Applied AI on the Edge Proves There’s More to AI Than ChatGPT - Brian Cavanaugh, CEO of VigilanteX - The TechEd Podcast

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TechEd Podcast Introductio (00:09):
This is the TechEd podcast, where we
feature leaders who are shaping,innovating and disrupting
technical education and theworkforce. These are the stories
of organizations leading thecharge to change education, to
rethink the workforce and toembrace emerging technology.
You'll find us here everyTuesday on our mission to secure
the American Dream for the nextgeneration of STEM and workforce

(00:32):
talent. And now here's yourhost, Matt Kirchner

Matt Kirchner (00:38):
it's Matt Kirkner, your host for the
TechEd podcast, where ouraudience knows just about every
week we have one conversation oranother around artificial
intelligence, it's somethingthat absolutely fascinates me.
Is absolutely transforming aboutevery aspect of our world, every
sector of our economy. Today,we're going to do an episode

(00:58):
that is largely comprised ofapplied AI and some really,
really amazing technology thatwe see being deployed by today's
guest and his company. Hiscompany is called vigilantic. So
the guest is Lieutenant GeneralBrian Cavanaugh, and I'm really,
really excited for this episode.
We are going to see some reallyawesome examples of applied
artificial intelligence. ButBrian, as you've given me

(01:19):
permission to call you. Welcometo the TechEd podcast,

Brian Cavanaugh (01:24):
Matt, thank you for inviting me and thank you
for what you do with TechEd. Myview is just, you know, this
area for our nation and ourfuture is extremely important,
the education aspects, you know,since our foundation, the
technology aspects, you know, Ithink about Benjamin Franklin.
Now there's Andrew Graham Bell,and this is just another
transition period in in ourhistory that's most

important. Where would we not be with folks like
like Benjamin Franklin,absolutely, and the attachments
to to electricity, thetechnology that began with the
with the telephone, and is nowthe basis of the technology
we're using to record thispodcast. The compliments of
Alexander Graham Bell, greatinventors like Thomas Edison. I
mean, this really is a countryfull of a history of inventors,

(02:10):
a history of innovation. I knowyour company isn't any
different, Brian. We're going tolearn about that today, but I
want to start out with as Iintroduced you at the outset
here, Lieutenant General BrianCavanaugh, I know you were
educated at the US NavalAcademy, worked your way up to
Lieutenant General of the MarineCorps. And for clarification and
starters, and I actually learnedthis on an episode with Todd,

(02:32):
young senator from the greatstate of Indiana, who I think
had a similar path. He went tothe to the Naval Academy and the
Marine Corps. And I was like,how does that fit together? He
said something along the linesof, No, there isn't a Marine
Corps Academy. If you go to amilitary academy on a path
toward the Marine Corps, you'regoing to the Naval Academy. Did
I get that right?

Absolutely right. Yeah. And actually, one
of my closest friends, she's inthe Marine Corps, and she came
out of Marquette, which I know

really, okay, my alma mater, Marquette,
university. That's That'samazing. Do you do you know
about what time she was there?
Graduated in 91 huh? Okay, sothat, that that in E, do you
have any idea what the majorwas? I do not know. Okay, so
we'll do some homework on that.
My wife and I both graduatedfrom Marquette in 1991 and
chances are that, yeah, one ofthe other of us probably,

(03:20):
probably cross paths with, withyour friends. So we'd love to,
love to go deeper on that whenthe when the time is right,
yeah, for sure. So I will tellyou, I'm proud of my my
education at MarquetteUniversity. It doesn't quite
hold the sway that an educationat the Naval Academy does. So
we'll get into that. But, butlet's talk about your career a
little bit, and some of thehighlights of that career,

(03:41):
before you retired from militaryservice. And before you answer
that question, I cannot be inthe same room, either virtually
or in person, with a militaryveteran without saying thank you
for my freedom, and I mean thatas sincerely as I can possibly
say it so. Thank you for thatincredible service and the
freedom that we enjoy here inthe United States of America.
Thanks to incredible servantslike you. And with that, tell us

(04:03):
a little bit about thatexperience in the Marine

Corps. Thank you, Matt, and thank you for the
acknowledgement. And you know, Iwon't speak forever. I feel
blessed to have been able tohave that opportunity. If you'd
have met me in high school andasked me if I was going to go in
the military, I would have saidabsolutely not. I wanted to go
to Duke University I went to, Igrew up in Baltimore, actually,
with one of your previousguests, Dr Charles Johnson Bay,
and I went to high schooltogether and Baltimore

(04:29):
Polytechnic Institute. And soit's a very engineering and
science based school, and thatreally fed well into Annapolis.
And like you mentioned earlier,the Naval Academy produces naval
officers, and naval is Navy andMarine Corps. So soldiers of the
are the Marines, right? Sotechnical background, mechanical

(04:49):
engineer there. So just youknow, right in my wheelhouse
after graduating, went into theMarine Corps. I was inspired by
a gun re sergeant that was inpart of the training curriculum
while I was at the proportion.
Up school and I became ahelicopter pilot. So I've been
able to serve basically 34years. I graduated 1990 served
for 34 years, four Pentagontours, which total about 10

(05:10):
years. Heavy focus in thewestern Pacific, so a lot of
time in Japan, Korea, Thailand,everywhere else out there, with
the focus area out there, I'veflown basically all over the
world, six or seven continentsI've served on. So just a true
blessing. Nothing I ever dreamedof in high school, by any means.

