THALES IN THE UK
For Thales, the answer involves human-machine teaming rather than replacement.“ We will never get to a stage, especially for mission-critical systems, where an AI is completely autonomously able to operate on its own,” Ajay says.“ There is always human accountability which needs to remain within the system.”
Achieving effective human-machine teaming requires designing for human factors from the start. Systems need to provide the right cues and feedback patterns that operators expect. The cognitive load needs to decrease without removing the operator’ s understanding of what the system is doing and why.
“ You need to look out for what are the cues, what are the behavioural patterns which a human expects in terms of AI output, of operating an AI system,” he says. Treating human considerations as an afterthought produces systems that technically function but fail in practice because operators don’ t trust them or can’ t integrate them into their workflows.
Thales aims to become a leading partner for trusted frontier technology, including AI, while supporting national security through ethical development. Ajay sees particular opportunity in deployment-focused applications operating in resource-constrained environments.
“ I would like to think we are world leaders in the deployed AI space because I think that’ s an untapped market at the moment,” Ajay says.“ We want cortAIx recognised as one of the top-table AI companies in the world. We want to be quite ambitious.” aimagazine. com 65