Hollywood producer Brian Grazer says that a curious mind is the secret to a bigger life. It’s also the secret to a thriving business.

Grazer and Oscar-winning director Ron Howard (A Beautiful Mind) have teamed up with GE and National Geographic Channel to make a six-part documentary TV series focusing on scientific breakthroughs and innovation.

Grazer and Howard are the executive producers of the series, also called Breakthrough, which launches this Sunday with an episode focused on fighting pandemics. The episode will air at 9 pm ET on the National Geographic Channel and will also stream on GE Reports.

Like the rest of the series, the pandemics episode will draw on research at GE’s labs. “We’ve been living in this world,” Beth Comstock, GE’s vice chair for business innovations, told Variety. “That’s why we exist. But we’re able to bring the perspective of ‘is this a breakthrough or not?’ — whether it’s ours or someone else’s.”

Above: Albert Einstein visited GE labs in Schenectady, NY, in 1921, six years after he published his theory of general relativity. The man in the light suit in the middle is Charles Steinmetz, the GE mathematician and physicist whose scientific breakthroughs helped electrify America. Image credit: Schenectady Museum of Innovation and Science Top: GE scientist Fiona Ginty is working on new tools to fight cancer.

GE scientists have had their share of breakthroughs. Over the years, the company has employed several Nobel Prize winners, as well as scientists who narrowly missed the award, like Nick Holonyak who invented the visible LED. Albert Einstein, Lord Kelvin, Guglielmo Marconi, I.P. Pavlov, Niels Borh and other science superstars have visited its research headquarters in upstate New York.

Each of the Breakthrough episodes was directed by a different marquee name. Peter Berg was behind the Pandemics episode, Angela Bassett did an installment on clean water, Paul Giamatti focused on human engineering, Ron Howard on aging, Brett Ratner on improving the brain, and Akiva Goldsman on the need for clean energy.

A group picture during a visit of Lord Kelvin to the General Electric Schenectady Works. Lord and Lady Kelvin are in the center of the picture. Charles Steinmetz is fourth from the left. Image credit: Schenectady Museum of Innovation and Science

Breakthrough will follow scientific explorers from leading universities and institutions during their daily quest for disruptive innovations that could change the way we live.

The episodes will also feature GE scientists like Peter Tu, who is working on computer vision, John Schenck, who helped GE build its first MRI machine and used it to image the brain, and Fiona Ginty, who works on the leading edge of cancer research. “When I was a young child, I wanted to be an inventor, but thought that everything had already been invented,” Ginty says. “As an adult scientist, I came to see how much work there’s left to do.”

John Schenck took the first selfie of the human brain. Image credit: GE Reports

GE Reports will profile the GE scientists and their projects over the next six weeks, starting with their work on wiping out malaria. “It’s science in real time,” National Geographic Channel CEO Courteney Monroe told Variety. “We’re covering scientific breakthroughs that are happening right now. Certainly, science is not waiting for us.”

GE’s innovation center in Saudi Arabia will join the company’s family of global research hubs stretching from the US, to Europe, Brazil, China and India. The move highlights GE’s growing emphasis on software and advanced manufacturing, and its transformation into the world’s largest digital industrial company.

The company made the announcement before the Minds + Machines conference, which is taking place in Dubai this week. Jeff Immelt, GE Chairman and CEO, opened the conference today. He talked about Predix, the company’s cloud-based software platform for the Industrial Internet, and said the company already had industrial assets valued at $1 trillion under management. He expected GE’s software revenue to grow to $6 billion in 2015, double the number just 2 years ago.

Above: GE brought all kinds of digital assets to Dubai this week, including a hologram host taking a GE9X jet engine for a spin. Top: GE “digital power plant” explainer was standing room only today in Dubai. Image credits: GE Reports

Funding for the project will come on top of the $1 billion GE had already agreed to invest in Saudi Arabia over the last three years. It also highlights the growing importance of the country and the region for GE.

Scientists at the center, which is located in the Dhahran Techno Valley on the Persian Gulf coast, will recruit from GE Global Research, GE Power & Water and GE Oil & Gas. They will be looking for new ways to boost the energy efficiency of new and existing machines and systems, and to meet a growing demand for power in the Kingdom and throughout the region. They will also take part in research seeking to improve power generation and oil and gas technology serving in “hot and harsh” conditions. Even in November in coastal Dubai, for example, temperatures still easily top 90 degrees Fahrenheit.

Light fixtures like this LED street lamp will be a key component of the “intelligent city.” This fixture, which GE brought to Dubai, has cameras to monitor traffic and parking and a microphone to detect potential crimes. Image credit: GE Reports

GE researchers will also partner with local customers, companies and developers to speed up the spread and adoption of the Industrial Internet in the Kingdom and beyond.

GE believes that the Industrial Internet, a network connected machines feeding data into the cloud for analysis and operational insights, could add $1 trillion to global GDP by 2030. The company estimates the Middle East, North Africa and Turkey could gain $465 million by 2025 on an annual basis by connecting machines to the network.

The lamp is part of a system that uses cameras to gather data and analyze traffic flow. Image credit: GE Reports

The coming age of the Industrial Internet will create “tremendous growth opportunities for GE in Saudi and the region,” says Nidal Ghizawi, the GE technology and innovation director who will run the new research center.

Observers estimate that over the next five years, more than 50 billion devices — from jet engines to fitness monitors — will be connected via the Industrial Internet and the Internet of Things. These devices will churn out terabytes of data constantly — enough information in a single day to match the print collection of the Library of Congress. Industrial data will likely be the fastest-growing segment.

GE Garages helped visitors grasp advanced manufacturing concepts like 3D-printing. Image credit: GE Reports

GE sees an important growth market in the Gulf region, where orders in 2014 exceeded those from India and China combined. One-fifth of those orders came from Saudi Arabia, which is home to Saudi Aramco, a key customer for GE Oil & Gas, and Saudi Electric Company, a customer for GE Power & Water.

The Kingdom has been diversifying its economy in order to lessen its dependence on oil and become a regional center for petrochemicals, pharmaceuticals, food processing and auto manufacturing. The Saudi economy is expected to grow, despite weak oil prices.

GE launched GE Digital last summer. The company estimates the Middle East, North Africa and Turkey could gain $465 million by 2025 on an annual basis by connecting machines to the Industrial Internet. Image credit: GE Reports.

GE expects to double its Saudi Arabian workforce to 4,000 in the next five years, the company also said today. Beyond adding jobs, Ghizawi says, GE also plans to double to 300 the number of Saudi suppliers. It will also significantly ramp up its training efforts, offering classes to more than 10,000 Saudi professionals, to boost expertise in the energy and health care sectors.

GE hopes to boost exports from Saudi Arabia to $100 million annually.

Shahid Abdullah has been in business long enough to spot a good opportunity. Abdullah is the president of the Sapphire Group, one of Pakistan’s largest textile companies with 16,000 employees, $800 million in annual revenues, and a global base of customers. But when his country started running out of electricity a decade ago, he switched gears and built a large power plant in Muridke, just north of Pakistan’s second largest city Lahore. “Moving into power generation was a step that made sense,” he says. “Not just from a business perspective, but also in terms of realizing our mission and contributing to the development of the communities in which we work and live.”

Abdullah’s calculation was simple. Lack of power is one of Pakistan’s burning needs. Electricity consumption is growing by close to 8 percent, and peak power demand exceeds supply by more than 4 gigawatts (GW), a massive amount. But his journey was far from easy.

The Muridke Power Plant generates 234 megawatts (MW), but from the start in 2010 it grappled with fluctuating fuel costs, which make up some 85 percent of its operating expenses. Fuel savings of just 1 percent could boost its net income by as much as 20 percent, but the downside was equally steep.

Abdullah, whose company came to GE’s Minds + Machines event in Dubai this week, started looking for a solution and learned about the Industrial Internet, a digital network connecting, collecting and analyzing data from sensors installed inside machines, including turbines that produce electricity. “His answer was in numbers,” says Azeez Mohammed, president and CEO of GE Power Generation Services in the Middle East and Africa, who started talking to Abdullah in 2014.

Top: The Badshahi Mosque (King’s Mosque) in Lahore. Image credit: Muhammad Ashar Above: The Muridke Power Plant Image credit: Sapphire Group

Mohammed proposed to embed hundreds of sensors and other digital instruments in Abdullah’s turbines, analyze the data they collect, and use the information to improve the plant’s performance, optimize production and reduce unplanned downtime. But Abdullah was cautious. “The last thing I wanted was to be a guinea pig in GE’s ‘first-of-its-kind’ experiment,” he laughs.

