Business
Frank Trevino Frank is the CEO of Exodus Space and also involved with the AI company, Tin Man Kinetics. He tries to educate people to see the positive side of AI versus all the negative things we see coming out of Holywood. How did Frank get started in Space? (01:09) Frank explains that there is a commonality between being an AI strategist, a digital marketing strategist and working space. He says that AI and digital marketing are both data-driven and looking back on his career he can see how he pivoted from traditional marketing to digital marketing first. His role slowly changed from engaging with customer to product development. Next Frank went into space but realized that things don’t happen very fast in space, it required a lot of patience. Frank got out of space and went into technology where he amongst other things worked in business intelligence and eventually AI. After working in Asia for a while he went back to the States and found himself in a position where he was able to combine his knowledge of AI with space. Frank is now working with two companies, Tin Man Kinetics, an artificial intelligence and digital solutions company, and Exodus Space. Where are you in the process of bringing space and AI together? (10:29) When Frank first worked in space, things that took 20 years takes about 10 years now. The other good thing is that there are more technology players coming into space. He thinks that their vertical take off and land space plane, which is in the conceptual stages now, will be ready in 2024 or 2025. The other project they are working on, Human Rated, will be ready in the early 2030s. They are looking at markets they can get into to see how they can give the investors a return. One such market is payload to the International Space Station, and the other is taking up satellites. Talking a little more about the AI component and issues associated with it. (13:21) Frank agrees that the security and ethical issues around AI will always be in the back of our minds. One of the ways they address this issue at Tin Man Kinetics is by having the tag lag line “Technology with heart”. Their goal is to help offer solutions to help people do positive things, and that is how they educate people about AI. One of the mandates in their charter is to hold charity events. They invented an app that incorporates images with machines learning and big data. People are invited to take images and the app redraws the images in Van Gogh’s or Picasso’s styles. At the end, the best images are printed out and auctioned off with the money going to charity. This helps to educate people about the positive side of AI versus the negative picture Holywood is painting. How does Frank’s marketing background and AI come together? (16:31) Franks starts by explaining the differences between AI, deep learning and machine learning. Frank is using AI to look at pictures to determine the demographics of the people in the image. Before using AI, the company didn’t know they have all this data available to them, because AI wasn’t available to do the analysis and find the patterns in the images Now, the company is using this new information to run a loyalty program The exciting part for Frank is that AI is always looking at the data you have and figuring out what data you are trying to find. Where the images were phase one, video is phase two from where AI is going to extract data and find patterns we can use in marketing. He says that AI is very versatile also outside of marketing. People are using AI to find new combinations of spices, to be creative and compose music and to direct movies and in HR to determine what training is best suited to the individual. Frank’s book recommendation