Artificial: C14 I meet Matt at the bus stop.

Monday and I'm waiting at the bus stop. I'd been told that the crowds of tourists thinned in September, but I can see little evidence of it. I spot Simon and who I take to be Matt Nicholson coming forward. 

"Hey Oliver meet Matt and vice-versa," says Simon stepping back to let us greet one another.

 

"You are both newbies here and have travelled from the same town in Ireland," I can see Simon is enjoying this. The bus arrives and together with around a dozen or so others we file on and take seats. Simon joins Matt and I sit in a third seat across the gangway from the two of them. The noise of the bus makes conversation across the gangway difficult, so I settle down to read whilst the other two chat animatedly. I can see Matt has the same wonder that I exhibited all of a week ago when I joined Brant.

 

We soon enter the Brant campus and then Simon bids his farewells as he gets off at an earlier stop. I cross over the gangway to sit next to Matt and we carry on toward the Research block. 

 

"You'll be held up there," I explain, "It will probably take a couple of hours to process you and then someone will collect you from the entrance area, probably Amy van der Leiden. She's the boss of our team and protects us from the wilder excesses of Brant Corporate," I explain.

 

Matt smiles, "The corporate electromagnet can be switched on at any time." 

 

I laugh, "Yes we are all ruled by spreadsheets and corporate magnets."

 

There is a hiss as the driver pulls up and opens the doors at the front and middle of the bus. 

 

"Good luck!" I whisper to Matt.

 

"Thanks," he replies, pulling a small day sack from the overhead space on our bus.

 

Weirdly, I didn't see him again until the next morning, when he looks the worse for wear. He'd been out on his first evening with Schmiddi and Rolf and had maybe tried a little too hard with the local beers. Simon found some tablets to give him, for what must have been a monster headache.

 

I spent Tuesday with Rolf, working out some new sensor designs, whilst Matt spent the day with Juliette Häberli. They seemed to spend a lot of time talking about cats. Matt's evening extended into one with Juliette and I noticed how quickly they had become good friends.

 

I could tell that Matt was quickly comfortable with the Geneva life. I'd had to have some me-time at the end of the first week, but Matt seemed to be ready for whatever came his way. 

 

But at the end of the week, he completely disappeared.  From Saturday morning until Monday. Simon was uncontactable and I wondered whether Simon and Matt were somehow involved in something together. 

 

The next Monday we had a big team meeting in the Research Lab to compare notes about last week and then to begin to prepare a series of experiments for the new week. I was somewhat dismayed to hear everyone in the lab discussing the defective components in the makeup of the Cyclone helmet. 

 

Amy cut in, "Yes; that is the difficulty. Kjeld Nikolajsen wants us to push to get the Human to Computer link designed and is not prepared to listen to arguments about parts of the system being defective. He thinks that any kinks can be ironed out later in the design and marketing process."

 

Schmiddi spoke again, "I was looking at the reports from Selexor. They seem to have a good PR firm. Harry Stensen, Selexor’s chief technology officer, said that the criticism of Createl is uninformed and that most AI researchers have a limited understanding of the psychology behind how workers think and behave."

 

Schmiddi continued, "Stensen compared the Createl algorithms’ ability to boost hiring outcomes with medicine’s improvement of health outcomes and said the science backed him up. The system, he argued, is still more objective than the flawed metrics used by human recruiters, whose thinking he called the 'ultimate black box.'"

 

We all watched Schmiddi reading his report on his laptop, “ 'People are rejected all the time based on how they look, their shoes, how they tucked in their shirts and how ‘hot’ they are,' Stensen told The Washington Post. 'Algorithms eliminate most of that in a way that hasn’t been possible before. The AI doesn’t explain its decisions or give candidates their assessment scores, which Stensen called 'not relevant.' 

 

Rolf asked, "Wasn't Stensen the man who said, 'When 1,000 people apply for one job, 999 people are going to get rejected, whether a company uses AI or not.' ?"

