Keoki Jackson: Lockheed Martin | Lex Fridman Podcast #33

The following is a conversation with Keoke Jackson. He's the CTO of Lockheed Martin, a company that through its long history has created some of the most incredible engineering marvels human beings have ever built, including planes that fly fast and undetected, defense systems that intercept nuclear threats that can take the lives of millions, and systems that venture out into space, the moon, Mars and beyond. In these days, more and more, artificial intelligence has an assistive role to play in these systems. I've read several books in preparation for this conversation. It is a difficult one, because in part, Lockheed Martin builds military systems that operate in a complicated world that often does not have easy solutions, in the gray area between good and evil. I hope one day this world will rid itself of war in all its forms. But the path to achieving that in a world that does have evil is not obvious. What is obvious is good engineering and artificial intelligence research has a role to play on the side of good. Lockheed Martin and the rest of our community are hard at work at exactly this task. We talk about these and other important topics in this conversation. Also, most certainly, both Keoke and I have a passion for space, us humans venturing out toward the stars. We talk about this exciting future as well. This is the Artificial Intelligence podcast. If you enjoy it, subscribe on YouTube, give it five stars on iTunes, support it on Patreon, or simply connect with me on Twitter @lexfridman, spelled F-R-I-D-M-A-N. And now, here's my conversation with Keoke Jackson. I read several books on Lockheed Martin recently. My favorite in particular is by, uh, Ben Rich, called Skunk Works, personal memoir. It gets a little edgy at times. But from that, I was reminded, uh, that the engineers at Lockheed Martin have created some of the most incredible engineering marvels human beings have ever built throughout the cen- throughout the 20th century and the 21st. Do you remember a particular project or system at Lockheed, or before that, at the Space Shuttle Columbia that you were just in awe at the fact that us humans could create something like this?

You know, that's a, that's a great question. There's a lot of, uh, things that I could draw on there. When you look at the Skunk Works and Ben Rich's book in particular, of course it starts off with basically the start of the jet age, uh, and the P-80. I had the opportunity to sit next to one of the, uh, Apollo astronauts, uh, Charlie Duke, recently at dinner, and, uh, I said, "Hey, what's your favorite aircraft?" And he said, "Well, it was by far the F-104 Star Fighter," which was another, uh, aircraft that came out of Lockheed there.

What, what, what kind of-

It was, it was the first Mach 2, uh, um, uh, jet fighter aircraft. They called it the missile with a man in it. And so those are the kinds of things I grew up hearing stories about. You know, of course, the SR-71 is incomparable as, uh, you know, kind of the epitome of speed, altitude, and just the coolest looking aircraft ever. So, uh, so there's-