GE’s Mohammed, however, was convinced that the project would work. So much so that he proposed Abdullah a deal: GE would pay for the sensors and the software and then split all benefits with Sapphire under a win-win scenario.

With Abdullah on board, GE dispatched a team of technicians and software engineers to Muridke. They spent a month developing a self-learning analytical model based on huge amounts of data from the gas turbines and other plant assets at Sapphire. The model allowed them to predict changes in efficiency, electricity output and other outcomes under different production scenarios without having to make any changes to the equipment itself.

Above: The control center at the Muridke Power Plant. Image credit: The Sapphire Group 

In October 2014 the team connected the system to the plant’s two GE 6FA gas turbines, which GE engineers specifically designed with the Industrial Internet in mind. By December that year, the Sapphire plant has started seeing the benefits.

The heart of the system is GE’s Predix software platform and an advanced analytics application called Asset Performance Management (APM). The app allows industrial assets talk seamlessly with each other in a secure manner, and uses analytics to make the equipment more efficient.

The GE team is now working to link power plant’s steam turbine to system. The software is so versatile it doesn’t mind that turbine was the Czech industrial company Skoda, not GE.

GE estimates the Industrial Internet could bring the Muridke Power Plant millions of dollars in benefits over the next decade.

The Muridke Power Plant is using two GE 6FA gas turbines. Image credit: GE Power & Water

Others in Pakistan will benefit from the system as well. Electricity shortages, known locally as ‘load-shedding’, are an everyday reality that families and businesses have had to learn to cope with them. “Our entire daily routine, from the time we sit down to help our children with their homework to the time we iron our clothes, is determined by the load-shedding schedule,” says Zeba Zahid, a mother of three and resident of Lahore, one of the cities that benefits from the power produced at the Muridke Power Plant. “It’s especially difficult to deal with in the summer, when peak temperatures cross 45 degrees Celsius [113 Fahrenheit] and load-shedding often exceeds 12 hours a day.”

GE estimates that making Pakistan’s power plants smarter with data analytics and software could add 600 megawatts to the country’s power output without building a single new plant. That’s comparable to building an entirely new power plant.

Abdullah feels that he made a smart choice. “As far as I’m concerned, the benefits offered by Industrial Internet based solutions are real and immediate,” he says. “This is an opportunity that Sapphire and Pakistan cannot afford to miss out on.”

GE acquired the power and grid business of the engineering company Alstom on Monday, creating a new global industrial powerhouse. The ink on the deal is still fresh, but it isn’t the first time the two companies have met. In fact, they both sprung from the same roots.

GE came to be in 1892, when New York financier J.P. Morgan organized a merger of equals between Thomas Edison’s Edison General Electric Company and Elihu Thomson’s Thomson-Houston Electric Company to form GE. Thomson-Houston’s top executive, Charles A. Coffin, became GE’s first president.

Above: Thomson’s early work with dynamos, arc lamps, and alternating-current power made him one of the top inventors of the late 19th century. His Thomson-Houston company merged with the Edison General Electric Company in 1892 to form GE. Top GIF: Top image: Thomson looks through a telescope at his observatory in Swampscott, Mass. Image credits: Museum Innovation and Science Schenectady

Like Edison, Thomson was a tinkerer and inventor from an early age. “Having worked, at eleven years of age and on, with electrical apparatus, generally of my own construction, it was natural that I should have acquired an intense interest in all advances in electrical science and its applications,” Thomson wrote in a letter. His interest was so intense, in fact, that his name still survives – albeit in a slightly altered form – as the last three letters in Alstom’s name.

Even before the merger, both Edison and Thomson were keen on exporting their products but were running into legal barriers. “In the case of foreign companies notably the French Company…everything without exception must be manufactured in France so as to conform to the French patent law,” the Edison Bulletin reported about Edison’s French subsidiary in June 1882.

To overcome the opposition, Thomson-Houston incorporated in France a group with the ungainly name of Companie Francaise de L’Exploitation des Procedes Thomson-Houston (CFTH) and in 1893 GE gave it “exclusive rights in all lines of electrical products and systems in France,” according to GE’s historical business review.

A Thomson-Houston plant in the mid-1890s, shortly after the company merged with Edison General Electric Co. to form GE. Image credit: Museum of Innovation and Science Schenectady

In 1928, CFTH combined with France’s Sociéte Alsacienne de Constructions Mécaniques to create Alstom – or Alsthom, as it was then known – to become a major builder of power plant and other heavy technology.

The business was headquartered in Belfort, France. In 1959, GE gave Alstom rights to manufacture gas turbines there, and then bought back the business in 1998.

In 1903, the Paris Orleans Railway Station was powered by Thomson-Houston technology. Image credit: Museum of Innovation and Science Schenectady

GE still makes turbines in Belfort, including the 9HA, aka “Harriet”, the world’s largest and most efficient gas turbine.

Thomson was born in England in 1853 but moved to America as a boy. When he was 11, he became so fascinated with electricity that he built an electrical machine out of a wine bottle. “I got my first view of electric sparks from that machine, my first knowledge of electricity from that machine,” Thomson told a biographer.

After graduation from high school, he taught science and became a professor at the age of 23. In 1880, he and his high school colleague Edwin Houston started a business selling arc lamp systems. They were so successful that a decade later their company rivaled Edison and Westinghouse Electric Co.

After the merger with Edison, Thomson became GE’s chief engineer and encouraged the company to establish a research laboratory in Schenectady, NY. The lab became GE Global Research.

Over his career, Thomson made pioneering contributions to the development of alternating current systems, dynamos, electric streetlights and railroads, x-rays and other technologies. He received more than 700 patents.

Today, scientists at the lab he started are developing software that connects machines to the Industrial Internet, advanced manufacturing methods like 3D printing, and supermaterials such as ceramic matrix composites (CMCs), which are already flying inside jet engines.

“The historical narrative of electrical events in the pioneer days,” Thomson wrote,” carry me back in retrospection to the time when I first began to see that the electrical applications must have a great future and especially that electric illumination would probably be the earliest development on a large scale.”

GE completed its acquisition of Alstom’s power and grid business today. The transaction, GE’s largest industrial deal ever, unites two storied businesses with roots stretching to the very dawn of the power industry more than a century ago and to its pioneering founders Thomas Edison and Elihu Thomson.

GE has been transforming itself into the world’s largest digital industrial company. With Alstom’s power and grid global footprint, GE will be able to apply big data analytics to an even larger installed base to reduce unplanned downtime and improve performance of turbines, power plants, wind farms, and the grid.

“The completion of the Alstom power and grid acquisition is another significant step in GE’s transformation,” said Jeff Immelt, chairman and CEO, GE. “The complementary technology, global capability, installed base, and talent of Alstom power and water will further our core industrial growth. We are open for business and ready to deliver one of the most comprehensive technology offerings in the energy sector for our customers.”

The Haliade turbine developed by Alstom has a rotor diameter of 150 meters – one and a half times the length of a football field. Image credit: GE Power & Water

Some 1.3 billion people don’t have access to reliable electricity today. The International Energy Agency’s 2014 World Energy Outlook estimates the world needs to add some 7,200 gigawatts (GW) of power generating capacity by 2040 to meet new demand and replace old plants. Two thirds of that growth will be in non-OECD countries, including places like China when Alstom had a big presence.

The acquisition boosts GE’s installed power generation base to some 1,800 gigawatts (GW). That’s more than enough to supply all of U.S.

The company will also be able to improve its power plant design and greatly expand its grid business. With Alstom, it now has the grid footprint and scale to compete globally. Alstom, for example, supplied equipment to the world’s largest transmission line, the Linhão do Madeira in Brazil. The 2,380-kilometer (1,480 miles) long line runs from the Amazonian state of Rondônia to the state of São Paulo in the southeast, and includes 20,000 kilometers (12,400 miles) of cable held aloft by 5,000 steel towers.

Software analytics applied to data coming from a huge installed base will help GE and customers reduce unplanned downtime and improve performance of turbines, power plants, wind farms and the grid.

The will deal will also leave GE with one of the broadest and deepest renewable energy portfolios in the industry. While GE has been a leader in onshore wind, the acquisition will allow GE to expand into offshore wind. For example, GE acquired the massive Haliade wind turbines that will power America’s first offshore wind farm off the coast of Block Island, RI.

Bryan Martin, head of U.S. private equity at D.E. Shaw & Co. — which is backing the offshore wind farm — says combining Alstom’s wind turbines and GE’s power generation into a single company changes the wind farm competitive landscape. “GE and Alstom getting together creates the first real competitor to Siemens” for offshore wind farms in Europe, Martin says.