 

Juliette added, "Yes, in the literature for my psychology work I see increasingly regular quotes that these inscrutable algorithms have forced job seekers to confront a new interview anxiety.

 

"An example, from right here at Brant: Lilja Jussila, a University of Connecticut senior studying math and economics said she researched Selexor and did her best to dazzle the job-interview machine. Lilja answered confidently and in the time allotted. She used positive keywords. She smiled, often and wide."

 

Juliette continued, "But when she didn’t get the job, she couldn’t see how the computer had rated her or ask how she could improve, and she agonised over what she had missed. Had she not looked friendly enough? Did she talk too loudly? What did the AI hiring system believe she had gotten wrong?"

 

"So what were the reasons?" I asked.

 

Juliette remembered, “Lilja said that maybe one of the reasons she didn’t get it was that she spoke a little too naturally. She didn't use enough big, fancy words. It's like not 'playing the game'.”

 

"I remember the case," said Amy, "It made it to the top because we were really desperate to hire someone with Lilja's skill-set. My theory was that it was simply her international Finnish-sounding name that threw her out."

 

Schmiddi added, "Selexor said its system dissects the tiniest details of candidates’ responses — their facial expressions, their eye contact and perceived “enthusiasm” — and compiles reports companies can use in deciding whom to hire or disregard."

 

He was still reading from the laptop report, "Job candidates aren’t told their score or what little things they got wrong, and they can’t ask the machine what they could do better. It's claimed that it would be the first stage of gaming the system. Human hiring managers can use other factors, beyond the Selexor score, to decide which candidates pass the first-round test."

 

Rolf added, "The advertising says that Selexor employs superhuman precision and impartiality to zero in on an ideal employee, picking up on tell-tale clues a recruiter might miss. Here:"

 

He handed out a flyer advertising Selexor. It was a photocopy of a page from Winners magazine:

 

Selexor

 

Selexor’s prospects have cemented it as the leading player in the brave new world of semi-automated corporate recruiting. It can save employers a fortune on in-person interviews and quickly cull applicants deemed below the standard. Selexor says it also allows companies to see candidates from an expanded hiring pool: Anyone with a phone and Internet connection can apply. 

 

Armanis Winterhall, Selexor’s chief industrial-organisational psychologist, told Winners magazine the standard 30-minute Selexor assessment includes half a dozen questions but can yield up to 500,000 data points, all of which become ingredients in the person’s calculated score.

 

The employer decides the written questions, which Selexor’s system then shows the candidate while recording and analysing their responses. The AI assesses how a person’s face moves to determine, for instance, how excited someone seems about a certain work task or how they would behave around angry customers. 

 

Those 'Raw Response Units,' Winterhall said, can make up around a third of a person’s score; the words they say and the 'audio features' of their voice, like their tone, make up the rest.

 

'Humans are inconsistent by nature. They inject their subjectivity into the evaluations,' Winterhall said. 'But AI can data analyse what the human processes in an interview, without bias. And humans are now believing in machine decisions over human feedback.' 

 

Now we were getting somewhere. Coming into my specialism. Artificial Intelligence and Augmented Reality.

Review of David Tennant in 'Good'

We attended the NFT play 'Good' with David Tennant. 

I thought it was both fascinating and revolting in equal measure (!) 

It was a chilling yet brilliant study of the corruption of Germany by the Nazis, with a stealthy creeping backdrop. The absorbed Professor (Halder?) seemed to have other things closer to the foreground, with his poor demented Mother and then the rather typical mid-life crisis of a man with a spare woman/wife. That he could betray his best Jewish friend Maurice so thoroughly and convince himself that he was acting correctly just added to the tension.

I didn't know anything about CP Taylor until this show, but seeing him and watching his own intensity of movement illustrated someone with a lot going on inside. I said I found the first half constructed like a complex mechanical clock.

