Amir Husain’s artificial intelligence breakthroughs may enable Boeing to achieve a seemingly-impossible milestone: passenger flights without pilots.
Husain founded SparkCognition in 2013 and built it into one of the leading artificial intelligence (AI) companies in the world. Building on that track record, Husain also serves a founder and CEO to SkyGrid, a joint venture with Boeing to develop the future of unmanned aircraft technology. These developments may enable unmanned flights to safely and accurately perform functions ranging from package delivery to passenger flights.
Having earned a Bachelor’s degree at age 17, Husain is a computer science wunderkind who has earned many awards and accolades for his AI work. The inventor has secured 27 patents, with many more still pending. He was named Austin’s Top Technology Entrepreneur of the Year in 2018, an Onalytica Top 100 Artificial Intelligence Influencer, and more.
Amir Husain’s AI in the Sky
With his background in computer science and AI, Husain hopes to usher in a new era of machine-operated services. His work in founding and running SkyGrid could enable an entirely new way of day-to-day aviation operations.
While the fantasy of unmanned air traffic has been a cinematic staple for years, making that fiction a reality requires overcoming many challenges. For example, widespread unmanned aircraft package delivery requires massive air-traffic coordination. The more companies and tasks that take to the sky, the more complex the flight control. That is where SkyGrid comes in.
“By offering scalable and robust capabilities in a single, integrated framework, SkyGrid will make large-scale air vehicle applications more practical and accessible,” Husain explains.
From Child Prodigy to Entrepreneur
Husain’s interest in technology began at a very early age. At only four years old, he saw his first computer.
“It blew my mind that you could control what showed up on the screen,” he recalls. “Afterward, I went to my room, grabbed some toys, disassembled them, added cardboard, and made a contraption that I called a computer. My mom knew then that I was hooked.”
Husain graduated college at age 17 – for the first time. After earning a Bachelor’s degree from the Punjab Institute of Computer Science in Lahore, Pakistan, Husain set his sights on the Distributed Multimedia Computing Laboratory in Austin, Texas. In order to get this dream job, he earned a second degree from the University of Texas at Austin.
During his first week living in the US, Husain lost everything in a random mugging. The $200 he had for textbooks was gone, and he had little else when he arrived. Nevertheless, Husain devoted himself to the things he loved – his work, and his soon-to-be wife Zaib, whom he married in 2002.
Amir Husain Rejects Fear of AI
While Husain initially pursued a PhD, he soon realized he did not belong in academia. “I’ve never been satisfied just coming up with an idea and writing about it,” he observes. “I want to take the idea, produce it, and apply it, so I became an entrepreneur.”
Over the next several years, Husain founded several different companies. His third endeavor, SparkCognition, would ultimately prove the most successful. The company recently secured $100 million in a Series C financing round.
With his new venture with The Boeing Company, Husain hopes to use AI to build a better future for humanity. He acknowledges that a lot of fear surrounds the use of machines and AI in society, but hopes to see the US embrace the world-changing possibilities.
“Fear slows you down,” he says. “Optimism and curiosity accelerate you.”