(05:32):
But you know, just you know,very fortunate to be able to
have had this type of career

and not just served, which obviously would be
impressive enough, but at thelevel of Lieutenant General,
which is, which is incrediblyimpressive. Talk Talk about
that, that career pathway in themilitary, and what was it about
you that led you to such anincredibly high rank? And then
also talk about, you know, howmany, how many folks were under
your purview? How manyindividuals did you did you

(06:02):
lead? Help us understand that alittle

bit. I'll start with kind of why you serve. One
of my passions is to be able tohelp people. And as you go up in
rank, you obviously have morepurview over the people you
help. So as a young guy, youknow, I thought, Okay, I'll do
about 20 years, and that'll getyou to the rank, about
Lieutenant Colonel, Colonel, andyour commanding units, about

(06:24):
2000 ish, marines and sailors.
Well, once you make general, youhave a major impact at strategic
and operational level in yourinstitution. You're able to
influence the decision making atthe highest levels, provide
different perspectives on thingsand really to impact and help a
lot of people on the westernPacific side. I was the deputy

(06:44):
at Marine Forces Pacific, whichis about two thirds of the
Marine Corps operating force, soroughly 7080, 90,000 folks.
Amazing. And then my lastassignment as a Lieutenant
General was out of Norfolk,Virginia. I was a fleet Marine
Forces Atlantic commander, andthat's the other 1/3 of the

(07:05):
entire operating force. Amazing.

Yeah, and I wanted to give you the
opportunity to share that sothat our audience get it gets a
sense for how special thisindividual is. So we're talking
with somebody that, as ouraudience now knows, is someone
who's pretty special, someonewho has exactly the right view
of leadership. But it's allabout service, and it's all
about understanding that thatleading is about being a servant
to the individuals for whomyou're responsible. And when you

(07:29):
do that, it is amazing, when youwhen you take that approach, the
amazing things that people willdo for you and for in your case,
for their country, for anyorganization. So servant
leadership is at the heart ofhow I think about leading
certainly appears, Brian is atthe heart of how you think about
leading as well. I should alsojust mention, as you began the
answer a little while ago, thatyou were a helicopter pilot. I

(07:52):
was at the Reagan Libraryearlier this week and actually
boarded a much older version ofMarine One. So the that, that
part of the conversation istimely for me, because I was
just standing board ahelicopter, not in the air, but
but in them, in a library just afew years ago, h3 it was, yep,
that's exactly right. Was thatthe same kind of helicopter that

(08:13):
you, that you flew?

Yes, I flew H threes and 860s while I was at
hmx one in support of PresidentBush, the main platform, age 53
excellent.

Which President Bush was that W or HW the
younger? Okay, yeah, George Bushthe younger. I met the older one
at one point, I never, I metLaura Bush. I never met, I never
met W, but I did, did spend sometime with HW years ago. That was
a pretty special night as wellprobably do a whole podcast
about that, but we'll Excellent.
We'll plan on it. We'll keep itrolling here. I want to, I want

(08:46):
to give a little bit of anexample. I was just sitting at a
table in California over theweekend talking with some folks
about coaching our kids intowhatever that came after high
school for them, and I made itreally, really clear to our two
children that, look, there's allkinds of great options for you
as you're leaving high school.

(09:06):
You can and none of these aremutual exclusive, and they can
stack on each other. You can goto workforce, directly to
workforce. You can go to auniversity. You can go to a
technical or community college.
You can serve in the military. Imean, we would support any of
those choices that are that ouryoung people, that our kids, in
our case, made. And as it turnsout, a lot of a lot of young
people are, or should be,considering careers in the US

(09:27):
military. So I would love foryou to share before we get into
the great things you're doing atvigilantics. Brian, you know,
why is a military career such agreat option, and what are some
of maybe those personalitytraits that might be inherent in
a young person that would leadthem to a career of service like
the one that you had,

absolutely Matt. So I'll start with myself
again. Coming out of highschool, I had no aspirations to
join the military, but I wouldsay, from start to finish, I
finished high school at 16. Ihad to wait till I turned 17. I.
And then came on board fromstart to finish, 39 years, three
months. It's just a treatablething, purpose driven. It wasn't

(10:08):
anything I ever even considered,and it's just special. Every
field you can think of is in themilitary. So we may associate
military with just what we seein the movies, but we have
doctors, we have lawyers, wehave dentists. I mean, we have,
obviously, aviators,submariners. There's just so
many aspects of all industryrepresentative in the military

(10:34):
to do that mission. So it'spurpose driven. It's great
opportunity. When I was inuniform and I go talk to high
schools, I would tell them, youknow, obviously I'd start with
the Marine Corps. Hey, you know,love for you to try to be a
Marine, right? And right, therest of the services, right?
Army, Navy, Air Force, SpaceForce. And then I would
transition, if none of thatinterests you, the government,

(10:56):
civilian side is critical to ournational defense and our
national security. And I talkabout all the opportunities on
the government side of service,and then the defense industrial
base. So welders, electricians,all those kind of vocational
aspects. How long does it taketo build a ship or a submarine?
And we need artisans to do that.
So it's a expansive there'snothing that's off the table of

(11:16):
opportunity in quote, unquote,that military construct.

