Stephen DeAngelis is founder and CEO of Enterra Solutions, the primary company to use Autonomous Decision ScienceTM (ADS®) technology to perform end-to-end value chain optimization, decision-making, and complicated research & development for enterprises.
Stephen F. DeAngelis is an internationally recognized expert on artificial intelligence and advanced analytics and their applications to the competitiveness, resiliency, and security of business entities and governmental agencies. Mr. DeAngelis is a patent holder, technology pioneer, and entrepreneur. His profession is within the intersection of diplomacy, business, government, and academia. He brings a singular perspective and deep experience to his firms.
Could you share the genesis story behind Enterra Solutions?
Enterra has its origins as a U.S. government contractor. Enterra developed and executed enterprise resiliency (systemic data-driven competitiveness, risk, and performance) models for U.S. governmental agencies. In performing this work, Enterra developed its best practices Enterprise Resilience Management Methodology and Maturity model under collaborative research and development agreements with federally funded US research and development agencies.
To advance competitiveness and resiliency technology, Enterra began work in artificial intelligence and applied mathematics within the early 2000s. By the mid-2000s, the corporate began to mix its work in the federal government sector with cutting-edge theoretical and experimental academic research – this work continues today. Enterra academic research is a bi-directional cooperation that exposes our company and employees to a few of the most advanced and complicated AI and mathematical techniques and practices, while establishing a deep network and set of connections to a few of the leading individuals and seminal thinkers in cognitive science and resiliency applications.
Enterra leveraged the scientific and technical learnings from its work in government and academia to reimagine big data analytics within the industrial sector – the result was the creation of Enterra’s Autonomous Decision Science® (ADS®) & Generative AI platform and set of value-chain expansive business applications that come together to create a primary of its kind System of Intelligence. Enterra’s System of Intelligence performs autonomous end-to-end optimization, planning, and execution by sitting atop a corporation’s multiple transactional systems of record/engagement across Marketing, Sales, Supply Chain, and Corporate Strategy, and orchestrating decisions and actions that help the corporate construct competitiveness and resiliency and reach their business goals.
By combining Enterra’s proprietary technology with organizational knowledge and practices, Enterra anticipates market changes systematically and at market speed—transforming businesses into Autonomous Intelligent Enterprises.
Enterra Solutions offers autonomous decision science, what is that this specifically and the way does it optimize business decisions?
Enterra’s Autonomous Decision Science® (ADS®) is the technology platform that powers the Enterra System of Intelligence™. Enterra’s ADS technology platform brings together three previously siloed technologies:
- A Semantic Reasoning and Vector Symbolic Logic-based Artificial Intelligence that allows human-like reasoning, decision-making and learning. This unique capability combines commonsense and industry knowledge with inference reasoning to create a system that could make decisions with subtle, human-like reasoning after which learn from the outcomes.
- Glass-Box, explanatory, transparent machine learning in the shape of the proprietary Representation Learning Machine™ (RLM). The premise of the RLM is high dimensional mathematics and functional evaluation. RLM uniquely identifies a function that describes the mix and contribution of variables in the info set that describe the observable effects through multiple layers of interaction with a high degree of precision. This is classed as a “glass-box”, explanatory algorithm that generates a function, whose output is visible versus “black-box” algorithms that merely generate patterns, but don’t offer any explanatory description of the dynamics of system/data set, nor have any substantive “Understanding” of what the pattern means.
- Constraint-based, non-linear optimization capability that includes the RLM derived formula, together with semantic reasoning constraints and logic, to perform fast optimization that reflect the complex multi-dimensional real-world considerations to derive highly actionable recommendations. This capability breaks the dimensionality barrier that’s related to linear models.
The unique combination of those techniques has enabled Enterra to offer clients with significantly differentiated capabilities and created a highly defensible chasm within the competitive landscape – with each large AI technology platforms and point solution players.
Roughly a yr ago, on the “Eye on AI podcast”, you discussed how old-fashioned AI continues to be a robust tool. Have your views shifted on this, and what are a few of the traditional machine learning algorithms which are still used at Enterra Solutions?
