Digital Transformation

Path to Automation, world is changing

If you look around then you can see the world is changing, you can see advancement in robotics. As AI improves, human start to develop machines that can replicate human actions.It is literally happening to almost every industry imaginable, from high precision surgery, space exploration, Self driving cars, smart warehouses, construction industry (a brick laying robot can lay up to 3000 bricks in a day) to a self cleaning Vacuum and moping system to Alexa or google home(smart home). We are not far from replacing a doctor, now machine can diagnose and prescribe medicine based on the test(blood work or other tests) results. So What is AI?, what is the fundamental thing which you need to understand when we talk about these, YES – The answer is Abstraction!! which is a fundamental mechanism underlying both human and artificial perception or representation of knowledge or reasoning.

What is Abstraction (from masters)

Abstraction has proven to be a powerful tool for controlling the combinatorics of a problem-solving search [Korf,1987]. Problem solving using abstract versions of tasks can provide cost-effective search heuristics and evaluations for the original, or “full”, tasks which significantly reduce their computational complexity, and thus make large problems tractable [Gaschnig, 1979, Kibler, 1985,Pearl, 1983, Valtorta,1981].Abstraction is also of critical importance for learning systems. Creating abstract rules can reduce the cost of matching the rules, thus improving their operationality [Keller, 1988, Zweben, 1988].

Some facts

Abstraction aims at reducing the complexity of the perceived world on relevant information and removal of irrelevant details. It establishes a link between the lowest end of the spectrum(signals) and the highest end of the spectrum(symbols).Abstract rules can transfer to a wider range of situations, thus potentially increasing their usability and utility. Abstract rules may also be easier and/or cheaper to create, thus simplifying the learning process and/or making it more tractable. Unfortunately finding good abstractions is difficult and still a matter of art, and a good abstraction should be the one that supports solving the problem in more efficient way.

Simple examples!

Notion of levels of abstractions is one of the foundations of information,
For example “How many kids are there in the line ?” Details of the kids are hidden (they are irrelevant to the question), “How many boys are there in the line ?” Details of the kids must be recoverable, information is not lost in the abstraction process, but only hidden, shielded from the outside view.What abstraction means here is the capability of removing inessential details and to identify a common “essence” inside variability.This capability of going to the core of things is another fundamental aspect attributed to abstraction, namely the ability to focus on relevance. Abstraction is defined as dealing with ideas instead of events.

Define the state of the world (problem space)

Abstraction can be embedded in the framework of representation changes. A good representation of the problem space is key to successfully solve problems. The abstract representation of changes, can be presented by mapping between sensory signals/objects or mapping between predicates. Lets place these in the classical sense-plan-act paradigm.

Sense-plan-act paradigm: decomposed into three functional elements.1) a sensing system (translate raw sensor input into a world model 2) a planning system (take the world model and a goal and generate a plan to achieve the goal)
3) and an execution system (take the plan and generate the actions it prescribes). Perception is the establishment and maintenance of correspondence between the internal world model and the external real world. Action results from reasoning over the world model. Perception is not tied directly to action

What’s NEXT

In the next post(also upcoming ones) lets take a deep dive into abstractions in E&P(Petroleum Exploration and Production industry), where how new digital transformation technologies can leverage to increase the operational productivity, to reduce NPT (non productive time) and have a meaningful impact on well costs. Also in-order to have successful abstract tasks/actions in E&P, we have to in-cooperate human interference in the above paradigm,

References :

• AI Challenges in Human-Robot Cognitive Teaming by Tathagata Chakraborti1, Subbarao Kambhampati1, Matthias Scheutz2, Yu Zhang
• Abstraction in AI by Lorenza Saitta . Jean-Daniel Zucker)