Technical brain, or OS majorly revolves central processing power of any entity in the human-machine computing architecture. Imagine, this as a ‘virtual brain’ of any entity.

Why?

We should consider the reasons for developing these kinds of systems. Fundamentally, it's about shifting the overwhelming responsibility of engaging with the system from the humans to the system itself. We have been talking about this in our previous notes as well.

In the past, the burden of interaction has always been on humans. Humans had to use interfaces and sensors to utilize processing units in order to complete tasks and reach objectives.

In the current state of technology, we're reaching a point where the processing units, or technical brains, are sophisticated enough to understand and adapt to users' needs without them having to do a lot of work. Instead of users having to tell the system what to do and how to do it, the system can anticipate what users want and act accordingly. It can use sensors and interfaces to understand the situation and provide the necessary information and assistance without users having to explicitly tell it what to do. This frees users up to focus on higher-level cognitive tasks.

In order to create systems that can anticipate users' needs and act accordingly, the systems need to be designed with powerful capabilities for understanding, perception, building context and reasoning. We call this a "technical brain," or an “OS” that can think and act like a human brain. This kind of brain can be applied not only to humans, but to physical environments and organizations, allowing them to learn, adapt, and interact in intelligent ways.

I’ll go more into what we are building and how we are building below.

What?

Technical brain, or OS majorly serves as a central processing power of any entity in the human-machine computing architecture. Imagine a 'brain' that powers the entire human-machine system, providing the computational power and access to data that enables the system to function. It's like the central hub of a human-machine system, enabling the system to function effectively and efficiently. We will be using the terms OS, and brain interchangeably from now on.  

This 'brain' has access to all types of data, whether it's digital or from the physical world. It's designed to interact with its surroundings and build a contextual understanding of the world, all with the aim of helping humans and entities in the background. It's not just about providing suggestions and recommendations, it's about taking action and integrating with systems that can complete both digital and physical tasks. This 'brain' achieves all these feats by connecting with a wide range of interfaces and sensors. These interfaces and sensors provide a window into the world, allowing the 'brain' to perceive and understand its surroundings.

I love the analogy of this 'brain' as a personal chief of staff. Just as a chief of staff works closely with an executive to help them make decisions and achieve their objectives, this 'brain' works closely with humans (or other entities) to gather information, generate insights, brainstorm ideas, and take action. It is not an assistant, but a chief of staff.

We will be diving deep into humanOS, and spaceOS in our upcoming notes.

How?

Now, we shall touch a bit on how can this happen.

In order to achieve the level of intelligence we've been discussing, the system needs to possess the following requirements:

1) The 'brain' needs to be able to gather and store large amounts of data in order to provide useful insights and predictions.

2) It needs the ability to process that data and use it to complete tasks or provide recommendations.

3) It needs to be able to predict user needs and proactively suggest actions before they're requested.

4) Finally, the 'brain’ needs to be able to interact with humans in a way that doesn't disrupt their workflow or break their attention.

To sum up, the complete architecture needs to consist of a set of interconnected components. Starting with 1) A data repository and integration layer that can access and manage digital data, 2) A sensor and ambient processing layer that can gather and analyze data from sensors and other ambient systems, and further take actions. 3) A user interaction layer that can communicate with users via consumer devices, 4) An interoperability layer that allows the system to communicate with humanOS and spaceOS. Lastly, 5) A central processing unit that orchestrates the working of all the components.  

humanOS

Let's dive into the concept of a humanOS.

We believe it's possible that humans may soon have their own 'technical brain' or OS with access to their personal data and the ability to perceive and interact with the world around them. With access to data and processing capabilities, it shall be able to augment humans by giving them power of immense processing power and data storage capabilities which we currently lack. By using this 'brain' to offload tasks, humans could focus on higher-level thinking and creativity endeavors.

This can also trigger an era where our dependence on central digital devices would decrease. Rather than spending time interacting with devices to complete tasks, we'll be able to focus on the core objectives of those tasks. Since the OS can do it on our behalf, why would we indulge in them. As we have talked multiple times before, our reliance on central digital devices only grew because systems were unable to do that in the first place. These devices are just a mode of completing an objective, and never the objective. Like writing an email is not the objective, sharing the intended information with the recipient is the objective and currently we do it by using our laptops.  

Through this, we envisage a state where humans can utilize the capabilities of machines in their decision-making. Whichever situation it is, a person shall be capable of not only using their senses and cortex to process the nuances based on the past memory, but also take full advantage of the machine’s large memory sets, and immense processing power to come up with insights to evaluate a situation and act in the moment. We will no longer need to say that “Yeah, let’s google it”, you will already have that “Google it” information with you. You will be able to act as one single entity along with machines.

Good technology should be like a windowpane. It should enhance your view of the world without drawing attention to itself ~ Alan Cooper

Imagine you are going to a party, and there is this person, Josh, who is apparently someone working in your dream company. By noticing Josh, the device can give you a nudge that you should initiate a conversation with Josh on the country’s geopolitics because that is what he is writing around over Twitter for the past 3 months. All this without needing to open your phone, and do all the stuff on your own. That definitely is something cool.  

I imagine this device as the person itself. Just the extended version of a person. I’d love to see a scenario where people talk to this device and analyze a previous situation just like we do with our friends. “Pin → Do you think, Sam was a bit bubbly while talking about her love life. Human → I surely, believe there is something going on. Pin → I’m so happy for her xxdd”  

I primarily see this product being widely used as a general product. But, we can pause a bit to think about its profound utility in professional setups for doctors, teachers, salesmen, negotiators, people giving speeches, workers in industry, and whatnot. We will discuss more of its use cases in our upcoming note.

The main utility that I see in the idea is that it can enable a scenario where users and machines can make complex decisions in unison. OS can perceive the physical environment in a similar way to humans. The OS will be able to perceive the physical world and provide relevant, context-rich insights to humans in real-time. This will enable us to make decisions with more information and insight than ever before and to do so in a more efficient and intuitive way. It will enable the detection of information and placement of insights with the right context and processing.

Further, being an OS that possesses the data, it can interact with any number of OSs and corresponding ambient computing devices to dispense the necessary data. We will discuss this more in our upcoming notes. This shall also play a key role in generating insights which were impossible before.

In the entire discussion, we missed talking about privacy. Privacy is a very crucial aspect of the technology which we talked about above. We need to develop the norms for this era from the ground up. The storage and processing of the level of data required cannot be in anyone’s possession apart from the humans themselves. In the last 2 decades, we have been using tons of applications where the developers had complete access to the data. In the next era, we need to pass on the ownership of data to users, not only of the physical data but also entire electronic data relevant to the person. It shall require huge conscious efforts.