This book is for children of all ages. It's about a "digital septapus" with seemingly magical powers that we use to introduce complex concepts about artificial intelligence, self-driving ships, and oceanic scientific research. This story about Artie is designed to illustrate the relationship between autonomous systems and "Edge Computing."
Some of this is complicated but bear with us. As you'll see in this book, the ultimate goal of the creators of Artie and the autonomous ship is to help us better understand the world's vast oceans.
The Mayflower Autonomous Ship 400 was created by an innovative team from three distinct organizations: Promare, a nonprofit that does oceanic research, MSubs, a submarine design company, and IBM, which brought the power of its Watson computer systems and its latest Artificial Intelligence technology.
So you could say that Artie has three parent organizations, and it has taken all of their collective talents to create a ship capable of navigating (and surviving) the ocean with no humans on board to steer.
In the first pages, we introduce the character of Artie the Septapus because octopi are a good metaphor for how Artificial Intelligence "brains" work with independent sub-computers (aka "Edge Computing").
If you've watched nature films, you might already know that, like other cephalopods like squids or cuttlefish, each tentacle on an octopus has its own brain. Or, to put it another way, each tentacle on an octopus is, in and of itself, kind of a self-contained mini-brain. The tentacles are coordinated by the central brain in the main octopus body, but they seem to be able to move around and grab things on their own. Watch this video for a more in-depth explanation of how clever octopi can solve complex problems, with their tentacles both working in cooperation with each other, and on their own.
IBM's Edge Computing technology is like an octopus in that it distributes computer processors (aka "mini-brains") that are able to make decisions on their own, while still coordinating with a central controlling computer.
By now you may be wondering why we call Artie a septapus and not an octopus and why he has only seven legs. (Hint: the early design was not done by a marine biologist.)
The subject of artificial intelligence independently working with sensors distributed around the planet is a favorite one for science-fiction films that predict the doom of the human race. However, a much more likely use of this technology (which already exists, and is all around us every day), is to make our world better, safer, cleaner and more well-understood.
The character of Artie, the friendly, well-meaning septapus is therefore a good way to start introducing children to the concept that artificial intelligence is not inherently evil and dangerous; that it can, in fact, help out when we need it most.
To learn more about the MAS400, artificial intelligence, and to track the voyages of the MAS400, please check out the main website and the videos and at: https://mas400.com/
