Space: the new AI frontier?

In recent years, the concept of artificial intelligence (AI) has emerged from the annals of science fiction into everyday life, as society grapples with a range of technological issues from cyber security to driverless cars. Along with other terms, such as machine learning, neural networks and'the Turing test', AI has become a contemporary media buzzword in both fact and fiction – despite a general lack of understanding of what AI really means to the average citizen of Earth. Out in space, however, the use of AI is arguably more mature and well-understood, at least for current applications, while its integration into future manned space exploration is pretty much a'no-brainer', along with sibling technologies such as robotics, telepresence and autonomous systems. Most of us, if asked to consider the link between AI and space, would probably think of HAL, the miscreant computer from '2001: A Space Odyssey', rather than any real-life application. Certainly, it seems to tick the box for any current definition of AI, which typically involves'computer systems able to perform tasks normally requiring human intelligence'.