A worker is finishing a huge Francis hydroturbine. Image credit: GE Power & Water

The company also believes that the GE Store — the concept that knowledge and inventions fuel further innovation and applications across the company’s varied industrial sectors as workers in different businesses share their expertise and technology — will also benefit from the combined firm. GE expects $3 billion in savings from synergies in year five of the merger.

The deal closed after receiving regulatory approval in over 20 countries and regions including the E.U., U.S., China, India, Japan and Brazil.

The ties between the two companies predate the creation of GE itself. The name Alstom (originally Alsthom) itself underscores the links between the two firms. The name is a mash-up of the Société Alsacienne de Constructions Mécaniques (giving “Als” to the name) and the Thomson-Houston Electric Company (the “thom” of the original moniker).

Elihu Thomson and GE engineer Charles Steinmetz, whose power grid designs helped electrify America, on a street in Boston, Mass. Image credit: Museum of Innovation and Science Schenectady

The two firms merged in 1928. Thomson-Houston was a predecessor to General Electric. In 1892, it merged with the Edison General Electric Company to form GE.

Even today, the two companies have many ties. In the French town of Belfort, Alstom Power and GE have factories that sit side by side, and even share a cafeteria.

In the era of Big Data, project managers need a new skillset and mindset.

Before 1998, the word terabyte didn’t exist. In 2007, the first 1 terabyte hard drive was brought to market. By 2020, we expect GE machines to produce 10 to the 6 terabytes per day of information — 1 million times the size of that hard disk. At GE Oil & Gas, we have unprecedented access to information about our technology and networks, from cradle to grave.

But having overcome hurdles to producing and capturing this information is only part of the challenge. Over the period that this Big Data revolution really got underway, the productivity of industrial companies actually declined, from 4 percent between 1990 and 2010, to 1 percent in the following four years.

Much of this comes down to the human factor. Training and skills hadn’t caught up with the level of data available. Put simply: we could get the data, but didn’t know what to do with it.

The key to contemporary project management is making data work for you. This means collecting the information available to you — from machine data, to client feedback, to social media commentary — and using the insights that information provides to create outcomes your customers can benefit from. Where once project managers reported retrospectively — explaining failures — today they must share issues honestly and proactively, seeking to anticipate and address them before they escalate.

This requires a shift in both skills and mindset. Skill — because project managers must be trained to effectively handle, sift, analyze and share the wealth of data available to them. Mindset — because providing customers access to real-time data, honestly discussing issues as they happen and collaborating to address problems require a new level of confidence and bravery from project managers. We have opened the windows and can’t now close them, whatever the weather.

Just as we expect our project managers to adjust to this new reality, we have to provide them the tools to make this possible. From my point of view, these tools must incorporate “hard” technology — like RealTrack, which helps them manage and share data and insight with customers — alongside “soft” skills, addressing real-time problem solving and customer engagement. It is where hard and soft skills and tools meet that a contemporary project managers finds their sweet spot.

Key to this process is leading from the front. I can’t ask my team to be fluent with data, keep up with the news on Twitter, or interact more frequently with the customer, if I am not doing the same. That’s why, when we set up our Project Management Academy, we made sure all training was staffed by leaders — bringing real world, immediately actionable lessons to the table. The world is moving too fast to theorize. We want our project managers to leave the room as agents of immediate change.

This dynamic form of project management is both good business practice and common sense. Shared access to data means more eyes on the issues, making teams better able to anticipate problems, and utilizing all the available expertise to address them. Empowering project managers helps to keep their interest, as well as to develop and retain them. And better-informed project managers — who engage the customer more regularly, tackling problems collaboratively — make it more likely you will retain the customer.

The growth of Big Data is a huge opportunity for us as a project management community — and we are grasping it. It’s time for the #contemporarypm to shine.

(Top GIF: Video courtesy of GE)

Alberto Matucci is the Wellstream Global Leader at GE.

Qatar-based RasGas Company Limited isn’t your typical energy business. In just two decades, it has grown into a leading global supplier of liquefied natural gas (LNG). The company employs more than 3,000 people of 68 nationalities and contributes a major part of Qatar’s economic output. It’s also a key tool in the government’s strategy to meet the goals listed under the Qatar National Vision 2030.

Like all successful companies, RasGas is constantly looking for smart ways to improve its operations. It recently found GE’s Predix.

Predix is an industrial-strength, cloud-based software platform that GE developed to analyze data and optimize the operations of machines connected to the Industrial Internet. This week at the Minds + Machines conference in Dubai, RasGas announced a partnership with GE Power & Water to stream its data into the cloud and use Predix to analyze it. RasGas will use the results to make their machines more efficient, extend their lifetime and optimize the company’s product chain.

Azeez Mohammed, head of power services for GE Power & Water in the Middle East and Africa, says the pilot phase of the partnership with RasGas will include GE and non-GE equipment. He says it’s the first time a Predix pilot has been applied beyond GE devices, showing that the platform’s open architecture can work with all devices.

RasGas knows well the power of data. The company has been gathering it from its LNG plants for years, but the use of it was limited. Data time synchronization, consolidation of complex data and holistic analysis proved to be challenging. Predix will help the company improve things. “RasGas has hundreds of assets sending information in different formats for different purposes,” Mohammed says. “But it was hard to aggregate the data using a unified platform.”

At the heart of the RasGas project sits GE’s Asset Performance Management package. It will help LNG workers analyze information coming from their machines, share it across systems and identify spots where there is room for improvement and optimization.

Observers estimate that over the next five years, more than 50 billion devices – from jet engines to jogging fitness monitors – will be connected via the Industrial Internet and the Internet of Things. These devices will churn out terabytes of data, effectively matching the print collection of the Library of Congress on a daily basis.

Industrial data will likely be the fastest-growing segment. But industrial data is both complex and voluminous. It’s also inherently messy.

GE software engineers designed Predix to allow users to organize their data and give developers a platform to build apps that address the specific needs of each industry. LNG facilities, after all, are different from airplanes or wind farms.

There are two main pain points for the oil and gas industry — one is reliability and the other efficiency. Because energy companies sign contracts that guarantee a certain amount of gas supply for as many as 10 years out, they need to reliably secure the right output.

Predix will help them proactively minimize unplanned downtime, better manage periodic maintenance, and ultimately improve equipment availability. This will cut the amount of the unprocessed gas produced during downtime. Since such gas is typically flared off, it will also reduce waste. “With Predix, they’ll be able to reduce unplanned downtime and have a more reliable production line,” Mohammed says.

Using Predix-based apps for data analysis will also allow workers to see if the equipment is working within design parameters and ensure that each area is operating as efficiently as possible to maximize performance and output.

Finally, GE’s Asset Performance Management program will also allow crews to share insights and store them in talent and knowledge databases.

French energy giant EDF is a well-known nuclear-power-generation company, but now it wants to diversify its energy mix by expanding into renewable energy. Antoine Cahuzac, the CEO of EDF Énergies Nouvelles, the company’s renewables division, believes the newly merged GE and Alstom Energy, with its global footprint, will be the perfect partner. “Both GE and Alstom are very important for us,” Cahuzac says. “They have globally recognized technological expertise in turbines … and their equipment is state-of-the-art.”

Cahuzac says the fact that the two companies are known as the crème de la crème among energy-equipment manufacturers is crucial for EDF Énergies Nouvelles. Wind — both onshore and offshore — is the backbone of the EDF division’s business, making up 86 percent of its total installed capacity. The company has nearly 7 gigawatts (GW) of installed wind capacity in Europe, North America and Africa, and a further 1.3 GW under construction.

Renewables will account for more than 50 percent of the increase in the world’s total electricity generation by 2040, according to the International Energy Agency, and Cahuzac expects that working closely with GE can help EDF get a big slice of the pie. “The geographical footprint of GE and Alstom covers a lot of countries that we are looking at,” Cahuzac says.

Top: Workers finishing a Francis hydroturbine. Above: The Haliade can generate 6 megawatts of electricity. Images credit: GE

GE’s acquisition of Alstom’s power and grid assets was its biggest-ever industrial deal. The U.S.-based company expects to add $10 billion in additional revenue as a result of the combined businesses’ global footprint.

Alstom’s power and grid business had a strong presence in regions that are building out energy infrastructure, such as China, Brazil, India and the Middle East. GE and Alstom together installed a whopping 5 GW of wind power in 2014 alone.

That global reach and scale will be a boon to EDF, too. The company owns a solar farm in Chile’s Atacama Desert, for example, and is setting up a wind farm in Brazil, where the EDF executive sees excellent potential. GE Renewable Energy CEO Jerome Precesse has said that GE will be able to execute projects everywhere in the world.