For me, it was a masterclass in the subconscious, with Taylor editing all the individual tracks together, including 4th wall breaks when needed.

The casting (Tennant and the woman - Sharon Small) was excellent and the hallucinations of the story drifting through characters were difficult to pull off yet well executed. The lighting brought a Riefenstahl drama to the bunker where the play appeared to be set. Stripes of red lights etc (Triumph of the Will etc.).

I thought, even from the outset, that the set proposed the inside of gas chambers, but maybe I was wrong about that. What was plain though was the incremental matter-of-factness of the march toward the terrible Holocaust. Tennant's character didn't believe in anything by the end. Just what was good for himself.

Artificial : C13 SImon Gray tells me about Matt

Sunday. 10 in the morning. I'm in the apartment making coffee when there is a knock on the door.

 

"Hey Man!" it is Simon Gray. "We missed you yesterday!"

 

"Oh, Simon, come on in, I'm making some coffee."

 

"Yes - we celebrated jeûne genevois yesterday, which translates to 'Genevan Fast' in English. It was around at Bradley Floyd and Jennifer Hansen's apartment. I was with Bérénice Charbonnier and we met Matt Nicholson, the new guy who will be working in your lab."

 

"Yes, he was also recruited in Cork and was actually hired a few days before me," I answer.

 

Simon says, "I'm showing him to the bus tomorrow morning. His first week will be like your, full of indiction processes. I doubt you'll see much of him until after the process is complete."

 

My coffee brewing is complete and I pour the coffee and we chink mugs together.

 

"So any new news?" I ask.

 

"Not really, we all had a fun day and could talk about you behind your back. Lucky for you that Matt arrived after you; the main topic of the evening was more about him than about you! Oh, I've asked him to join us on the bus on Monday, by the way. Hair of the dog, by any chance?"

 

He looks at me and pulls a small, discreet hip flask from his jacket. Then, he tips a splash into his coffee and offers to do the same for me.

 

"You know, I'm good," I say and smile across to him.

 

"Okay, message received," he smiles and puts the silver flask away, "Schladere - Himbeergeist - probably a bit rich for this time of day."

 

"I'll be having vodka on my cornflakes next," I quip back.

 

He chuckles then asks, "So what do you make of your first week at Brant?"

 

"It's that old expression about drinking at the firehose," I answer.

 

"Yes, the people are pretty intense and seem to know an awful lot," answers Simon, "Plus the politics. I know I work in the pharma part of Brant, but I still get to hear things. Amy van der Leiden is a great operator for you. By all accounts she protects your team from the difficult questions that Brant Head Office asks. Bob Ranzino is a man on a mission. Someone is apply ing the screws to him, speaking of which you'll also have noticed that there's action between him and Jasmine Summers."

 

"Is her name real?" I ask, "Only..."

 

"I know, she sounds like a porn star or something," says Simon, "but its her real name, all right."

 

"I feel as if I need a morality transplant to work on my current project," I say, "It is so - er - dark."

 

"You must be working with those Cyclone helmets? The future of warfare etc."

 

"Deeply scary," I say, "No wonder they pay so well."

 

"They want to monetise everything," explains Simon, "That's how Kjeld Nikolajsen operates. He knows that he needs to feed something back to HQ every quarter. The Numbers are everything at Brant."

 

"SO is he running some other projects too?" I ask, "Only I can't see the Cyclone being a quick enough Return on Investment?"

 

I'm mildly surprised how much Simon seems to know about my department, considering he doesn't even work in my building.

 

"The office telegraph says that Kjeld is a wily operator. He even split the Cyclone into three sub-projects so that he can talk about each one separately. He's running a few other projects too. Some of them are more like cash cows - the surveillance drones for example. His team use commercial drones and upgrade their batteries and motors so that they can carry heavier payloads. It's simple work but once it has been badged Brant, they can charge profitably for what has been done. NLEs, they call them. Nice Little Earners."

 

We both smile.