Science is generationally additive, meaning that one generation of capability layers on top the previous generation’s innovations to create latest capabilities. Enterra continually innovates and creatively evolves its technology. As mentioned above, Enterra has created an Enterra Autonomous Decision Science® (ADS®) & Generative AI platform that’s an ensemble of human-like reasoning and GenAI capabilities, super advanced high-dimensional, glass-box, explanatory machine learning with non-linear, constraint-based optimization engines. Now we have brought together these previously siloed technologies under one platform and in doing so have been capable of unlock previously unrealizable analytical capabilities and mitigated the shortfalls of anyone individual technology.
How has Enterra Solutions integrated Generative AI into their solutions?
While many organizations are still in a discovery and trial period with generative AI, Enterra Solutions and our clients have benefited from its powerful capabilities for over a decade. The AI component of Enterra’s platform will uniquely learn the environmental reasons that recommendations are successful or not and persist that learning of their Ontologies and Generative AI knowledge bases. Enterra, when requested by a client, will develop a selected GenAI knowledge base representing their clients’ strategies, tactics, business logic, and ways of working and winning; while providing updated logic and constraint setting to the optimization functions inside the functional components of Enterra’s System of Intelligence.
Hallucinations is one among the first issues with Generative AI, how does Enterra Solutions overcome these limitations?
Generative AI can automate most workflows, but being unvalidated, its credibility is questionable. This might be addressed by leveraging ADS technology that may plug into large language models (LLMs), reason and triangulate knowledge mathematically to validate its efficacy. By leveraging ADS to deliver trusted explainability and actionability of insights and suggestions, trust might be built.
From 2015 to 2019, you were an Advisory Board Member on the Dalai Lama Center for Ethics and Transformative Values at MIT, how has this molded your values on business and AI?
Well, if one is involved with the Dalai Lama Center you may’t help but take into consideration leadership and ethics as one in the identical. If you run a business, you learn in a short time that you simply make 1000’s of choices a yr. Some are small, some are strange or procedural, and a few are significant or consequential decisions. I hope that I even have learned to make decisions with ethical considerations natively embedded in my logic – truly a north star and the parameters for enlightened decision-making. This idea can also be reflected in the best way we construct algorithms and software, and it’s ultimately reflected in the best way that we run our organization.
Often business and AI leaders similar to Geoffrey Hinton are concerned concerning the future potential problems of AI, and specifically AGI, what are your views on this?
A few of Geoffrey Hinton’s concerns are with potential misuse and the speed at which AI is being deployed. Those are fair points as many firms try to suit AI into their business practices without first understanding what problems they try to resolve. AI doesn’t solve every problem and mustn’t be considered a blanket solution to all business challenges. It’s paramount that firms start with a business-led problem statement, before trying to find viable solutions. When you understand the issue you are attempting to resolve, you may understand the strategic fit and technical feasibility of using advanced technologies, like AI.
You’re a serial entrepreneur and have successfully launched multiple businesses in various domains, what drives you to innovate?
At the tip of the day, I’m more of a creative lifelong learner and intellectually curious businessperson than an administrator. The mixture of lifelong learning and mental curiosity, when combined with an entrepreneur’s zeal for creating latest business, drives innovation and the creation of services and products to fill identified market gaps. The need to work with great teams of individuals and to “compete and win” by creating shareholder value are what drives me to innovate.
What’s your vision for the long run of AI?
Though the lens of AI’s use in near-future B2B applications – I imagine that AI will enable practical autonomous decision-making within the near future in at-scale business applications. These capabilities will probably be driven by human-like Intelligent Agents that augment human-decision making with a man-made intelligence or artificial super intelligence which are focused on large and disruptive use cases. Applications similar to, end-to-end value chain optimization and decision-making for global corporations across industry sectors and disruptions in drug discovery and formulations, and clinical trials, are transformative and touch the lives of most individuals across the planet.