EDF also favors a steady and strong approach. “We aim to produce electricity in countries where there is political stability, a favorable regulatory environment and good growth prospects,” Cahuzac says. GE shares these values, he says.

The relationship between EDF and Alstom is already deep and strong. The two companies won big in France’s offshore wind tender in 2012, carrying off 1.5 GW of capacity. “Alstom’s Haliade 150-6MW offshore wind turbines— which EDF helped develop — will be instrumental in these projects. So this is a very important relationship for EDF,” Cahuzac says.

The rotor of each Haliade turbine is nearly one-and-a-half tim the length of a football field, or 150 meters. All that torque spins GE’s 6-megawatt direct drive permanent magnet generator. The design allowed GE engineers to eliminate the gearbox, reduce the number of moving parts, cut the need for maintenance, and lower the operating cost.

The generator weighs 150 tons and sits 100 meters in the air. It’s split into three separate electrical circuits. Even if two circuits go offline, the turbine can still produce 2 megawatts of electricity on the remaining circuit.

The technology will power America’s first offshore wind turbine off the coast of Block Island, R.I. In November, EDF and Alstom’s former offshore wind business are joining forces again to bid in Morocco’s huge onshore wind tender, which will offer up to 850 MW of capacity.

Elsewhere, GE is helping EDF to build France’s first subsea tidal power plant, supplying the project with special transformers developed by GE.

GE says the Alstom deal gives it one of the broadest and deepest renewables offerings in the industry, allows it to improve power plant designs and provides it with a broader grid portfolio with the footprint and scale to compete globally. The company will also gain muscle in project expertise.

There is more good news for EDF. The global headquarters for GE Renewable Energy will be in France, meaning that as EDF plans to expand its renewables portfolio the perfect partner will be just down the road.

Block Island is a teardrop-shaped piece of land some 13 miles off the coast of Rhode Island, U.S. It’s best known for its beaches, wind-swept bluffs and summer vacation homes. But a new attraction is quickly rising three miles off its southeastern shore.

There, in the choppy Atlantic surf, a company called Deepwater Wind started building what will be America’s first offshore wind farm. The farm will have five wind turbines, each rising to twice the height of the Statue of Liberty. When completed in late 2016, they will generate a combined 30 megawatts of electricity — enough to supply 17,000 homes — and turn Block Island into the most powerful coastal enclave in the northeast (with apologies to the Hamptons).

But there’s more to the project. It is also the physical example of GE’s future following its acquisition of Alstom’s power and grid business, which closed earlier this week.

Top: The massive Haliade turbine has a rotor diameter of 150 meters. It can generate 6 megawatts. Image credit: GE Above: Deepwater Wind has already started building America’s first offshore wind farm. Image credit: Deepwater Wind

The Block Island farm brings together Alstom’s massive Haliade turbines, whose blade tips will tower 600 feet above the water, and GE’s innovative gearless permanent magnet generators that can produce 6 megawatts of power. The combination has the potential to transform the renewables business both in the U.S. and abroad.

Until now, Europe has been the hub of wind innovation, says Bryan Martin, head of U.S. private equity at the financial firm D.E. Shaw. The company is financing the $290 million Deepwater farm, and Martin believes that bringing Alstom’s wind turbines and GE’s power generation technology under one roof will change the wind industry’s competitive landscape. “We’re very excited about GE’s acquisition of Alstom’s power businesses,” Martin says.“GE and Alstom getting together creates the first real competitor to Siemens” for offshore wind farms in Europe, Martin says.

The new farm will rise 3 miles off the coast of Block Island. Image credit: Deepwater Wind

The rotor of each Haliade turbine is nearly one-and-a-half times the length of a football field, or 150 meters. All that torque spins GE’s 6-megawatt direct drive permanent magnet generator. The design allowed GE engineers to eliminate the gearbox, reduce the number of moving parts, cut the need for maintenance, and lower the operating cost.

The generator weighs 150 tons and sits 100 meters in the air. It’s split into three separate electrical circuits. Even if two circuits go offline, the turbine can still produce 2 megawatts of electricity on the remaining circuit. Low maintenance and redundancy are hugely important, especially for offshore installations, where treacherous waters and high wind can delay a repair trip for days or weeks.

Jeffrey Grybowski, chief executive of Deepwater, says the farm will power all of Block Island, which currently relies on expensive diesel fuel. The farm will also lower carbon emissions by an estimated 40,000 tons annually — the equivalent of taking more than 150,000 cars off the road. It could also help cut electricity bills for Block Island residents by up to 40 percent. “Offshore wind can power much of the U.S. East Coast, not least in the Northeast, where the wind is strong and we need energy,” Grybowski says. “And we can employ lots of people doing it.”

Say hello to Haliade. The machine is now part of GE’s offshore wind portfolio. Image credit: GE

The Block Island farm will be the first offshore wind farm in the U.S. But the potential for U.S. offshore wind energy is massive — over 4,000 gigawatts (GW), which amounts to more than four times the nation’s annual electricity production, according to the U.S. Department of Energy. President Barack Obama’s Clean Power Plan has also increased interest in onshore and offshore wind energy, presenting a new opportunity for industry.

So far, a total of 47,000 onshore turbines have been installed in the U.S. wind market, where GE is a major player. The Alstom power and grid acquisition now gives it a stronger offshore offering and also one of the broadest and deepest renewables portfolios in the industry. The combined businesses will also have expanded project expertise and financing for power projects.

“Today offshore wind is a small market with big potential, and the Block Island project sits at the leading edge of innovation,” says Anders Soe Jensen, CEO of GE’s offshore wind unit. “We’re proud that GE will again be making energy history with the first American offshore wind farm.”

GE Aviation, one of GE’s largest and most profitable units, generated $24 billion in revenues in 2014. Talking to investors this week just before the Dubai Air Show, David Joyce, its chief executive, said the powerful mix of GE’s technological breakthroughs and the overall growth in airline traffic is keeping him bullish about GE Aviation’s outlook.

Joyce said that one of the key factors powering GE Aviation’s growth was the GE Store– the way that GE shares technology and knowledge between businesses. He said the GE Store was creating a network effect that allowed GE engineers to borrow technology from colleagues elsewhere, move fast, and leapfrog competition.

GE Aviation, in fact, owes its very existence to the GE Store. The company’s first product some 80 years ago was an aircraft turbo supercharger developed by a gas turbine engineer employed by GE’s power generation business.

But Joyce’s unit doesn’t just take from the GE store. It also gives back. Take a look at out examples. (GE Reports will be at the Dubai Air Show next week. Subscribe our newsletter to receive more coverage.)

Taking from the Store:

GEnx – In 2001, there was a downturn in the aviation industry following 9/11 and the dot.com market shakeout. But instead of slashing R&D spending, GE invested in the GEnx, a brand new engine for the Dreamliner and the latest Boeing 747 aircraft, the 747-8.  Drawing on its deep reservoir of materials science, the engine went into production in 2010, and the company shipped engine No. 1,000 this month. Overall, airlines from around the globe have ordered 1,600 GEnx engines to date.

Building up Global Operations– Experts project air traffic in China to grow 7.5 percent annually over the next 20 years. As a result, jet engine makers will deliver more than a third of all new jet engines in the Asia-Pacific region over the next two decades. GE projects that its engine fleet size in the region will triple by 2031. GE Aviation has been taking advantage of the inroads made by other GE businesses that have been local mainstays, such as GE Healthcare. Joyce’s units is also benefiting from access to other shared resources in China, such as the Shanghai Technology Center, which runs innovation programs with Chinese customers.

CMCs from Power & Water – GE Power & Water and GE Global Research have been experimenting with a GE-developed super material called ceramic matrix composites (CMCs). After a successful run inside a 2-megawatt gas turbine, GE Aviation decided to test parts made from CMCs inside jet engines. Today, CMCs are one of the key technologies inside the LEAP next-generation jet engine developed by CFM International, a joint company between GE and France’s Safran (Snecma). Even though the engine won’t enter service until next year, it’s already the best selling jet engine in GE’s history. CFM has have received more that 7,000 orders and commitments for the LEAP valued at more than $125 billion.

Giving Back:

Additive manufacturing – GE Aviation was the first business to experiment with 3D printing and successfully produced the first commercially viable 3D-printed GE part: a component for the LEAP’s fuel nozzle. Now other GE businesses such as GE Healthcare, GE Oil & Gas and GE Power & Water are all experimenting with the technology and looking for ways to incorporate GE Aviation’s insights in its designs.

Services– Servicing jet engines is a fundamental part of GE Aviation’s business model. Its comprehensive service agreements (CSAs) – they are really long-term service contracts – are outcome-oriented to make sure airlines have the resources they need to keep their planes running. In return, these contracts provide predictable long-term and high-margin revenues to Joyce’s business. Other GE businesses are now using the same strategy to create multi-decade long relationships with their customers.