 

"But how can you know so much about what is supposed to be a secret department?" I ask.

 

"Brant leaks like a sieve," answers Simon,"Give it another week and you'll know all about my department too."

He pauses then asks, "Hey, fancy a walk? I was thinking about going around the lake on one of the boats."

 

"I'll give it a miss today," I answer, "I did exactly that yesterday."

 

"Okay, I'll move along then," says Simon holding up his coffee mug by way of a salute, "I may see you later, or else tomorrow at the bus stop."

Artificial: C12 Cara Weekend

It was finally the weekend and a chance to decompress after a hectic first week. I was concerned whether I was going to have the bandwidth for this role. Everything seemed to happen so fast, the learning curve was steep and everyone else seemed to be experts on everything.

 

I'd been invited to a block party at the Rue de la Confédération, where many of the other residents would be attending, yet I felt too drained to go along. It was some kind of special day in Geneva, when they all eat plum tart. Not my scene. A party with French speakers eating plum tart. I'd already politely declined despite Aude Darmshausen and Bérénice Charbonnier's strongest protestations that I should attend. 

 

I was also told that a new guy, Matt Nicholson, the mystery man from Cork would be along and that it was his first day. Simon Gray had said that I didn't need to worry and that he would take care of showing Matt around.

 

I shoved a welcome note under Matt's door which introduced myself and thought I'd catch him next week on the bus.

 

I spend Saturday being a Geneva tourist to hopefully blow away the cobwebs which have formed in my head during the week. I join a tour which takes me into the Old Town, around by the big fountain, a visit to the flower clock, down to the Lake, hop a boat for a Lake Leman cruise. And there was a tram included too, all with a courteous guide named Mr Gabriel. 

 

On the coach and then on the tram, I am sitting next to Melody, who is from Holland and travelling across Europe by train. Melody is pretty with wild, dark curly hair and wears a black outfit and carries a small rucksack. She explains her black outfit was so she would not get noticed. She has a slightly edgy accent, but very strong English. I think it is how she pronounces TH as a kind of D sound which is how I had picked up on her accent. She tells me she had lived in nort London for tree years. We chat so much our guide, Mr Gabriel, thinks we are lovers and even makes a joke about us  in the commentary.

 

I joke to Melody that we are meeting like in 'Before Sunrise', the Richard Linklater film and she says it was one of her favourites. We agree to sightsee around Geneva together but not to fall in love like they did in the movie. Melody knew the whole movie plot - which I could hardly remember - and wanted to take me to a cafe where we could drink milkshake, so we could do 'the part about the poem'. When we are at the flower clock she says it is good how the flowers could face either way, following the sun. I don't fully understand but approve of her remark anyway. She says she followed Annie Clark's advice about when in an unfamiliar city to do something real and strange. So here we are on the boat touring the lake at sunset, which is when she said she wanted to kiss me. I'm not sure whether I was part of the real or the strange. I'm sure I was another part of her movie plot.

 

Melody explains to me - and it wasn't just a brush off - that she has placed herself in what she calls 'deep nun mode'. Single. Focused. 'Completely monastic. Sober, celibate – full nun.' I’m pretty sure she’s joking when she adds, in a slow, funny, unpredictable way, “I mean there are always sex plans. But none for, like, a month.”

 

We split up late Saturday evening, and agree not to swap any further information. Well, except she admits she told me a false name. She says her real name is Cara. She used Melody from a time when she was in a band. Cara says she'll meet me where we first met on the Quai in another six months - like Céline and Jesse did in that movie.

 

When I return to Rue de la Confédération, I could hear that the party was still running, but I crept quietly to my room. The cobwebs were gone. 

Artificial: C11 Token Need

It was amazing to me how the Brant protocols were set up for each test run of the Cyclone. The next two days were spent running electrical tests and then animal-based tests against the two Cyclone helmets.

 

I had a couple of Brant's earlier technologies explained to me - Selexor and Createl, which had now been integrated into what was the Cyclone 2 helmet. 

