1. Vision

“Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them” ~ this is a quote by famous mathematician, A. N. Whitehead.

I believe we heading towards an era of intelligence where the technical systems would be assisting humans directly in decision-making. This era of decision intelligence shall be enabled by advanced perception and information fusion capabilities. Machines shall be able to perceive the environment as humans and pass the information in order to achieve the objective. These technologies shall be built upon the ambient systems and shall utilize our peripheral attention so that we can put our central attention to the objective and not the technology.  

This will enable an era of hybrid intelligence which shall possess the advanced processing capabilities of machines to boost human cognition. We believe this will enable a plethora of possibilities that are unthinkable in the current paradigm.

And this is how we believe we will reach the phase where technology acts like a windowpane, enhancing our view of the world without drawing attention to itself, as envisioned by the legendary computer scientist Alan Cooper.

2. How this shall be achieved?

Two key themes will drive us toward this vision: ambient systems and human-machine integration. I'd like to elaborate on each of these themes in turn.

2.1 Ambient Systems

An ambient system is one that operates autonomously in the background, unobtrusively collecting required data from its environment to fulfill a purpose. Unlike traditional systems that require explicit interaction, ambient systems understand their surroundings and act accordingly, requiring no conscious attention from us.  

We are already using ambient systems in our day-to-day lives. Some examples include automated water pumps, thermostats, and mobile phone auto-brightness features. With the increased machine perception capabilities, the ubiquitousness of such systems shall only increase from this position.

2.2 Human-Machine Integration

By human-machine integration (HMI), we mean a state where humans can fully utilize machines in their decision-making. By intricately fusing machine intelligence with human intelligence we enable a world of immense processing power mixed with the intuitive impulses of humans. We believe this shall enable an era of unimaginable possibilities.

This will be an era where machines weave themselves in the background and arm us with the right information at the right time with the right context. 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.

3. Why are we doing this? What are we aiming to achieve?

This shall result in multiple possibilities. We will try to cover 2 main points in which the vision will help us in the long run. We will keep modifying this segment over time.

3.1 Transcending Human Cognition

Human-machine integration transcends human intelligence. We, humans, cannot have the memory of the scale of a computer, nor we can process things that fast. We are more able to reason, to draw generalizations, to bring logic. So why can’t we work towards gaining the capabilities of a machine by making them work for us? It will help us transcend human cognition. It will be an ideal state where machines are working to empower us and not the other way around. By leveraging machines to take care of redundant tasks, we can free up our minds to focus on more complex and creative endeavors. In this way, we can make greater progress as a society, using our uniquely human capabilities in tandem with the power of technology.

3.2 Opportunity to live in the moment.

Freeing ourselves from the burden of doing subtasks via technology gives us the opportunity to live more in the moment. It helps us focus more on the wider goal and not sub-tasks, because those are already handled by machines by their perception of the world.

I believe there are grey areas in both 1, and 2. But the grey area is something that makes it exploring further. Making it open for everyone’s interpretations. More humane connections and productivity, reaching areas never though of before are the results of the above two points.