Business support in tough cycles – Now that Aviation is in a bullish cycle, profits earned from jet engines can be used to support businesses powering through harder times. For example, earnings from GE Aviation have made possible GE Oil & Gas’ purchase of the subsea equipment and services company Advantec, as well as other acquisitions. GE says that it is this diversity that creates balance sheet stability and constancy in investment.

America is at a crossroads in the world economy. If we don’t take the lead in writing the economic rules of the road through trade agreements like the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), other countries will.

The United States economy continues to gain strength and create new jobs and opportunities for the American middle class, while acting as a driver of the global economy.

This is an extraordinary achievement. Just seven years ago, the American economy was devastated by the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. Countless families lost everything, and American companies were driven out of business left and right. The next several years were extremely difficult, but the resilience of the American people, aided by proactive economic policymaking, won through and brought recovery.

Made-in-America exports have been a major part of the story, contributing a full third of our economic growth from mid-2009 to 2014 as we fought our way back. In fact, we’re in the midst of the longest streak of consistent monthly job creation in United States history, with more than 13 million private sector jobs created since March of 2010. The number of new businesses and new factories has been climbing again, too — a reversal of sharp declines during the crisis.

But there is much more that should be done to expand economic opportunity for all Americans.

Selling American exports overseas is one of the most powerful ways to do that, which is why President Obama has put a new, 21^st century trade policy at the core of his Middle Class Economics strategy.

And when it comes to increasing American exports, the United States is on the cusp of a monumental bipartisan achievement for American workers and businesses: the Trans-Pacific Partnership, or TPP. TPP is a groundbreaking new trade agreement between the U.S. and 11 other countries in the Asia-Pacific region which will open countless doors of economic opportunity for Made-in-America exports — supporting high-paying jobs across our country and securing the United States a competitive edge in a critical region of the world.

For the last five straight years, as the Obama Administration has worked to boost exports, American workers, farmers and businesses have broken all previous U.S. export records. Last year, these exports supported 11.7 million American jobs — jobs that pay up to 18 percent more on average than jobs that aren’t related to exports. And nearly 97 percent of the U.S. companies that sell those exports are small and medium-sized businesses, an engine of job creation.

Our government must show economic leadership in the world by acting to help American exporters keep breaking those records and supporting the high-quality jobs we need. We must also attract more investment and the jobs that come with it to the United States. That’s where TPP comes into play.

Thanks to a hard-won breakthrough at the TPP negotiating table last month, yesterday we released the full, final text of the agreement for review by the public, stakeholders, and Members of Congress. And it’s very important for our country’s economy and our values that we seize this opportunity to get trade done right.

The global economy is evolving rapidly, and our future prosperity will largely hinge on American trade negotiators gaining new access to international markets, as well as shaping the rules of trade in a way that builds on America’s competitive strengths.

Globalization has brought the world closer together, but the economic rules of the road are still being written — and our rivals, like China, are not just trying to get better access than the United States to growing markets, but to beat us in writing those rules of the road. China’s version of these rules won’t reflect our economic interests — and they certainly won’t reflect our values, such as strong requirements to protect workers’ rights, intellectual property, a free and open internet, and the environment.

This proves there is an urgent need for the United States to show engaged leadership and to bring home new trade agreements like the TPP that invigorate our economy.

Underscoring that urgency is a simple fact: the U.S. economy is more open to international competition than most other countries. For example, the average applied American tariff, which is a tax imposed on imports to the United States, is only 1.4 percent. The average world tariff, however, is over twice that high. And in some TPP countries, American-manufactured goods can face tariffs of up to 100 percent, while American agriculture exports can be hit with tariffs as high at 700 percent.

To level the playing field, bold steps to bring down those high foreign taxes on American-made products are a must.

TPP does this, and much more. First, the agreement cuts over 18,000 tariffs on Made-in-America exports – bringing most of them to zero – while delivering first-of-their kind benefits to help small businesses export.

On top of that, the TPP establishes unprecedented rules that promote internet-based commerce and protect digital freedom in the global marketplace.

TPP will also help attract investment to the United States. When international companies are thinking about where to build their next factory, they know that here in America we already have a skilled workforce, affordable access to energy, a strong rule of law and a huge market. Think about what happens when, in addition to those strengths, they’ll be able to export to all 11 other TPP countries duty-free.

Moreover, the TPP will cause the largest expansion of fully enforceable labor rights in history, which will elevate standards of living for workers in developing countries while enabling American workers to compete on a more level playing field.

The United States stands at a crossroads in the global economy where, as more developing countries realize their potential and come into their own, more American jobs depend on selling overseas what we make, grow and do at home. In 15 years, there are projected to be to over 3 billion middle class consumers in Asia. Those consumers will want to buy American exports. Cutting-edge trade agreements, like the TPP, are how we reach them.

We have the best innovators, the hardest workers and the will to win. We owe it to ourselves, and to the next generation, to shape globalization to our advantage and level the economic playing field for our people. That’s what the TPP will accomplish.

(Top image: Ambassador Froman tours Concord Supply Company, a San Antonio small business that manufactures and exports industrial materials. Courtesy of David Teran)

Ambassador Michael Froman is the U.S. Trade Representative.

All views expressed are those of the author.

When it comes to electricity, Brazil deals with unique challenges. The fifth largest nation in the world has some of the planet’s longest electricity transmission lines, and its customers face some of the highest electricity bills anywhere. Improving the reliability and efficiency of Brazil’s power stations — and also of the grid, which stretches across vast sections of the country — is a critical matter.

Both Alstom and GE were big players in the country prior to GE’s acquisition of Alstom’s power and grid business. Now GE just might offer Brazil what it needs to energize its power industry.

It can begin with getting power to where it’s needed. Sergio Gomes, regional commercial leader for Latin America at GE’s Grid Solutions business, says a solution called “power compensation” is similar to pouring the perfect pint of beer. “You want as much beer and as little froth as possible in your glass,” he says. “Power compensation gets maximum beer in your glass, allowing the network to transmit as much energy as possible.”

Top: The Itaipu Dam on the Parana River supplies Brazil with a quarter of its power. Above: A power substation near the Itaipu Dam. Image credits: Getty

GE now has the technology to serve the perfect glass. Gomes says that GE brought to the table so-called “series” power compensation systems, which smooth the voltage of transmission networks and allow utilities to transfer power more efficiently. GE has also been investing heavily in software. Its systems are already helping Furnas, one of Latin America’s largest utilities, modernize grid protection, control and communications systems.

GE has now acquired from Alstom “static” compensation products that improve power quality. Because Alstom’s grid business had been a major player in Brazil, the company brings a lot of credibility. For example, it supplied high-voltage direct- and alternating-current equipment to the world’s largest transmission line, known as the Linhão do Madeira. The line runs for 2,580 kilometers (1,420 miles) from the Amazonian state of Rondônia to the state of São Paulo in the southeast. It uses 20,000 kilometers of cable (more than 12,000 miles) — enough to stretch halfway around the Earth at the equator. Some 5,000 steel towers keep it aloft.

“Alstom’s former business was more related to high voltage, whereas GE’s products and services are more related to medium voltage,” Gomes says. “GE will now offer a full portfolio of low- to high-voltage products and services.”

A worker is finishing a giant Francis hydroturbine. Image credit: GE

All this distribution expertise is very much needed in Brazil. The country has been dealing with a growing number of blackouts. With roughly two-thirds of Brazil’s electricity generated by hydroelectric plants, the country’s multiyear drought has only made things worse, causing a spike in electricity bills.

That’s where GE’s new transmission expertise dovetails with Brazil’s power generation profile. A third of Brazil’s power generation equipment was made by Alstom’s energy business, including the iconic Itaipu Dam, which the American Society of Civil Engineers called one of the seven wonders of the modern world. The massive structure on the Paraná River holds a row of 20 giant turbines. In 2008, they generated 94,684 megawatts (MW), the largest amount of power ever from a single dam. Itaipu alone supplies Brazil with a quarter of its power, and Paraguay with 90 percent of its electricity needs.

Hydropower will also be a fitting complement to GE’s growing renewables business in Brazil, now mainly focused on wind. As of 2014, GE had around 1,000 wind turbines installed in the country. The Alstom acquisition added turbines owned by one of its biggest customers, and Brazil’s second-largest renewables company, Renova Energia, which owns Latin America’s largest wind farm, located in the state of Bahia.

Although wind accounts for only 0.9 percent of Brazil’s energy supply, it is the fastest-growing source of power generation in the country. GE is now set to blow that market wide open.

