Beyond Limits: Mitigate risk with agile industrial-grade artificial intelligence, created to drive industry growth

In the new world of artificial intelligence (AI), cognitive AI has gained significant importance due to its ability to provide solutions that are similar to human abilities. While this sector of AI is still under extensive research, certain companies have seen the impact and potential it could have in different industries.

Beyond Limits is an innovative AI startup that provides cutting-edge cognitive AI solutions that can handle challenging business problems through resilience, reasoning, and autonomy.

With a team of forward-thinking JPL scientists developing solutions for businesses in sectors that affect millions of lives, like healthcare, finance, logistics and more, they are able to develop automated solutions that enhance people’s abilities and talents by imbuing them with human-like thinking skills.

CIO Bulletin had the opportunity to talk to AJ Abdallat, the CEO of Beyond Limits about the role innovation has played in the company’s success.

Q. What has led to the steady but robust growth of Beyond Limits?

The main reason we have managed to solidify our presence in this space is our pioneering of the hybrid AI model, which enhances AI machine learning techniques with cognitive AI. Cognitive AI replicates the inner workings of the human brain, such as materializing tacit knowledge and the ability to make inferences and apply human intuition. Data is often incomplete and messy, so cognitive reasoning is needed to fill in the gaps that AI numerical analyses fail to override. Because they cannot extrapolate from imperfect data, stand-alone AI computations often lead to inaccurate recommendations. Our approach helps companies overcome these shortcomings that often undermine AI deployments.

Q. In what ways are the technology used by the company related to Caltech and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab?

Beyond Limits leverages a significant investment portfolio of advanced technology developed at Caltech’s (California Institute of Technology) Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) for NASA space missions. Envisioning the challenge and promise of rocketry and space flight, Caltech formed the Guggenheim Aeronautical Laboratory, where JPL was later started. In 2005, ambitious NASA projects necessitated the formation of JPL’s legendary AI Reasoning Laboratory, which Beyond Limits is a by-product of.

Q. What are the reasons for Beyond Limits’ innovation in the industrial-grade AI?

Beyond Limits champions the hybrid AI model, which is the next frontier of AI technology. To fully tap into the value of AI, data leaders need to move away from conventional AI that typically operates as a ‘black box’. A black block provides recommendations without any explanation, which not only creates resistance to adopt the technology, but is also not practical when there is so much at stake. With much of the chatter around AI centered on the degree of how much it will automate tasks and the extent of human involvement, our AI solutions keep humans in the loop by explaining the reasoning behind their recommendations, with the context-rich information necessary for solving the most complex challenges.

Q. Beyond Limits states that AI is a powerful tool for the human workforce. What innovations is the company implementing in its AI services to ensure this?

The core of our innovation comes in how we meet workforces where they are, and reinforce how AI is essentially an augment, not a replacement. In high-risk, high-value industries such as energy, utilities, healthcare and finance, there is too much at stake to trust the decisions of a machine at face value, with no explainable understanding of why it gave that recommendation. Since machine learning is a component for many AI systems, it’s important for us to know precisely what the machine is learning. AI is a great method for handling lots of data that can tell you the “what.” But for AI systems to become trusted advisors to human decision-makers they need to be able to explain the “why.” Our cognitive engines deliver clear audit trails explaining the human-like reasoning behind their recommendations and showing the evidence, risks, certainties, and ambiguities. These audit trails are designed to be understood by people and interpreted by machines.

At its core, we strive to fuse AI with human expertise to amplify capabilities.

Q. What makes Beyond Limits’ LUMINAI Refinery Advisor a next-gen industrial AI software?

LUMINAI Refinery Advisor is one of our key flagship products that has helped refinery operators hit production planning targets and improve reliability in operations. What makes it so powerful is how it’s designed to “think” like an engineer and in essence go beyond conventional, automation-focused approaches. It tackles a recurring problem in refineries — lack of transparency — by removing communication barriers between planning, engineering, and operation teams to determine how to best optimize refineries and meet ever-changing commercial plans. On top of that, it offers few to zero barriers to resistance when it comes to adoption: it is no-code, less expensive than homegrown solutions and a fraction of the typical cost of other refinery optimization software.

Q. Can you allude to the intrinsic features of Beyond Limits’ ‘Cognitive AI solutions?

The hybrid model that we have pioneered bridges the gap between AI expectations and reality thanks to its cognitive AI component, which makes AI viable and applicable in the real world. Gartner estimated that 80% of machine learning projects are expected to fail or not perform as planned in 2023. A lack of operational data, user resistance, and poor project fit often drive failure. Cognitive AI integrates operational expertise and knowledge that enable human-in-the-loop outcomes to make ML work better. Our solutions also provide enhanced generative AI capabilities. Generative AI models such as ChatGPT often don’t understand what they generate — but with a Cognitive AI layer, parameter size can be reduced, and accuracy is improved, using automated, productionized operations and low-code workflows. True to our hybrid AI model, we also provide complete transparency and explainability with fact-checking, contextual understanding, and self-awareness to know when a particular line of reasoning is not working and why.

Q. Does Beyond Limits plan to expand its AI platform to other industries as well?

The platform is customizable for most industries. Though we mostly service the energy sector, we plan on expanding our footprint to include utilities, transportation, and healthcare.

Q. What are Beyond Limits’ plans for the future?

We are currently launching KBOps, a solution that provides subject matter experts with a no-code AI system to capture and operationalize company knowledge at scale. It encodes company knowledge and transforms it into actionable data. A lot of the challenges companies face is converting the domain knowledge they have into practical data that AI can generate recommendations from. Limited access to experts’ knowledge causes bottlenecks that create inefficiencies. A more prevailing issue is lost knowledge and knowhow due to employee departures. Knowledge is also usually fragmented across sites and teams. So what we are trying to do now is deliver automated decision guidance to targeted users and build no code tools for experts to seamlessly share knowledge with teams.

We are also looking at integrating our solution into generative AI. We build and sell industrial-grade AI solutions, but we see huge potential in integrating our kind of AI with generative AI tools like ChatGPT to streamline processes even further.

A brief biography of the CEO

AJ Abdallat is the CEO of Beyond Limits and a member of the Advisory Board for the Caltech Center for Autonomous Systems and Technologies (CAST).

AJ has over 20 years’ experience building high-tech startups in the fields of bio-inspired AI, reasoning systems, edge intelligence and smart sensors. Prior to launching Beyond Limits, AJ was co-founder and CEO of several Caltech/ NASA JPL startups where he raised over $500M in venture and strategic investment and led several startup companies to successful exists.

AJ holds a Master of Science degree in Engineering from the University of Missouri and a Bachelor of Science from the University of California at Berkeley. 