Artificial Intelligence in Chemical Industry - I : Safety

Space Odyssey 2001, a cult sci-fi film of 1968 by Stanley Kubrick, describes a journey to Jupiter. HAL, a computer onboard the spaceship has intelligence to take decisions. In a spine-chilling finale, HAL decides that humans are a threat to its mission and plans a clever stratagem to do away with the crew. This is the kind of “artificial intelligence” that the noted sci-fi writer Arthur C Clarke envisioned more than 5 decades ago. Today “Artificial Intelligence” has been reduced to AI and bandied about in many unintelligible ways.

AI has become a buzzword and interchangeably intermixed with Robotics and Internet of Things (IoT). Robotics and IoT are tools of convenience; AI is far more. Robots and machines on IoT perform as per the way we humans program them. AI systems think for themselves and may perform actions that we don’t expect them to. We don’t program AI systems; we teach them to think for themselves, just as we do.  Intrinsic in this is our acceptance of the limitations of human brain; both its size and speed of information processing. 

Automation

What inroads will AI make into the chemical industry? The degree of automation in the chemical process industry is already very high. Control algorithms are getting sophisticated and the response times are becoming shorter. Advanced and predictive control systems are allowing plants to be operated very close to the theoretical efficiency. Feed-Forward control systems allow process parameters to be adjusted in anticipation of changes in the quality of raw material. Equipment fitted with smart sensors monitor and announce their health in real-time, thereby improving the plant reliability immensely. All these have become possible because of human intervention aided by computer technology and are not to be confused with AI.

Safety

Despite the high degree of automation, the chemical industry has been plagued by horrific accidents. The safety Guru, Trevor Kletz, in his seminal work – An Engineer’s View of Human Error – says that statistics support the view that as many as 90% of industrial accidents are due to human failing. Kletz then proceeds to catalogue various types of human error – error due to momentary lapse of attention, error due to improper training or instruction, error because the task is beyond a person’s ability, error due to noncompliance. All these four types of errors can be eliminated by a robust artificial mind that is intelligent and free of fatigue and emotions. “Zero Accident” can thus be a lofty goal for adopting AI in chemical industry.