If Peter Tu’s technology takes off, an airplane could know when pilots get distracted in the cockpit and offer suggestions to help them make better decisions. Similarly, doctors could receive important tips on communicating and improving body language when presenting patients with a diagnosis.

These and many other advances are in the works thanks to research into computer vision, which harnesses powerful algorithms and the unflinching eye of cameras to analyze the real world. Computer scientists and engineers are pursuing the goal of giving machines human senses so that they can become aware of their surroundings.

There are few places where this far-out work is closer to commercialization than at GE Global Research’s Computer Vision Lab, where Tu, the Oxford-trained senior principal scientist of the lab, works. Technologies than can enhance our minds and bodies will be also featured in the second episode of Breakthroughtitled More than Human and directed by Paul Giamatti. The six-part TV documentary series, which is focusing on scientific progress and innovation, was developed by GE and National Geographic Channel. It airs on Sunday at 9pm ET on the NatGeo Channel.

“What we’re trying to do is to create computer models of people — their digital twin,” says Peter Tu. Image credit: GE Reports

Over the last few years, the technology has progressed from simple tasks — camera systems designed to make sure health care workers wash their hands before and after touching patients or to monitor a patient’s face for signs that he is experiencing pain — to significantly more nuanced and complex activities.

Tu explains that the lab’s computer-connected cameras are becoming able to identify a range of physical characteristics such as facial expressions, body language, the direction of a person’s gaze and the distance from another person. His team then uses programming to translate those characteristics into a general understanding of how a person or group feels at any particular moment.

Expressions such as a smile or frown are all machine-readable inputs that can be analyzed to reveal the level of trust or hostility between people, a person’s confusion while operating a machine or whether a salesperson is developing rapport with a potential customer.

“What we’re doing now is building inference engines that consume interactions and expressions between people to estimate their emotional state and the broader social context,” Tu says. “What we’re trying to do is to create computer models of people — their digital twin. We ask, ‘What is the internal state of an individual and how do their interactions reveal that state?’”

Tu believes that over time, computer vision systems could be deployed in health care settings to train doctors and retail employees on how to better interact with people, in crowd control, public safety and military applications, and for industrial uses.

Tu says the first commercial deployment will likely come in a year, when a GE system will be ready to measure heightened anxiety levels in crowds populating public spaces.

He says that over the next two or three years, such systems will become available to operate in what he calls the “man with machine” space — constantly watching a pilot or train engineer’s face to detect signs of anger or exhaustion, or monitoring a medical-imaging technician or nuclear plant operator to look for indications of confusion while operating complex systems.

“We’re looking at this ability as a way to detect situations before they turn into a catastrophe, like a pilot or machine operator who’s multitasking and runs the risk of getting into a bad situation,” Tu says. “Not just watching if someone is falling asleep, but if they are overly taxed. If we can recognize that then we can save a lot of lives and prevent a lot of accidents.”

Computer vision systems could also analyze how people interact with each other. These will be able to identify the full suite of human expressions, body language, gaze, audio signals and proximity measurements to understand the dynamics of human interaction in groups. This will open complex group dynamics up to acute dissection through data analysis. How do people interact in teams? How can a doctor quickly develop a rapport with a patient? The system will provide real-time and continuous feedback as to how a person is doing his or her job. and also help with training.

The current iteration of the system in Tu’s lab uses a couple of desktop computers connected to eight pan-tilt-zoom security-type cameras and three specialized cameras that record color images and depth information at the same time. This is enough data for the computer vision algorithms to classify and analyze specific placement and movement of the human body.

Tu says that his work takes humanity down an interesting technological path that has philosophical dimensions about what intelligence and emotions mean. By accurately analyzing a person’s behavior and then use that information to building a digital model that simulates the person’s hidden inner state, a future, more capable computer vision system might be able to predict an action the person hasn’t performed yet. This ability sits at the very core of what a human does during every interaction with another human.

Still, Tu says his team’s work is focused not on creating sci-fi AI robots that can empathize with humans and feel sad, happy or angry. Instead, it’s all in the service of making a world that works better. “If we can give empathy to machines so they can read and understand how behavior gives a window into a person’s emotions, then they can be more aware of users and possibly give those users a better experience,” he says.

The 2015 Dubai Air Show opened for business on Sunday. Cities in the United Arab Emirates like Dubai and Abu Dhabi have become major aviation hubs over the last two decades and carriers based in the Middle East such as Emirates, Etihad and Qatar Airways have become powerful global players. As a result, the Dubai Air Show, which is held every two years at the Al Makhtoum International Airport located in a desert just outside the city, has become a major industry trade event on par with the Paris and Farnborough airshows.

The 2015 Dubai Air Show opened on Sunday. It’s grown to become one the industry’s most important event, together with Paris and Farnborough in the UK. Image credit Adam Senatori.

The two world’s largest plane makers, Boeing and Airbus, are present here and so is GE Aviation, which is supplying many of their planes with jet engines.

The highlight of the first day was a brand new Emirates Airbus A380 that can hold a combined 615 people in economy and business class. This makes it the world’s largest passenger jet measured by the number of people it can fly.

The GP7200 jet engine made by Engine Alliance uses technology from the GE90, the world’s largest and most powerful engine. Image credit Adam Senatori.

The plane is powered by four GP7200 engines. The engines were developed by Engine Alliance, a joint venture between GE and Pratt & Whitney. At the core of the engine is technology GE originally developed for the GE90, the world’s largest and most powerful jet engine.

GE Reports is at the show. We will bring you daily dispatches here as well as on our Twitter and Periscope channels @ge_reports. On Sunday, we got exclusive access inside the Emirates world’s largest passenger jet as well as Qatar Airways’ brand new A380.

Subscribe to our social media channels. There’s much more in store. In the meantime, enjoy some of the best moments from Day One of the show as captured by pilot and aviation photographer Adam Senatori.

Visitors can right walk up to many of the planes at the Dubai Air Show. We will bring you the experience on our Periscope channel @ge_reports. Image credit Adam Senatori.

A visitor poses next to the front landing gear of the world’s largest passenger plane, a brand new Emirates Airbus A380 that can hold 615 travelers. Image credit Adam Senatori.

Unlike the airshows in Paris and Farnborough, the Dubai show is held at an airport at the edge of a desert. Despite the large number of visitors, the open space sometimes allows visitors to feel like are attending a private show. Image credit Adam Senatori.

The afternoons are typically filled with the roar of flyovers and today was no different. Image credit Adam Senatori.

Airbus brought to Dubai its newest plane, the Airbus A350 XWB, for the first time. GE makes composite trailing edges for the plane’s wings. Image credit Adam Senatori.

A view through a GEnx engine powering a Qatar Airways Dreamliner visiting the show. Adam Senatori took the shot during the “golden hour,” when fine desert dust hovering over the horizon colors the sunlight butter yellow just before sunset. Image credit Adam Senatori.

We must consider the key moral and policy questions around artificial intelligence and cyborg technologies to ensure our innovations don’t destroy us.

How much do we really know about the impact of scientific breakthroughs — on technology or on society? Not enough, says Marcelo Gleiser, the Appleton Professor of Natural Philosophy and a professor of physics and astronomy at Dartmouth College.

As someone who explores the intersection between science and philosophy, Gleiser argues that morality needs to play a stronger role in innovations such as artificial intelligence and cyborg technologies due to the risk they could pose to humanity. He has described an artificial intelligence more creative and powerful than humans as the greatest threat to our species.

While noting that scientific breakthroughs have the potential to bring great harm or great good, Gleiser calls himself an optimist. But says in this interview that “the creation of a transhuman being is clearly ripe for a careful moral analysis.”

When it comes to understanding how to enhance humans through artificial intelligence or embedded technologies, what do you view as the greatest unknowns we have yet to consider?

At the most basic level, if we do indeed enhance our abilities through a combination of artificial intelligence and embedded technologies, we must consider how these changes to the very way we function will affect our psychology. Will a super-strong, super-smart post-human creature have the same morals that we do? Will an enhancement of intelligence change our value system?

At a social level, we must wonder who will have access to these technologies. Most probably, they will initially be costly and accessible to a minority. (Not to mention military forces.) The greatest unknown is how this now divided society will function. Will the different humans cooperate or battle for dominance?

As a philosopher, physicist and astronomer, do you believe morality should play a greater role in scientific discovery?

Yes, especially in topics where the results of research can affect us as individuals and society. The creation of a transhuman being is clearly ripe for a careful moral analysis. Who should be in charge of such research? What moral principles should guide it? Are there changes in our essential humanity that violate universal moral values?