I think it's important for us to note that
Brian just the wide range ofcareers, and you know, kind of
going back to to my own twokids, neither of whom decided to
pursue the military out of highschool, but one of whom is now
living in Washington, DC, andworking pretty closely with the
Department of Defense. So toyour point, you know, in that
case, the civilian role, and notemployed by the DOD, but, but in

(11:43):
a advisory role to the DOD. Allkinds of incredible
opportunities for careers inservice to the United States.
And when we think about astudent who's considering a
military career, are therecertain experiences, types of
students, interests that wouldbe appropriate for, you know,
for a student who's in one ofthose to maybe be even more

(12:04):
considering of a military careerthan

others, I think when you look at the I'll say
the characteristics or traits, Ithink Naval Academy kind of gets
it right, because they focus onmoral, mental and physical,
right? So that moral foundationis, you know, it's mom and dad
or grandma or however that thathome construct is, yeah, and
your belief system, the mentalis the educational aspect. In my

(12:27):
opinion, you always want tolearn. You're never going to get
there. You want to keep being avoracious learner. And then the
physical aspect is a key piece,obviously, especially as a young
person, you have to have certainlevel of physicality to go and
do the mission sets that we doin the military.

Yeah, those are great, great examples. I was
just, by coincidence, we'rerecording this episode about
four or five days after werecorded one with former
Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker.
And by coincidence, we're bothEagle Scouts, and I was just
reflecting on the scout oath andthe Scout Law and and just, it
occurs to me how well thatapplies to the three examples
that you just offered in termsof moral, fundamental and

(13:03):
physical and all three of thembeing incredibly important, you
know, also important, by theway, and is a way of segueing
into the next conversation isthe incredible work you're doing
at vigilantic. So you're the CEOof a high tech company, which
has to be a really, really cooltransition. Transition. Let's
start out with just the overviewof the technology. What are the
applications? What industriesare leveraging? The visual

(13:24):
analytics technology?

It's a really interesting industry. What I'll
say is it's really aboutintegration. So we all know AI
has been around for a while, butwe associate it with chat, GPT
and text and something you do atyour desk. Our company, with our
partnership with spot AI, we'retaking that kind of same
construct, you know, into thephysical world. So on edge

(13:47):
compute with, you know, theirsoftware, and, you know, with
our cameras and our solarpanels, batteries just fully
remote, having that kind of atyour desk feel out in the real
world, we were able to go acrossmany industries. So we focused
initially on home builders andthe security aspect, because
that's kind of what everybodylooks at in this form factor, is

(14:08):
they'll look and see a trailer,and you've seen these in major
retailer parking lots, thetrailer with some cameras on it,
everybody goes right tosecurity. But with what we have
security is probably less than10% of the capabilities of the
vessel. It's about safety. So ifyou think we've transitioned
into large GC so folks thatbuild stadiums, folks that build

(14:31):
the freeways across our nation,we're working with a lot of
organizations that are veryconcerned about their people.
The AI agents can tell whensomeone does or doesn't have a
hard hat on and notifications,if someone's up on a rooftop not
strapped in, they can send anotification. And then the
project management aspects,supers have to go out, or PMS

(14:52):
have to go out, site to site tosite. You can just kind of sit
at your desk and see all yoursites very rapidly. So that time
saving aspect is. Of anotherfeature that we kind of offer,
bringing the AI into the realworld. That's where I think
there's a lot of opportunity foryoung people to think about as
they think about, what will I dowhen I graduate high school, or

(15:12):
what do I want to study incollege?

You and I are so aligned everybody, when they
think of AI, they think aboutchatgpt, perplexity, Claude. I
mean, it's generative AI. Andobviously that's important. We
like to say that, you know, allof those are AI, but AI is so
much more than generativeartificial intelligence. And to
your point, you know, the wholeapplied AI side of things, how
are we deploying, you know, edgedevices, Edge sensors that are

(15:37):
intelligent. We'll get into, youknow, what we mean by that in a
moment, to add the edge and thendeploy artificial intelligence,
and utilize artificialintelligence in every level,
control systems, networking inthe fog, in cloud, in the cloud,
what we call the edge to cloudcontinuum. And that is really
where the action is, I think.
And there's a certain group ofstudents that are going to
really, really get fired upabout writing the next best AI

(15:58):
algorithm, or understanding howto create 50,000 lines of code
using AI. That's awesome forthem, but for the other 95% of
students and young people andall of us, it's really in the
applied artificial intelligence.
So just so I understand Brianexactly the technology we're
talking about here, or at leastclose enough. So we're deploying
cameras on the edge. So I lookat a large general contractor

(16:21):
who's working on a huge project,be it to your point, a stadium,
a new freeway system, largecommercial building, what have
you. And you think about thepressure on a general contractor
to make sure that theiremployees are working safely.
And there's really two parts tothat. The first big part of it,
and I think the biggest part isobviously, as someone who spent
my whole career inmanufacturing, the rule number

(16:42):
one is, send your people homesafely. You know, it doesn't
nothing that we are doing is soimportant that we wouldn't want
somebody to go home to theirfamily at the end of the day the
way that they came in themorning. And so that's the
really, really big part of it.
And then the added aspect ofthis is the responsibility on
the regulatory side. So we'vegot all kinds of, you know, OSHA
regulations and otherregulations that we need to

(17:03):
comply with. And as somebodythat's worked not necessarily in
the construction space, althoughI did a little bit of that more
so on manufacturing, theimplications for not playing by
the rules in that regard can bereally, really hefty. And so
making sure we're complying withboth of those. So now I've got
technology that can kind ofmonitor using edge security
devices in the cloud. To yourpoint, are people using their

(17:25):
PPE safely if I'm doing confinedspace entry, or if I'm, you
know, if I'm up in the airworking on something, am I
properly deploying fallprotection? All obviously, for
the safety of the of theemployee. And so we're able to
utilize AI to identify, amongother things, when somebody
might not be following exactlythe policy or the procedure they
need to follow in order to worksafely. And then we can correct

