Decades before OpenAI’s ChatGPT propelled artificial intelligence into the national consciousness, Jugal Kalita was immersed in the world of AI.

Kalita, a University of Colorado Colorado Springs computer science professor and chair of the school’s computer science department, has been doing research into artificial intelligence for more than 40 years. He taught many of the 25 people now working on artificial intelligence for infrastructure and defense giant Parsons and has received 17 grants from the National Science Foundation and other government agencies totaling nearly $4 million.

“Forty-two years ago, when I started working on AI-ML (artificial intelligence and machine learning), we were working on isolated tiny little problems in natural language processing,” Kalita said of the advances he has seen in artificial intelligence. “Even thought we were an optimistic bunch, I never envisioned linguistic abilities of machines would blossom to a holistic all-encompassing level as we see now. Large language models inexplicably capture so much of human knowledge of language and the world, it is really astounding.”

Born in Nagaon, India, Kalita received a bachelor’s degree from the Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur before receiving master’s degrees from the University of Saskatchewan and the University of Pennsylvania, where he also received a doctoral degree. He has taught at UCCS since 1990, teaching more than 20 different classes to thousands of students.

Kalita’s research focuses on AI primarily in machine learning and natural language processing used in cybersecurity and bioinformatics, which is the use of computer technology to collect, store, analyze and share biological data. Machine learning is a part of artificial intelligence in which computers can learn and adapt without detailed instructions, while natural language processing is a part of machine learning that helps computers interpret, manipulate and understand human language.

One of Kalita’s recent research projects combines data from vehicles, aircraft and sensors such as temperature, air pressure, remaining fuel and air traffic control data — many in different forms such as text, audio or numbers — to advise a pilot or vehicle operator. Much of his research is designed to be used in the private sector, with a focus on building prototypes and proving that a concept or design works.

Kalita is working with nine interns this summer on a variety of AI research projects funded by the National Science Foundation. Among them, Naman Chhibbar, a UCCS computer science student, is researching the use of AI to summarize long documents of 10,000 to 50,000 words, and Jeno Saghi, a UCCS master’s degree student in computer science, is working on assembling different types of data to improve weather forecasting and other types of predictions.

Kalita is concerned that most of the large-language AI models in use are based on only English or Chinese.

“If AI caters only to English and Chinese speakers, it will leave much of the world behind. We need more research into the 50 to 75 other languages (that are widely spoken), so there will be a lot of opportunity for companies and nonprofits that will benefit the rest of the world,” Kalita said. “if you want AI to be pervasive in India, it will need to work in 25 languages, and in east Asia, it will have to be able to function in Thai, Indonesian and Malay.”