For example, should parents be able to select specific genetic traits for their children? If a chip could be implanted in someone’s brain to enhance its creative output, who should be the recipient? Should such developments be part of military research (which seems unavoidable at present)?

You’ve cited warnings by Stephen Hawking and Elon Musk in suggesting that we need to find ways to ensure that AI doesn’t end up destroying us. Are there any technological you would suggest as a good starting point?

The greatest fear behind AI is loss of control — the machine that we want as an ally becomes a competitor. Given its presumably superior intellectual powers, if such a battle would ensue, we would lose.

We must make sure this situation never occurs. There are technological safeguards that could be implemented to avoid this sort of escalation. An AI is still a computer code that humans have written, so in principle, it is possible to input certain moral values that would ensure that an AI would not rebel against its creator.

Could the AI supersede the code? Possibly, which is why some people are very worried. There could be a shutdown device unknown to the AI that could be activated in case of an emergency. This would need to be outside the networking reach of the AI.

Are there policies that can be put in place that could better ensure that scientific breakthroughs are used appropriately?

From a policy perspective, granting agencies should monitor the goals of the funding to make sure the intentions are constructive and that safeguards are implemented from the start. Governments should work in partnership with scientists and philosophers to maintain transparency and to implement humane operating procedures.

Progress in the control of new technological output should come not just at the national, but at the international level. Global treaties should ensure that cutting-edge research involving AI and transhuman technologies are implemented according to basic moral rules to protect the social order.

There is urgency in developing these rules of conduct. Let us not repeat the errors from climate change regulation — we must act before it’s too late.

Are you generally an optimist or pessimist about how humanity uses science?

I’m optimistic. The human drive to kill existed before science was here. It’s not a scientific problem — it’s a moral problem embedded in a species that evolved within a hostile environment and that is still unable to look beyond its origins. Humans will continue to use science to kill and to heal.

But I detect the emergence of a new mindset, one that seeks a higher moral ground. This mindset is a byproduct of a new global consciousness, a consequence of increasing knowledge of our cosmic position as molecular machines living in a rare planet that are capable of self-awareness. Science not only creates new machines and technologies, but also new worldviews. It’s time we moved one from our ancient tribal divides.

(Top image: Courtesy of Thinkstock)

Marcelo Gleiser is the Appleton Professor of Natural Philosophy and a professor of physics and astronomy at Dartmouth College. His latest book is “The Island of Knowledge.”

All views expressed are those of the author.

A recent five-year transportation study found that more than half of the trains running on India’s vast rail network didn’t leave on time. What’s holding them back? A lack of locomotives.

Not surprisingly, late departures lead to frustration for millions of travellers as well as businesses, which rely on trains to ship their goods.

But a multibillion-dollar Letter of Award to GE by the Ministry of Railways could help unclog this bottleneck and significantly boost the Indian rail network’s on-time record.

Under the supply and maintenance contract, valued at $2.6 billion, GE will develop and supply 1,000 fuel-efficient Evolution Series locomotives to Indian Railways over the next 11 years. Included in the agreement is a $200 million GE investment to manufacture the diesel locomotives in the state of Bihar’s Marhowra district. The agreement is the largest deal in GE’s century-long involvement in India.

GE’s latest Evolution Series locomotive on a test track in Pueblo, Colo. This is the first locomotive to meet the U.S. EPA’s strict Tier 4 emission standards. All images credit: Vincent Laforet

“This project combines GE’s deep infrastructure and manufacturing expertise with India’s growth priorities,” said Jamie Miller, CEO of GE Transportation. “This is an exciting and integral part of our localization strategy in India.”

With the Indian GDP set to grow by about 7 percent annually over the next few years, the country needs modern rail infrastructure to support its growing economy.

Globally, rail is considered the most efficient form of freight transportation. Countries like the U.S. and China rely on rail to meet over 50 percent of their freight transportation needs.

Indian Railways plays a critical role in moving raw materials and finished goods around the country. It currently transports a little more than a third of the total freight transported in India, but with new locomotives powered by GE, that will change.

The factory and the new high-skills jobs could be an economic catalyst for India. They also align with Prime Minister Modi’s “Skill India” agenda. The initiative seeks to boost high-value jobs across multiple domestic industries, including railway.

“This infrastructure project is further evidence of India’s position as a growth engine for Asia,” said GE Chairman and CEO Jeff Immelt. “It is a major advancement and milestone for India and for GE, and a symbol of our commitment and support of the ‘Make in India’ initiative.”

The Letter of Award confirms GE as the selected bidder, following a competitive bidding process. GE and Indian Railways plan to sign a formal contract soon, establishing a joint venture, before breaking ground on the new facility.

Nick Kray is no Picasso, yet his work is on display at New York’s Museum of Modern Art. A decade ago, MoMA’s design collection picked up a composite fan blade from the GE90 jet engine that Kray helped create. The blade’s onyx black sinuous curves are pleasing to look at, but for Kray they are no longer state of the art. “We are now working on the fourth generation of that technology,” Kray says.

Kray works as a consulting engineer for composite design at GE Aviation. In the 1990s, he was part of a GE high-stakes gambit to make the front fan of its largest jet engine from epoxy and carbon fibers.

The blades from the material, called carbon-fiber composite, allowed GE’s aerospace engineers to design the GE90, still the world’s largest and most powerful jet engine. It’s also GE Aviation’s most profitable machine. “Our competitors make jet engine fans from titanium and steel and even some of our own people weren’t initially so hot about using composites,” Kray says. “Nobody had tried this before.”

The engineering is so difficult that to this day, GE is the only company with composite fan blades in service. They work inside the GE90 and the GEnx engines that power many Dreamliners. The material allowed GE engineers to design blades that result in lighter and more efficient engines, allowing airlines to save fuel by shedding precious pounds.

Now Kray and his team are busy building the future. They are working on a fourth generation of the blade for the GE9X, GE’s largest engine yet, designed exclusively for Boeing’s next-generation wide-body jet, the 777X.

GE has already received orders and commitments for 700 GE9x engines valued at $28 billion (list price) from several growing Middle Eastern airlines like Emirates, Qatar and Etihad, as well as Lufthansa, Cathay Pacific and All Nippon Airways. Emirates, Qatar and Etihad, which are present at this year’s Dubai Air Show have ordered 150, 60, and 25 GE9X powered 777X aircraft, respectively. On Monday, Emirates also signed a $16 billion deal with GE Aviation to service its GE9X engines for a dozen years after they enter service.

Top image: The GE90 powers many Boeing 777 jets, including this China Airlines plane. Above: A drawing of GE9X engine. Where the GE90 has 22 fan blades, the GE9X will have just 16 blades made from 4th-generation carbon fiber composite. Image credit: GE Aviation

The blades will feature several new components, Kray says. They will use stiffer carbon fibers so GE can make them longer and thinner. Their trailing edge will be made from a special structural glass fiber composite that can better absorb impact energy. “Carbon fiber is very stiff and not that flexible so that when a bird or something else hits the blade, it creates a shockwave deep inside it,” Kray says. “But the glass composite can deform better and deflect stress on the blade.”

GE will also replace the titanium leading edge that is currently used on GE90 and GEnx blades with steel. “It’s a strong material that allows us to keep the new blade thin in shape to maximize performance,” he says. “If you are an aero guy, thinner is always better. We want the best performance that’s humanly possible.”

GE is testing the new design for the GE9X blades on a scaled-down testing rig at Boeing. Image credit: GE Aviation

Where the GE90 has 22 blades and the GEnx holds 18, the GE9X will have only 16, even though it is the largest of the three.  Besides making the engine lighter, the fewer and thinner blades will also spin faster. “This is great for overall engine performance by matching the entire low pressure fan and turbine system to peak performance,” Kray says. “It’s something the engineers have been asking for.”

The blades still retain their beautiful, sinuous curves, forward sweep, a hook at the top and the belly in the center. Says Kray: It’s an amazing technology.”

When GE designed the GE90 carbon-fiber composite fan blade, it was not starting from scratch. In the 1980s, the company developed the experimental GE36 open rotor engine. It had used carbon fiber composite blades in an unusual hybrid design that combined features from turbofan and turboprop engines.

The GE36 was the first GE engine with composite blades. But they were on the outside. Image credit: GE Aviation

Although the engine demonstrated fuel savings of more than 30 percent compared with similarly sized conventional jet engines, it did not catch on.

Back in the lab, challenges abounded. Typical titanium blades absorb energy and bulge when they hit obstacles such as a bird. But ordinary composites can delaminate and break. “We didn’t know how this new material would respond to stress,” Kray says.