(17:46):
that on the fly Wait, ratherthan waiting until, you know, a
tragedy happens to to correctfor that. Am I getting that
somewhat right? You're

getting it absolutely right. I mean,
awesome. There's so many aspectsof kind of what you just laid
out that are important toaddress. And bottom line is we
want everybody to go home safelyevery day, and it's across
industries, and it's inside andoutside, right? So with our
workout system, we have ourtrailers outside, but with our
partnership, we cover inside andoutside, so on the manufacturing

(18:15):
floor all the way out to a jobsite, and it goes across
different verticals. So I useconstruction. I used freeway oil
and gas, you know, differentcameras. You can get thermal
cameras. You can get all thesedifferent other technologies.
And the AI agents that arebuilt, essentially, if you were
standing there and you saw it,you could see, what would you
want to do about it, right? Andthat's what an agent can do. As

(18:38):
a military person, from asecurity aspect, we would have
military guys kind of roamaround and look and do these
things, but you know, 24/7doesn't blink is the preferred
method. From a security aspect,you talk about safety with the
OSHA. You know, you can programwhat those OSHA violations could
be and detect those when theyoccur. You can be passive and

(19:02):
capture data like I had 17 folkswithout a hard hat today. You
don't have to always take actionimmediately, and then now you
have all this data, and you canmake informed decisions at a
higher level, at a strategiclevel, about, you know,
procedurals, things that youneed to change, or this super is
doing better than this super. Isay, used AI as a tool to help

(19:23):
you, one, bring it right homeevery day. And then secondly,
you know, become more efficientand effective in the jobs that
you're doing, absolutely and

who wouldn't want to be more efficient and
effective in their in theirwork. Talk about the trailer
part. You mentioned the trailera couple times. I want to make
sure that that's clear from forour audience what you're
referencing there

sure our specialty trailer. We call it
Argos. It's solar panels,bifacial solar panels with
battery backup. So it's a NDAcompliant. It's ruggedized, do t
certifications, nhtsp, it'stollable. You can move it, put
it anywhere as long as you havesun. And we use. Starlink. A lot
of folks use cellular, but whenyou have that high definition

(20:05):
video, you want to be able totransmit it without bandwidth
restrictions and those types ofthings. So So Starlink solar
panels or software anywhere thatyou can use Starlink in the
world. And as long as the suncomes up, which it does every
day, as far, so far, yeah, youhave this, this ruggedized,
really military grade trailerthat you can put somewhere in

(20:27):
again. What is it you want tosee? And then what do you want
to do about it once it's seen?
Yeah, I can do all that awesome.

So there's no people in the trailer. It's all
electronics and technology. Gotit super, super cool. All right,
so now that's now that'slaunching a whole bunch of
questions in my head that aregoing to be fun to explore.
We'll start out with in ouraudience, individuals that
listen regularly know that weuse this, this term, the edge to
cloud continuum, all the time.
I'm a huge believer that weteach artificial intelligence by
teaching the edge to cloudcontinuum. You know, the example

(20:53):
that we'll use a lot of times isSpotify, and your phone, it can
perfectly predict the next songthat you want to hear all the
time. How does it do that? Well,number one, your phone has 23
smart sensors and smart deviceson them. By smart we mean two
things. They have embeddedintelligence and they have the
ability to communicate with eachother. Once we do that, all the
concerns about latency andbandwidth that we used to have
in terms of sending data backand forth to a computer network,

(21:15):
a control system, a cloud, thosestart to go away. So we can
deploy way, way more of them.
And that's what's happening inthe, you know, in the world, not
just of technology, but everysector within our within our
economy. But my phone has these23 smart sensors and smart
devices. Those are communicatingwith my phone, which, by the
way, Spotify, knows everythingabout me. It knows what I listen

(21:37):
to, it knows what I skip. Itknows what I swipe. It knows
what I play over and over andover again. It knows who I
follow. It knows who follows me.
It knows when I was born. Itknows where I live. It takes all
this information and it says,All right, this is exactly the
next song that Matt Kirknerwants to hear next. It's doing
that, not just at the phonelevel, but it's communicating
with the fog, which in that caseis a regional data center, and
also with the cloud, which is anexternal data center where all

(21:59):
these algorithms are running todo all that prediction. And so
if we teach students that edgeto cloud continuum, and really
anybody, not just a student, ifwe teach them the edge to cloud
continuum in any sector, now youcan start seeing how that
applies to other sectors. Wetalk about it in manufacturing
with smart sensors, devices,programmable logic controllers,
data collectors and computernetworks and then cloud

(22:21):
computing. Same thing happens inhealthcare, same thing happens
in energy, same thing happens inretail, hospitality, in defense,
in construction, across everyone of those segments. And so
that's when we talk about theedge to cloud continuum. That is
my belief of how we teach AI iswe teach how that data is moving
back and forth. So in thatcontext, let's talk about what's
happening with your technology.

(22:43):
So on the edge, you've gotcameras and sensors both. Is
that, right? What kind of thingsare on that trailer that are
monitoring a job site, forexample?

