The AI revolution is well underway — and Colorado Springs is determined to be a key part of it as a host of industries explore the promise of artificial intelligence.

“From startups to established enterprises, companies in Colorado Springs are embracing the potential of AI to streamline processes, gain insights, improve customer experiences and transform businesses,” the Colorado Springs Chamber & EDC proclaimed last year ahead of Artificial Intelligence Appreciation Day on July 16.

The subject of artificial intelligence took center stage at the annual Small Business Week in Colorado Springs this past spring, with the theme of “The Year of A.I. (Action & Innovation).” Small businesses are using AI to improve customer service. The health care industry is looking to it to improve patient care and save lives. Defense and aerospace companies are embracing it in a variety of ways.

Here is a look at how just a few companies in Colorado Springs are utilizing AI.

BOOZ ALLEN HAMILTON

A team of 50 to 75 Booz Allen Hamilton employees in Colorado Springs played a major role last month in deploying advanced artificial intelligence aboard the International Space Station.

The team was part of the company’s effort to use a large-language AI model to help astronauts diagnose problems with the orbiting facility and make repairs without having to keep bulky manuals onboard or relay questions and answers through mission control, said Chris Bogdan, a company executive vice president who heads its space business. Large-language models are a type of AI that can understand and generate human language.

Booz Allen Hamilton CEO Horacio Rozanski told stock analysts on a conference call in July that during a visit to the company’s Colorado Springs operation and U.S. Space Command, “our team successfully uploaded and made operational what we believe is the first large language model in space.” He met with Space Command officials to “discuss opportunities to modernize our nation’s space capabilities,” Rozanski said on the call.

The team put all major systems manuals and repair capabilities and procedures into the AI model, then compressed the file so it could be uploaded to the station and tell astronauts in seconds to how to diagnose and fix problems with the station, Bogdan said.

The Colorado Springs team has helped develop several other AI projects for use in space. The company also has uploaded AI algorithms to monitor and analyze astronaut health and performance and will test the system when an astronaut wearing an Oura ring — a device worn on a finger to measure sleep and physical activity — arrives at the station. Another project put an AI algorithm on a satellite launched in April that can recognize other satellites.

UCHealth

UCHealth has been using artificial intelligence since 2018 to help a team of nurses find potentially fatal sepsis earlier in hospitalized patients, potentially saving thousands of lives that might have been lost if treatment had begun later.

The Aurora-based health care giant uses artificial intelligence to analyze more than 2,000 patients a day virtually, looking for early signs of sepsis, and alerting a small team of doctors and nurses to take a closer look, then alerting hospital medical staff. Sepsis is a reaction to infection that spreads inflammation throughout the body and can lead to septic shock, a sharp drop in blood pressure that can damage organs and lead to death.

UCHealth’s statewide Virtual Sepsis program has “saved thousands of lives and it continues to get better on how it operates and works with our frontline (health care) team. We are finding sepsis two to four hours earlier than we would have without using AI,” said Amy Hassell, chief nursing officer for the nonprofit’s Virtual Health Center. “Every hour impacts mortality (death) by 10%, so that  two to four hours can reduce mortality by 30% or more.”

The Virtual Sepsis Program is just one way UCHealth is using AI in patient care. It also is using AI to assess the risk of patients falling and to review X-rays, MRIs and other imaging to search for abnormal growths, or nodules, in lungs that in rare cases could be cancerous and alert a team of doctors and nurses to any concerning findings.

“We have been able to help hundreds of patients by catching things earlier,” Hassell said. “AI looks at large sets of data and serves up patterns for you to look at. It can identify 50 concerning scans out of 1,000 very quickly. It is helping us scale precious resources.”

PARSONS

Defense and infrastructure giant Parsons, based in Chantilly, Va., has used AI for more than 20 years in a product called Knowledge-based Predictive Analysis and Situational Awareness, which was initially used after 9/11 to monitor ships to determine if they had been hijacked with the possible intent of sinking them and blocking access to ports. The software tool has been upgraded many times and is now used for many other tasks to find patterns in data and what those patterns mean.

“We are developing new capabilities based on what has been done in the past and our products continue to evolve so (military) decisionmakers can understand what the machines are telling them,” said Rick Pavlik, director of advanced technology in the company’s space operations group in Colorado Springs. “Now a lot of research and funding is going into sense-making – finding the root cause of all the indicators we are getting.”

That means making AI adaptable — allowing military personnel to have influence over the technology. “AI models are based on historical examples, but things (adversary tactics) change so quickly, you need to adapt models so they don’t become outdated,” Pavlik said.

Parsons does much of its work for military and intelligence agency customers, especially the U.S. Space Force, which has major operations in Colorado Springs. The company employs more than 500 people in its local operation with 25 focusing on AI.

BLUESTAQ

Bluestaq, a Colorado Springs-based defense technology contractor, is evaluating both artificial intelligence and machine learning, a part of AI in which computers learn and adapt without detailed instructions, said CEO Seth Harvey. The company is studying where it makes the most sense to incorporate the technologies into its products that help its military customers better understand patterns and abnormalities in data.

“We are kicking off a number of research efforts on generative AI,” which use large-language models that understand and can generate responses in human language, Harvey said. “Within the next three to six months, you will see us provide products to users incorporating AI to improve the user experience. Generative AI is transformative technology to aggregate or curate (make judgments about) data in any sector or industry.”

Harvey said AI can be employed in almost any industry that uses some type of data to help sort through and interpret information from a vast variety of sources more quickly, finding trends and identifying data that may point to problems or threats. Bluestaq primarily builds data management software for military customers; AI, he said, is key technology that can detect and analyze trends in large data sets that come from space, air, maritime and ground sensors.

“There is no sector or industry where data is not at the center,” Harvey said. “Generative AI gives us the ability to aggregate information across an indefinite number of sources. That is something we have never seen before and will transform how the world operates across every sector.”

The challenge of using powerful generative AI software is assessing the credibility and accuracy of what that technology produces, Harvey said. Bluestaq has developed a series of policies and guidance over the past two years about how its employees use AI that require them to validate the responses the technology produces to ensure they are accurate and are free of any bias that could produce false positive or negative results, he said.

Rebecca Decker, Bluestaq’s chief operating officer, said the company requires employees using AI to ask the technology to provide sources for its results so they can verify those sources are credible.

“The stakes are higher in the type of work we do. We train new hires on this policy on day one because it is so important.” She said the company plans to hire 80 people in the next year for a project that will incorporate generative AI in Bluestaq’s products.

COMPUTER ACCESS TECHNOLOGIES

Computer Access Technologies, a Colorado Springs company that provides systems engineering services for drone payloads, space systems and cybersecurity systems, is evaluating specialized AI software that it could incorporate into its products and services, said Ed Rios, founder and CEO. The firm’s 24 employees are looking for ways AI can be used in products and services that meet current or anticipated military requirements, he said.

“In (our work with) drones, we have different feeds for information from sensors, such as radio frequency, electro-optical (which converts changes in light to an electronic signal) and infrared,” Rios said. “The blending of data from those feeds happens much more efficiently with artificial intelligence — it would take days or weeks with human processing, but can be done significantly more quickly, in seconds or minutes” with AI.

Rios said AI can help both the government and private sector cope with a shortage of workers with critical technical skills. But he warns that those skills are still needed to create the complex algorithms that AI tools use to process data.

“When the workforce is shrinking, the replacement (for humans) can be AI — it allows them (the military) to do more with less people,” Rios said. “But AI is only as good as you can program with algorithms, and that is a critical skill” — a skill that is in short supply, he added.