The single most important area in which world resources are currently poured into is Artificial Intelligence (AI). It is a business environment where research ideas and results are converted to integrated silicon in no time, quickly adopting new silicon technology nodes as soon as they become available. The rapid development in this area, as well as the vastness of its applicability to all aspects of life, makes it near impossible to match with dedicated developments in the space domain. Hence it is necessary to rely on COTS components to stay abreast with the technological progress and take advantage of its benefits to the space domain. Although the idea of using COTS AI devices in space is not new, the new innovative concept is to establish a framework for continuously testing, screening multiple types of AI devices, and to integrate them into a generic high performance compute board platform where failure mitigation is handled using hardened components. The latter platform is under development with ESA funding, but lacks a clear path to flight since AI devices are not part of ESA's COTS plan. We propose for the long term to include novel AI devices in the COTS plan in a systematic way, and to rapidly support ongoing system developments with a dedicated radiation testing and screening program for the first generation of AI devices.