Yeah. So cameras and sensors we use our
standards is like a 30x PTC, sopan, tilt, zoom, camera, 60
degree view, and again,individual customers will
determine what it is they wantto see. The agent is developed
for that particular thing, andwhen it's detected, the beauty
is that will create an incident.
That incident is then stored, sowe have two terabytes on prem on

(23:14):
the machine, but the incidentsare stored and then sent to the
cloud. So we're not processingon the cloud, processing at the
unit level, for speed, thesecurity, all those things are
are enhanced when you can do

that for absolutely and so, you know, you
start thinking again about theedge the cloud continuum, rather
than to having to send all ofthat data that you're collecting
up to Starlink, and then viaStarlink, it would go to and it
is the selective data thatyou're using is going then to to
a data center of some sort.
You've got a lot of that databeing stored on prem and now,
and you've mentioned agents acouple times, let's go into
agent tech AI, and in how we'redeploying AI agents, which to

(23:54):
me, my best analogy there is,it's like a digital employee,
right? We can create an agent todo anything that a person would
do, but it'll do it digitally.
It'll do it much moreaccurately, and it'll do it
faster. So talk about the wholeagentic AI side of your
technology.

Brian, I think that's the I'll say the secret
sauce is just Sure. Again,that's why you can go across all
the different verticals, onceyou understand, okay, if I were
standing there, and I'll use asafety officer, for example.
Again, this form factor,everybody looks at the machine
and think, okay, security, andthat's less than 10% I believe
what the capability is. So let'stake a safety officer, and a

(24:32):
safety officer can't stand on asite where there's a oil and gas
platform or field orconstruction site college
campus. I mean, just think aboutall the different use cases. You
can't stand there, 24/7, right?
You can. So you develop theagents. What is it you want to
see? I want to see no hard hatsor safety vests or crowding, you
know, because you know things,something's about to happen,

(24:55):
anything that you can your mind,can think of if you were
standing there and want. To sayyou can train an agent to detect
that on your behalf. Once it'strained, you upload kind of
positive images of that negativeimage that then you validate.
Once it's trained, it'llcontinue to that learning
process, and you continue tovalidate that. It just gets
smarter and smarter.

Yeah, that's so cool. And I know you can't give
up the you know, the underlyingtechnology wouldn't expect you
to, but I want to make sure thatthat point is in law. That that
point isn't lost on ouraudience, is that a lot of times
people working in the AI fielduse big words like agent tech
AI. And, you know, sometimesthey use them because that's the
parlance they use to communicatewith each other. Sometimes they
use it to impress you or confuseyou, or, you know, make you feel

(25:37):
like they're smarter than youare. The truth of the matter is,
it's really simple, and I lovethat example, because you're
like, we because you're like, wecould have a security agent on a
job site that's a human beingthat's doing something. You
know, that job probably isn'tthe most fascinating job, just
sitting there and watching tomake sure that people are
complying with whateverregulation. You know, maybe it
pays okay, maybe, you know,maybe not. But now we're taking

(26:00):
that technology and deploying itto and then we can take that
individual and put them in arole that might be even, you
know, even more interesting tothem, better paying for them.
You know, what have you. Theother thing that you already
mentioned, and I saw it inmanufacturing, right? We used to
do all of our visual inspectionusing people, and so if you're,
you know, you're inspecting forcompliance with the with a some

(26:21):
type of a specification providedto you by whoever is expecting
that part next that you'remanufacturing. The truth of the
matter is, the visual inspectionby a human being, it's about 95%
accurate, maybe 99 or 97%accurate, I should say, which
seems pretty good, other thanyou realize then that 3% of what
you're doing is going out thedoor and it isn't, it isn't

(26:44):
right, right? So that that canbe a real problem. So, so the
other thing is just the theaccuracy side of this that
you're able to do with agenticAI. And as young people are
thinking about careers aroundartificial intelligence, how you
create an AI agent for aspecific task, for a specific
application, is really where thefuture a lot of a lot of this, a
lot of this technology is soreally, really fascinating. You

(27:07):
know, how you're utilizing it.
What any examples on thesensors? I mean, are we talking
about temperature sensors,moisture, humidity, proximity,
light. I mean, what kind ofsensors are you using?

So I think if you use, like the thermal
cameras, the thermal cleansingis an example. We have a site
where we're just really lookingat batteries and make sure that
they don't heat up to a certainlevel, yeah, cause all that
runoff. That's an example of,you know, one of our use cases,

perfect. Yeah, really, really fascinating. I
could sit here and just talkabout the technology and the
applications for the next twohours. I'm not sure the audience
would be as fascinated by thatas I am. Somebody will take that
offline, along with some of theother discussions about former
presidents and what you know,whatever else we've already teed
up here for future episodes, butI want to stay on the topic. And
let's you mentioned spot AI anumber of moments ago, as you

(27:57):
were introducing the company andthe technology, talk about that
relationship and that platform,and you had said at some
previous point that it does forvideo, what chat GPT has done
for TechEd. So tell us what spota spot AI is.

