the benefits afforded, each one must be robust to interruption
and failure, and resilient to every possible perturbation from wear and tear in
daily use. For system-wide failures, a system must have manual control
backups; user-friendly methods for joining and leaving networks; autono-
mous updates and backups; and autonomous hardware updates (e.g., the list
is similar to re-ordering inventory or goods automatically after a sale event or
in anticipation of scheduled events by a large retailer like Amazon, Wal-
Mart, or Target). A system must also provide forensic evidence in the event
of mishaps, not only with onboard backups, but also with automatic backups
to the cloud.
For new and future systems, there are several other questions that must be
addressed: Will systems communicate with each other or be independent
actors? Will humans always need to be in the loop? Will systems commu-
nicate only with human users, or also with robot and machine users?
For future systems, we are also interested in what may happen when
these “things” begin to “think.” Foreseeing something like the arrival of
the IoE, Gershenfeld (1999, pp. 8, 10), the former Director of the MIT
3
Media Lab, predicted that when a digital system:
has an identity, knowing something about our environment, and being able to
communicate … [we will need] components that can work together and change
… [to produce a] digital evolution so that the digital world merges with the phys-
ical world.

Gershenfeld helped us to link our AAAI symposium with our past symposia
4
on using artificial intelligence (AI) to reduce human errors. Intelligence is

2
For example, from General Electric on IIot, see https://www.ge.com/digital/blog/everything-you-
need-know-about-industrial-internet-things.
3
Gershenfeld is presently the Director, The Center for Bits and Atoms, MIT, Cambridge, MA;
gersh@cba.mit.edu.
4
For example, see our AAAI Symposium at Stanford in 2016 at http://www.aaai.org/Library/
Symposia/Spring/ss16-01.php.