Tyler Saltsman EdgeRunnerAI

In a world where military strategy and technology converge, a revolutionary new approach is changing the game. This episode, we're joined by Tyler Saltsman, CEO and Army veteran of Edge Runner, a company that's pushing the boundaries of artificial intelligence in the military. With a focus on creating AI models that can live on devices, rather than relying on cloud-based systems, EdgeRunner is providing soldiers with the tools they need to make faster, more informed decisions in the heat of battle.

To learn more about EdgeRunner and their innovative approach to AI in the military, tune in to this episode. Tyler shares his insights on the future of military technology and the potential for AI to make a real difference on the battlefield. Don't miss this conversation with Tyler Saltzman, CEO of EdgeRunner.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Eight nine nine. After this is the RJ. Harris Breakfast
Show WHP five, Ad harrisburg in thirteen forty WRIWN reading,
and iHeartRadio. Well, no doubt you already know. The President
of the United States of America is coming to Carlisle
today for a military I'm going to call it seminar

(00:25):
that is being hosted by Senator McCormick. And one of
the people who is going to be there is army
veteran and the CEO of edge Runner, Tyler Saltzman. Good morning, Tyler,
Welcome to Central PA and the Morning.

Speaker 2 (00:43):
Showay, good morning, RJ. Happy to be here. Thanks for
having me on your show.

Speaker 1 (00:47):
No my pleasure. I know that a lot of what
is being talked about today is the future of our military,
and that's already begun. So tell us a little bit
first about edge Runner, and then I want to talk
about where we're going.

Speaker 2 (01:06):
Yeah. So, what we've done is we built effectively a
better version of chat GBT that never needs the Internet,
but it's military specifics. So for example, me, as an
army logistication, I require much of an AI than a
combat medic. And so what we've done is we've built
specialized AI agents that live on your device that don't
need the Internet, that can aid you in battle. They

(01:27):
can help you learn your mos quicker, your military occupation, specialty,
and they can also aid you in the fight, which
increases faster decision making, which can be the difference between
life and death or dominating the fight versus just winning.
If that makes sense.

Speaker 1 (01:42):
It does. Now, before we go there, you say that
this is off the cloud, but it's on the edge.
So the edge is a new term for most of us.
We know what the cloud is. What is the edge?

Speaker 2 (01:57):
That's right? So the edge is typically define as where
the data lives, where the data resides, so you can
have many edge locations with server farms. But for us,
we're taking it further. We call it the fore edge,
which is laptop, cell phones, battle armor, headsets, you name it,
things that are with us at all times. And so

(02:18):
at the tactical edge, we're revolutionizing assets by putting think
of it as putting little mini brains on these devices.
So now I can interact with it like a conversation,
but it knows how to help us in the fight.

Speaker 1 (02:31):
You know, in the movie Patent, it was portrayed that
you know, Patent thought he lived in a few former lives.
But the bottom line is he drew on experience for
where to go and what to do. And when I
say experience, you know centuries before him. Is this the same?

(02:52):
I mean, do we do? We have an AI here
that looks back at battles throughout history and says, maybe
you should do this.

Speaker 2 (03:00):
Well, that's exactly what AI is good at. Now. It's
not a silver bullet and it's not perfect, but it's
very good at training on a corpus of data of
previous wars, all the sms, the field manuals, the TMS,
training manuals, historical data, trends, all of it and compressing
it into a model that I can talk to like
it's CHATSBT. So think of it as like the Jarvis

(03:24):
to Tony Stark's Iron Man. But it's specific to the military.

Speaker 1 (03:28):
And is it helping everyone from the people who are
forging the battle plans even at the instant In other words,
I need a decision right now based on this situation.
Is it helping them? But also the medics?

Speaker 2 (03:43):
That's right, So we call that in garrison where you're planning.
So in garrison, when you plan and you prepare for
a mission. We call that battle alreadyiness. As well as
the forward line of troops out, the folks out fighting
the fight of the tackle edge, we can help them
make faster decisions. And then we can also help our
folks in garrison better plan uh and come up with

(04:05):
more contingency plans but also stronger plans in order to
you know, increase our probability of success. But you can
do that much faster.

Speaker 1 (04:13):
It's amazing the you rely on data centers though, even
though it's the edge, you rely on data centers correct.

Speaker 2 (04:21):
Well, actually we don't. So once once our model has
been trained, then it can live on your device definitely, yep.
Just like it's an application that does need the Internet.

Speaker 1 (04:32):
How do you get that to your device?

Speaker 2 (04:37):
So what we do is once we've trained trained the model,
we then send out a binary that you just download once,
so you need the internet one time to download it
on your laptop or your phone, and then once it's there,
it can lay in airplane mode and assist you. And
we're able to take AI models and compress them and
make them very small. Think of like the original computers
there were once the size of house, and now the

(04:58):
ones in our very phones are much more powerful than
those original computers, and they're very small. That's what's happening
with AI today.

Speaker 1 (05:04):
So do you take your device to a specific center
to get a new download of information. I'm assuming this
will be updated as time goes on, that's right.

Speaker 2 (05:15):
So we update every three to six months. We can
just push it out, you know, over the web, anytime anywhere,
and then once you have it, it takes about five
or ten minutes of download and then you can go
back on airplane mode. So think of it as like
your standard software update. So once it's safe, if you
can receive the update and then go back on mission.

Speaker 1 (05:33):
Okay, have you met the president before or is this
your first time?

Speaker 2 (05:37):
I haven't, so this is the first time i'll be
I'll be seeing him in person, so you know, we're excited.
In addition, there's a lot of brilliant military leaders here
and also folks from academia, so it's exciting to bring
everyone together from Department of War, industry, folks like myself,
in academia, research labs like Penn State and Carnegie Mellon,
folks like them.

Speaker 1 (05:57):
Well, I'm way out of time, but is there a
way that we can get more information Tyler on edge Runner.

Speaker 2 (06:05):
Absolutely, so we've got you know, we've published some recent
research papers, so you can, you know, visit our website
at runner dot com check it out. And I'm more
than happy to visit your show anytime and dive further.

Speaker 1 (06:17):
We're going to have you do that. This was very
good and you know, we'll have Holly get in touch
with you and we'll go from there. But thanks for
being on today and you'll enjoy meeting the president. He's
quite the guy.

Speaker 2 (06:28):
Well, love to thank you fellow Pennstator as well. So
happy to be home, all

Speaker 1 (06:31):
Right, Oh sounds good, all right, take care of all right,
Tyler Saltzman, who is the CEO and Army veteran edge
Runner