Well, Spot AI is led by two phenomenal
gentlemen that we're obviouslypartnered with and very close
with. They went to Stanford, andI'll say loosely, when everybody
went to the cloud years ago,they went to the edge, and they
were kind of first and into thisarea, and very, very
experienced, I'd say, probablyone of the global leaders in
I'll call on the edgetechnology, and the partnership

(28:31):
with us helps them grow to thephysical world on the outside of
the buildings, kind of like youdescribed. So again, AI has been
around for a while, you know,chat, GPT and techs, but to be
able to search video, you know?
So think of the same type ofapplication chappy GPD does for
the text, right? Our partnershipwith them, we can do that in
video. So you can go into oursystem. It's all web based, a

(28:53):
single user interface for entireecosystem. So if it's inside or
outside and everything inbetween. You can go in and you
can type in text and search thevideo, much like you would do
outside of the physical worldyou're

creating. You're engineering a prompt, I should
say. But instead of doing thatin text, you're doing it using
video. And then is the modelkind of the same where a
generative, pre trainedtransformer will kind of predict
the next word, and that's thekind of predictive side of
generative artificialintelligence. Is it doing the
same thing? It doing the samething with video? Or go a little

deeper, there it does. So you would type in
text like, show me all yellowforklifts in the past 30 days.
You put the what, you know, youtype that in, and you can put
the window that you want to lookand it'll go through, you know,
months worth of video inseconds, yeah, and pop up all
those video clips of the thingthat you're looking for, cool

(29:46):
before you take a human days,yeah, absolutely look in and
just try to find what you'relooking for. And it does it
instantaneously.

It's amazing. So it almost feels like, you know,
if I go into my, you know, myphoto app. On my on my
smartphone, and I say, you know,find all the pictures with dogs,
and it'll go and find, find thedog pictures. It's doing the
same thing, but it's doing itwith whatever you're trying to
monitor outside, as it relatesto security, yeah. So think
about that as far as whetherit's, you know, whether it's

(30:15):
compliance, whether it's goingback and even, like, accident
investigation or near misses orthose kind of things. It feels
like there's all kinds ofapplications there. That's
that's really, really cool,

and you can set it up to create the cases,
right? So, like, if you knowthat, you know these types of
things are something that youwant to keep, the agents will
automatically create a case forit and store it for you, so that
when you go back, it's alreadythere.

That's cool. Who creates the agents are those all
custom, are those turnkey, kindof existing on the platform. Or
how does that

work? We have some preset so, like common so
like in construction, like onindoors, like your experience
with manufacturing, you know,forklift incidents or the
crowding or hard hat detection,those are kind of standard. But
any custom one can be built. Thecustom ones can be built in a
matter of seconds and minutes. Imean, it's not

that hard, okay, so, so, so an individual
utilizing the platform cancreate their own agent. Yeah,
awesome, yeah. This is really,really cool. So tell me a little
bit about who creates all thisand what is their background.
Are these data scientists? Arethese computer programmers? Are
they AI agent or AI experts, Ishould say, or, you know, who
developed all this stuff again?

So the spot AI, the founders and their team came
up with kind of all this, andthey, they developed the
software, and it's so userfriendly. So at the customer
side, sure, even a simplehelicopter pilot can go build
this agent, yeah,

simple helicopter pilot, right? As if that's Yeah,
but believe me, I was, I was inthe cockpit of that, that
helicopter over the weekend.
There's, there's nothing simpleabout what's going on in there,
but, but, but, but your point iswell taken. You don't need

to be a data scientist. I'd say that's pretty
simple stuff.

So let's talk then, about, you know, whether
it's a software developer orsomebody who's an expert in AI,
somebody who's an expert incamera technology, I mean, all
these different applications onthe on the edge as it relates to
artificial intelligence, andtalk about, you know, students
and some of the careers. So, youknow, we're big believers that
we teach all of this stuff usingapplied artificial intelligence.

(32:14):
And when I say applied, youknow, in a school, I'm thinking
like, all right, I can, I canhave a scaled down autonomous
vehicle platform or drones thatare using edge to cloud
technology. I can have aadvanced manufacturing or
industry 4.0 application that'susing smart sensors at the edge
and communicating with, youknow, with cloud software that's
finding patterns in what I'mseeing in advanced

(32:35):
manufacturing. I can havestudents who are, you know,
coding. They could beprogramming. I mean, the
precision agriculture, you thinkabout the applications there,
they could be learning on like asmall tractor that's full of
sensors and communicating withthe cloud using GPS technology
and software and so on. That, tome, is how we teach this, right?
We teach it in a hands on way weteach it on the applied side.

(32:56):
It's not all theory, it's notall coding and programming, not
that that isn't important. Butthere's way more to it than
that. Are we like minded? And Imean, I kind of feel like we
already are from that previouspart of the conversation. And
then talk a little bit about howyour technology serves as
examples of why we should beteaching it that way,

we are absolutely like minded in this
and I'll start my comments withand I'm sure you're familiar and
your listeners are familiar withthe mandate out of China that
all the children learn, startingin primary and secondary
education, it's a requirement.

So, yeah, let me just tell you I was, and maybe,
maybe, if you're a regularlistener, you already know this,
but I spent, I spent a week inChina in August, visited 26
tech, tech companies in sixdays. And that shocked me. And
so keep going on that it'smandatory K 12 education
mandates AI education in China.
So keep going right?

So the point I was going to make is that I
think we're behind in thatthought process. I think our
children need to know it's notit's not okay. I don't want to
go in and be a programmer or,you know, it's across all and I
gave an example of a couple ofindustries, right? And that's
just a couple, but your mind canthink of myriad industries that

(34:08):
there's application. So if youwant to go and if children
students, want to go down adifferent route, you can't
ignore it, right? Your point isspot on about just the
versatility in not only oureducation system of implementing
some type of learning, I think,I think we kind of limited to,
you know, AI's writing papers,and that's the extent of the

(34:30):
conversation. That's just soI'll say insufficient for what
we need for our future, ournational defense or national
security, and all those aspects

they hear again, this could be a whole episode. I
think we have a hugeopportunity. There's the
education model in China.
There's also the US is attitude,for lack of a better term,
toward the intellectual propertyas it relates to coding and
programming and how China looksat that. In China, it's all open
source, right? There's no IPreally, not to say nothing,
because I'm sure they protectsome of it. It's. Some level.
But generally, somebody who'sinnovating in China, all that,