The team ran hundreds of intensive tests simulating bird strikes, rain, snow and hail storms at GE’s jet engine boot camp in Peebles and the Wright Patterson Air Force Base, both in Ohio. “We’d test almost daily and make changes based on what we learned,” Kray says. “The results gave us enormous confidence in the material when we saw how durable it was.”

By 1993, the team had the right material and blade design, but they were far from done. They still had to produce it. GE Aviation teamed up with its European jet engine partner Snecma. The French aerospace company was experienced in making high-tech composites. They formed a joint-venture called CFAN and built a new composites factory in San Marcos, Texas.

Even with the help, making the blade was a hard climb. “The manufacturing of composites remains a manual process,” Kray says. “The material goes through chemical changes and tends to move around. We had to learn how to get it right.”

Each GE90 engine has 22 carbon fiber blades. The GE90-115B is engine is still the world’s largest and most powerful jet engine. Image credit: GE Aviation

The workers inspected every single blade with X-rays, ultrasound, laser and other tools for defects. Initially, only 30 percent of them passed. (The current yield is about 97 percent.)

The Texas workers weren’t learning about composites alone. GE also had to explain the material to regulators, and even to Boeing, who wanted to use it on its 777 long-range jet. The first one was scheduled to leave its plant in 1995. “On top of everything, we were racing against time,” Kray says. “It was a very steep learning curve.”

Ultimately, the wager paid off. Even though the GE90 engine had fan diameter of 128 inches, larger than its predecessors, the composites shaved 400 pounds off the machine. The GE9X’s fan will be 134 inches in diameter.

A rendering of the Boeing 777-9 plane with a GE9X engine. Image credit: GE Reports

The Federal Aviation Administration certified the engine and the composite blades in February 1995. “The engines essentially opened the globe up to incredibly efficient, twin-powered, wide-body planes,” says David Joyce, president and CEO of GE Aviation.

The engine wasn’t shy about showing its power and grace. In December 2002, the GE90-115B version of the engine achieved a Guinness World Record as the most powerful jet engine ever built, generating thrust in excess of 127,000 pounds – more than early space rocket engines. In 2005, a GE90-powered Boeing 777 set another world record, this time for distance traveled non-stop by a commercial jetliner. The plane covered 11,664 nautical miles between Hong Kong and London in 22 hours and 42 minutes. In 2007, the Museum of Modern Art in New York included the curved composite blade in its design collection.

This GE90 got the rocks flying near GE Aviation’s flight test center in Victorville, Calif. GIF credit: GE Aviation

Even after 20 years, GE is still the only jet engine maker with engines using composite blades in service. Kray and other engineers are currently working on a fourth-generation blade for the GE9X engine for the 777’s successor, Boeing 777X. That plane will be the largest and most efficient twin-engine jet in the world. “Next-generation composites will go even further,” Kray says. “We are never going back to metal.”

The seaside Tuscan town of Massa defies the Italian stereotype of vineyards and sun-soaked hilltops. True, Michelangelo got stone for David from nearby marble quarries, but today Massa is best known for massive machines and heavy-duty engineering. It’s the birthplace of several industrial goliaths, including GE’s latest jet engine, the GE9X.

GE is developing the engine exclusively for Boeing’s next-generation wide-body plane, the 777X. The GE9X is designed to be the world’s largest jet and most efficient engine with a fan that’s 134 inches in diameter – just under the interior width of a Boeing 737, which clocks in at 139 inches. It will go into service at the end of the decade.

Top: Qatar Airways is one of the Middle Eastern airlines that ordered GE9X engines for its fleet of Boeing 777X planes. Above: The GE9X will the latest high-bypass turbofan engine from GE. This image shows its predecessor, the GEnx, at the 2015 Dubai Air Show. Image credit: GE Reports

GE has already received orders and commitments for 700 GE9x engines valued at $28 billion (list price) from several growing Middle Eastern airlines like Emirates, Qatar and Etihad, as well as Lufthansa, Cathay Pacific and All Nippon Airways. Emirates, Qatar and Etihad, which are present at this year’s Dubai Air Show have ordered 150, 60, and 25 GE9X powered 777X aircraft, respectively. Today, Emirates also signed a $16 billion deal with GE Aviation to service its GE9X engines for a dozen years after they enter service.

What makes the engine special, however, isn’t just its size. It’s also how it is being built. The Massa plant belongs to GE Oil & Gas, and GE Aviation has used it and its engineers to develop a core part of the engine. GE calls this concept of sharing expertise and knowledge the GE Store.

The GE9X test rig – in blue – at GE Oil & Gas facility in Massa, Italy. Image credit: GE Aviation

On a typical day, workers at the Massa site test and assemble huge modular power plants that can each generate 116 megawatts for oil and gas installations such as the Gorgon subsea gas field off the coast of Australia. “They have a lot of experience with gas turbines,” says Tim Taylor, a senior engineer for mechanical design at GE Aviation, who was involved in the project. “Since each oil and gas project is pretty much unique, they have a lot of experience with variability and can build a new test stand very quickly.”

The GE Aviation team first arrived in Massa in 2013. Since Italy doesn’t have the same travel visa requirements as the U.S., they were able to invite GE experts from Poland, Germany, India and elsewhere to join the project.

White marble peaks and quarries where Michelangelo got marble for David tower over the Massa plant. Image credit: GE Aviation

The team set up their prototype at one of Massa’s outdoor test stands. “Our test director came from GE Oil & Gas and he set up all the instrumentation and monitoring systems,” Taylor says. “His team designed for us the lubrication and cooling systems so we could move really quickly. It was a bespoke rig.”

The team’s goal was to validate a design for the engine’s high-pressure compressor (HPC) – a key component supplying pressurized air to the combustor of the engine and helps determine its efficiency. “We are using new cobalt-based alloys, new coatings and new aerodynamic designs,” Taylor says. “We had to prove them all.”

A detailed image of the test turbine showing a ring with variable vanes that help engineers change the pressure inside the engine. Image credit: GE Aviation

The HPC for the GE9X has 11 stages of airfoils designed to compress the air flowing into the combustor chamber 27 times. “Compared to our previous engines, we have more stages and the rotors have a larger radius,” Taylor says. “This means that when we increase the pressure inside the compressor, the temperature also goes up. You don’t get anything for free in nature and we had to make sure that design would hold up to expectations.”

The prototype that the GE Aviation team took to Italy was built at 75-percent scale. The team only needed validation data at 30 percent of the pressure it would see in service, or 300 pounds per square inch, to confirm the design was going in the right direction. “That’s the same amount of pressure you’d feel at 510 feet under the sea, about the limit for World War II submarines,” Taylor says. “You need a tremendous amount of torque to create that pressure. You can’t do this with an electrical motor.”

A hologram of the GE9X jet engine at the Minds + Machines conference held last week in Dubai. When the engine enters service at the end of the decade, it will be connected to the Industrial Internet. Image credit: GE Reports

But you can do it with a gas turbine and Taylor and the Oil & Gas team used a model built by their colleagues at GE Power & Water. “It’s funny that this turbine actually uses technology we at GE Aviation had originally developed for our jet engines,” says Taylor. “It kind of completes the circle for the GE Store.”

With the test rig in place, Taylor and his team took the HPC for the new jet engine for a spin. They did a lot of harsh things to it, including testing for stall. During normal flow, air moves from an area of high pressure to a low-pressure environment – just like when air escapes from a party balloon. But a compressor moves air in the opposite direction. “It’s against nature and the air doesn’t want to go that way,” Taylor says. “When you push it too hard, the compressor stalls and burps up a fireball that tears up the engine. We had to prove that our design would work within the safe boundaries.”

Taylor and the team ran two series of tests in Massa. After the first one, they decided to open the front part of the compressor and tweak it to improve performance. The second test series, concluded this year, proved they were on the right path. “We got the efficiency we wanted,” Taylor says. “We could run it without stalling.”

The HPC is now back in the U.S. Another team at GE Aviation coupled it with a combustor and will soon begin testing the pair together.

The combustor for the GE9X includes inner and outer liners made from a ceramic matrix composite (CMC) – a light and heat resistant super material whose first application was inside large GE gas turbines. “At GE, you can’t turn a corner without running into a technology built by some other business,” Taylor says. “It’s the magic of the place.”

When finished, the GE9X will deliver a 10 percent improvement in fuel burn, compared to its older brother, the GE90 engine. One variant of that engine, the GE90-115B, holds the title of the most powerful jet engine ever built. In 2002, it generated 127,900 pounds of thrust at a GE’s jet engine test stand in Peebles, Ohio. The thrust of the Redstone rocket that took Alan Shepard to space was just 76,000 pounds.

The GE90 will likely get to keep the record, but the GE9X will me more efficient. Says Taylor: “You can’t stop progress.”