General Electric (GE) is a global pioneer in the development of Artificial Intelligence (AI), primarily focusing on the integration of human intellect and industrial machinery to facilitate intelligent and user-friendly products and services. These innovations are designed to revolutionize various sectors, including transportation, healthcare, and energy. GE Research is at the forefront of this initiative, inventing and deploying AI solutions that can operate on industrial devices, at the edge, or in the cloud.
GE's approach to AI research is multidisciplinary, combining insights from data-driven machine learning with domain-specific knowledge from areas such as materials, physics, biology, and design engineering. This fusion amplifies the quality and causal-veracity of the predictions derived, a concept GE refers to as hybrid AI. The company is developing state-of-the-art perception and reasoning capabilities for its AI technology to observe and understand contextual meaning, thereby improving the performance and lifespan of its assets, industrial systems, and human health.
GE's AI development also addresses key challenges, such as the lack of sufficient labels needed for traditional supervised learning approaches, the need to ingest and link multiple data modalities, and the need to build AI solutions that are interpretable due to safety-related regulatory requirements. The company utilizes state-of-the-art capabilities in computer vision, machine learning, knowledge representation, reasoning, and human system interactions to robustly monitor, assess, and predict the performance and health of assets.
The benefits of GE's AI products are manifold. They include reduced downtime on assets through AI-driven proactive intervention, increased throughput, and reduced costs. For instance, AI can minimize airline delays and cancellations, optimize wind turbine settings to maximize farm output, or optimize power plant operation to reduce fuel costs. In healthcare, GE Research is integrating AI into every aspect of the patient journey, improving disease diagnosis, and augmenting doctors and clinicians by increasing workflow efficiencies to save precious time.
In addition to asset awareness and management, GE's active AI research areas include Computer Vision, automation, autonomy, User Experience, Augmented Reality, and Robotics. The company's AI expertise is demonstrated in various capabilities:
- Human System Interaction: GE is researching and developing intelligent, natural user interfaces and visual analytic techniques to enhance and enrich interactions between humans and AI.
- Knowledge Management & Big Data: The company applies semantic modeling, text mining, and Big Data to capture and digitize industrial domain knowledge for human and machine use.
- Machine Learning: GE is developing and scaling machine learning solutions for industrial applications to facilitate continuous learning, adaptation, and improvement in dynamic operating environments.
- Computer Vision: The company is enhancing fundamental and applied research to mimic human visualization and interpretation.
Innovating to Build a World That Works | GE Research