(35:01):
all that code is open source. Imean, so you, you know, you
create a new AI algorithm, youput it in a humanoid robot, you
know, it's on GitHub two monthslater, and the whole world has
the ability to look in the, youknow, look under the hood and
see how you're doing that in theUS. It's exactly the opposite,
in the sense that we are closedsource companies like meta AI,
companies like anthropic,they're not out there sharing

(35:24):
all their code with everybodyelse. It's like, That's your
secret sauce. You used that terma little while ago. That's how
we do this, and we're notsharing that with anybody. That
creates a competitive advantage,and in a capitalistic economy,
creates an opportunity for us togenerate revenue and ultimately
net worth and wealth. So tworeally, really different ways of
looking at the same, same issue.

(35:47):
So your comments on education,on applied artificial
intelligence, on the sense ofurgency. This isn't a five year
problem. This is a five monthproblem we have here in the
United States of making surethat every every school across
the country is teaching appliedAI, super, super important.

What I thought about this in February to today
is there's so much change ishappening so rapidly. And that's
to your point about, like, youknow, five months, right? And
then the others are, thehistorical approach, as you're
talking. It just made me think,you know, like the World Wide
Web, you know, microwave, allthe things that we kind of gave
the world, yes, historically,this is a little

different, right, right? Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
Everybody's innovating andthings to learn from both sides,
but I think the stakes arehigher, too. To your point, I
mean, it's, you know, it's, it'sone thing to say, well, we could
microwave an egg faster than youcould. It's another thing to say
that we, you know, we can. Wecan build an AI platform that
has the ability to transform theentire world economy, you know,

(36:45):
the country that does that, thecompany that does that, the
individuals that do that,obviously, the impact is way,
way bigger than, you know, thanthe proliferation of the
microwave oven. So the stakesare super, super high. I think
you make a really, really goodpoint, actually. And also
looking forward to hearing alittle bit more about
vigilantics and in theapplications for your
technology. So far, we've talkedabout construction. We've talked

(37:07):
about building freeways andinfrastructure. What about
applications in the military? Isthat a future opportunity,

absolutely when I just retired last year? So
when I joined this effort, Ithought about these
applications, and you get thatepiphany, man, I wish couple of
my responsibilities was theMarine Corps security aspects of
garden embassies and gardennuclear weapons and those types
of things. And, you know, justaugmenting, I tell folks,

(37:37):
because some people getconcerned about AI's taking
human jobs. I'm like everycommand I've ever had, every
effort I've ever led. I neverhad enough people to do the task
that I had to do. Right? I couldtake, like, one of our machines
and put it there and free thatindividual up to go do something
that deem a lot more importantthan kind of standing there with

(37:59):
that capability. 24/7, right?
And then, you know, the recycleand of you know, every post
three to three to five peopleand all those types of things, I
could just eliminate that andmove those folks to go and do
other things. There's so manyuse cases from a military
construct that this wouldbenefit.

So I think about the same thing from my days in
manufacturing, where everybodywas like, aren't robots going to
take all the jobs? And I'vebeen, you know, as long as I was
in manufacturing, I never hadenough people to get the work
done. And there's more jobs inmanufacturing than there are
people to fill them, you know,we'll worry about that when the
time comes. But for right now,let's just find a way to get the
work done. And good chancethere's going to be that much
more work waiting for us once weonce we solve for this problem.

(38:40):
So that's never been an issue,at least in my career. Think
about for a moment, Brian, youknow, what does the future look
like of AI in militaryoperations? I'm sure there's a
ton of stuff that you couldnever share, but but in terms of
what you could How is AI gonnagonna affect and impact the
military operations over thecourse of the next, say, three
to five years?

I think that the simplest form is just like
in industry, looking for thoseefficiencies, whether it's in
human capital, where we can, youknow, start having like, you
know, the paralegal type of workdone, or administrative type of
work, or logistics, those typesof things. I think you're going
to see a transition there, andthen as you go to the higher end

(39:21):
where it's going to help inplanning and help in strategy
and help in execution, right? Soagain, our machine can tell you
when something's happening basedoff of, you know, what it sees.
If you expand that out, if youhave, you know, let's say better
cameras or satellites and thingsthat can extend out and use an

(39:41):
AI to help you speed up thatdecision

cycle. So if I'm a student that's hearing that
and I'm saying AI is going tohave huge applications in the US
military, and thinking about themilitary as a potential career
choice, how should I bepreparing myself for that career
pathway? What are the things. Astudent could do in middle
school, in high school, what arethose things they should be
preparing themselves

for? I think the main baseline thing is to be
a voracious learner, right? Andif you're not interested in
coding and those type of things,which like, Well, I remember
carrying four train cards back,right? Exactly. It's a little
different now, but just, youknow, everything's evolving

(40:26):
change. So you want to be veryadaptive to change. And, you
know, find what it is you likeand that you're interested in,
and then understand how AI canbe used as a tool to support the
things that you want to do. Andthen, again, I tell you,
there's, there's not a job thatI can think of that's not in the
military, whether it's in theNavy with our corpsman or our

