Moving AI to the edge

In today's data centers, a dominant paradigm shapes machine learning and AI systems: massive amounts of data are collected, cleaned, and stored into some form of database or collection of files.  Then machine learning tools are used to train a model on the observed data, and finally the resulting model is used for a while in the edge application.  All of this takes time, so the edge applications operate using stale data, at least to some degree.

In online AI/Ml systems, like smart highways controlling smart cars, smart homes, or the smart power grid, a pervasive need for instant responsiveness based on the most current data is a distinguishing characteristic: today's standard cloud systems can definitely react to new events extremely rapidly (100ms or less is the usual goal), but because the edge runs on cached data -- in this situation, cached models -- and these platforms can't update their models promptly, they will continue to use a stale model long after something fundamental has changed, invalidating it. 

So why would we care about stale models?  The term model, as used by the ML community, refers to any concise representation of knowledge.  For example, on a highway, knowledge of a particular truck's behavior (its apparent route, history of speeds and lane changes, perhaps any observations of risks such as a tire that could be shredding, or a piece of cargo that might not be properly tied down) are all part of the model.  In a continuous learning setting, the model shapes behavior for all the smart cars in the vicinity.  In a smart power grid, the model is our estimate of the state of the grid; if the grid starts to show an oscillatory imbalance or signs of a shortage of power, the model can evolve in milliseconds, and the grid control algorithms need to adjust accordingly.  Yesterday's model, or even the one from ten seconds ago, might not be acceptable.

What will it take to move AI to the edge?

• The AI/ML community will need to figure out what aspects of their problems really need to run on the edge, and are incorrectly situated on the standard backend today.  Coding at the edge won't be the same as coding for the backend, so work will be required.  This suggests that many applications will need to be split into online and offline aspects, with the online parts kept as slim as possible.  The offline components will be easier to implement because they run in a more standard way.
• We need programming tools and platforms for edge-oriented AI/ML tools.  I'm betting that Derecho can be the basis of such a solution, but I also think it will take a while to reach that point.  We'll need to understand what edge-hosted AI/ML tools will actually look like: how will they represent, store, and access machine-learned models?  How big are these models, and what data rates arise?  Where are the low-latency paths, and how low does  latency need to be?
• We may need to integrate hardware accelerators into the infrastructure: if a system does vision, it probably wants to use GPU accelerators for image segmentation, tagging and for operations such as rotation, alignment, debluring, 3-D scene reconstruction, etc.  FPGA components offer a second rapid model, more focused on searching HTML text or other "byte stream" objects.  FPGA accelerators are also useful for doing quick cryptographic operations.  There could easily be other kinds of ASICs too: DFFT units, quantum thinkers, you name it. 
• All of these pieces need to synchronize properly and be easy to program in a "correct" way...

I'm fascinated by this whole area.  If it interests you too,  send me a note:  perhaps we can find ways to team up!