(40:47):
doctors or aviators, there's,there's infantry. I mean,
there's so many aspects, youknow, munitions, TechEd, there's
everything that you can thinkof. Those opportunities. Are
there one? It's a way to serveyour country, do something that
you're passionate about, meetwonderful people from all across
the globe,

yep, and launch, launch an amazing career,
whether it's 39 and a half yearsin the military, and then being
the CEO of a tech company or,you know, taking an on ramp or
an off ramp anywhere along theway, is just an incredible way
to launch your career, builddiscipline and learn incredible
technology and also get somehelp with whatever comes after
you know your military serviceas well. So super, super career

(41:24):
choice and wouldn't, wouldn'thesitate to encourage as many of
our young people as possible toto consider that as one as they
move through their theireducation pathway, which is kind
of where I want to leave ushere. Brian, couple more
questions for you. One oneducation. We've talked a lot
about applied education, appliedartificial intelligence,
education, graduating from highschool when you're 16 years old,

(41:45):
what students can be doing inhigh school to prepare
themselves for military careers?
Is there something abouteducation from your particular
pathway, which was unique inmany respects, that you would
say, I have this view ofeducation that's a little bit
different, or might surprisesome

folks, here's a good one. So growing up, I'll
say our mother, my sisters andI, we had no idea that college
was even an option. So for us,it was ninth grade, 10th grade,
11th grade, 12th grade, 13thgrade, 14 I didn't know choice.
So just that fundamental, I'llsay discipline and thought

(42:21):
process really was a benefit tous. And, you know, I don't know
that people think about that,right again, I had no concept
of, I thought you everyone hadto go to college, Huh?
Interesting. Not the case, sure.
So it was never, it was neveroption in our household.

Got it? Yeah. So there's Yeah. So everybody has
to, has to go to college. Thatwas just the expectation that
you had growing up from, youknow, the environment in which
you grew up, and especiallyduring that era, right? I mean,
that was to, you know, that wasthe ticket, and in a lot of
ways, to the college education.
And so kudos to your family forencouraging you in that regard.
And now we think about thisstage of the world, which is

(43:01):
now, you know, a few severaldecades later, all these options
and all these on ramps and offramps that didn't necessarily
exist. So so consider youroptions. Certainly, a four year
university can be a great one,but, but not the only one. And
make sure you keep your youroptions open. I

want to make sure I do say that for your
listeners that that's not anoption or not a consideration.
Yep, I would even reinforce thatthe military or government
service options or thevocational options are
absolutely a way to get a goodstart, learn a trade, learn all
these things that we'vediscussed, and then go on and

(43:37):
have a phenomenal career.

Exactly right?
And that's the beauty of theworld we're living in today is,
is that, you know, we've gotwork to do and making sure
students understand all thoseoptions, but they certainly have
them. And whether it's, youknow, government service,
whether it's the military, wouldlove to see that at the top of
the list of as many students aspossible. And glad you mentioned
that we're going to take youBrian for the last question.
Back to we usually say to yoursophomore year in high school,

(44:01):
it's a question we ask a lot ofour guests on the TechEd
podcast. In your case, sophomoreyear of high school, you were
almost graduated, so let's,let's say, let's say we're going
to take you back to your 15 yearold self. And if you could give
yourself Brian one piece ofadvice to that 15 year old young
man, what would that be? I would

focus on enjoying today and not worrying
so much about tomorrow. I thinkwe all get in the habit of, you
know what I gotta do, what Igotta do. And I'll go back to my
time when I was hmx. When youleave the squadron, you
generally have an opportunity togo up to the Oval Office and get
a chance to meet the president,take a photo. So my wife and I
went up, and somebody told me,he said, make sure you look

(44:38):
around. You're you're in theline, you're kind of moving up,
you're moving up, and then youget to the crest of the opening,
and you see the president, andthen you kind of go in, take the
picture, chit chat, and thenyou're Yeah, and it's like, did
I get a chance to look aroundright absolutely? And I would, I
would advise myself to enjoy themoment, enjoy the day as as much
as you can. And tomorrow come,don't.

Rushing whether you're standing in the Oval
Office, which, by the way, is abucket list item for me, I
haven't had that opportunity. Ipray that I will at some point
in my life, but standing in theOval Office, what an incredible
opportunity that must have been.
Take it all in. Slow down. Enjoytoday. Tomorrow is another day,
and we'll take care of itselfone way or the other. But enjoy
every single day. I've certainlyenjoyed this day spending time
with Lieutenant General BrianCavanaugh, Chief Executive

(45:22):
Officer of vigilantics. We'velearned so much about his
incredible work, about edge tocloud technology, the edge to
cloud continuum. I'm so glad wehad you on as a guest, Brian.
And thanks for being with us.
Thank you, and we will link upthe show notes at TechEd
podcast.com/cavanaugh that'sTechEd podcast.com/c. A, V, A,

(45:45):
N, A, U, G, H, so any of thosereferences we made today that we
want to go a little bit deeperon, we'll be sure and place
those in the show notes whenyou're done there, check us out
on social media. TechEd podcastis on LinkedIn. We are on tick
tock. We are all over Facebook,you'll find us wherever you
consume your social media,including Instagram, by the way.

(46:06):
So wherever it is you go forsocial track us down. Say hello.
We would love to hear from you.
Love having Brian Cavanaugh onthe podcast this week, a great
conversation, and look forwardto seeing everybody next week.
My name is Matt Kirkner, host ofthe TechEd podcast, thanks for
being with us. You.

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Applied AI on the Edge Proves There’s More to AI Than ChatGPT - Brian Cavanaugh, CEO of VigilanteX

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Applied AI on the Edge Proves There’s More to AI Than ChatGPT - Brian Cavanaugh, CEO of VigilanteX