 

Then, on Friday of my first week, Rolf, Amy, Hermann and Juliette were huddled with me around the Cyclone 3, ready for some tests

 

Amy explains, "Levi Spillmann knew that the AI component called Createl which he had invented for aerial crop evaluation couldn't be transformed into something that could do image recognition of faces on a large scale. The AI component which Levi's Createl linked to is called Selexor but it is also flawed. It was originally supposed to hire recruitment candidates, but is driven by manually constructed rules, like 'no one over 1.8 metres high' and so on."

 

"Now Cyclone may look impressive, but it only works at a very slow speed, and requires many wires attached to it."

 

She looks piercingly at me, "Put the chain together. Selexor (dubious) plus Createl (flawed) plus Cyclone (sluggish) and you can see the current invention doesn't work."

 

"Okay then, what about Kjeld Nikolajsen?" I ask, "Surely he must suspect something?"

 

"No, I don't think so," comes Amy's reply, "Have you ever watched how workmen dig holes? They look busy but once they have dug a hole and have a pile of earth, to keep looking busy they will fix the hole with the earth they have dug."

 

"And there's always some earth left over," I say.

 

"Yes so they can dig another hole to bury it," chips in Rolf, smiling, "That's us, here, with this project."

 

"And well funded too," adds Hermann, "It shows that Brant wants to buy time and expects that the Cyclone will emerge as a working prototype one day."

 

Amy cuts in, "Well, I'm not sure how this fits in, but it looks as if Kjeld has also been making moves toward the Chinese. Some of this will sound like Robocop, but the Chinese are interested in developing soldiers with ‘enhanced capabilities.’ 

 

Hermann nods,  "China is conducting tests on its army hoping to create biologically enhanced soldiers, according to the Pentagon. John Ratcliffe, who used to be the US director of national intelligence, made the claims in a newspaper editorial, where he warned China poses the greatest threat to America today."

 

"I saved that article, from the Wall Street Journal," says Rolf, "It was also in the UK Guardian."

 

Herman nods, "Yes, the reports stated Beijing intends to dominate the US and the rest of the planet economically, militarily and technologically. Many of China’s major public initiatives and prominent companies offer a layer of camouflage to the activities of the Chinese Communist Party.”

 

Rolf adds, "China has even been conducting human testing on members of the People’s Liberation Army hoping to develop soldiers with biologically enhanced capabilities."

 

Hermann steps forward, "As we say, Wetware isn't Hardware."

 

Rolf adds, "Now let's look at the Wetware to Hardware interface. As ancient Greeks fantasised about soaring flight, today’s imaginations dream of melding minds and machines as a remedy to the problem of human mortality. Can the mind connect directly with artificial intelligence, robots and other minds through brain-computer interface (BCI) technologies to transcend our human limitations?"

 

These research scientists had thought this through. I was starting to get the impression that the Cyclone might actually work.

 

Hermann continued, "Over the last 50 years, researchers at university labs and companies around the world have made progress toward achieving such a mind-meld vision. Brant's Selexor used Createl and other entrepreneurs such as Elon Musk with Neuralink and Bryan Johnson with Kernel have visionary companies that seek to enhance human capabilities through brain-computer interfacing.

 

Rolf points to a simple diagram, "The difference between the more primitive technologies they are using and our one at Brant is that we don't have to open the skull and run intrusive brain rewiring to make it work. And it's the same whether we use Cyclone 1, or 2 or the hybrid Cyclone 3."

 

Hermann adds, "But an inductive link will not be as precise nor as powerful as something directly connected to the brain. A bidirectional brain-computer interface (BBCI) can both record signals from the brain and send information back to the brain through stimulation. The most sophisticated BCIs like those developed here in Brant are “bi-directional” BCIs (BBCIs), which can both record from and stimulate the nervous system. 

 

Herman chose to illustrate it with a simple diagram of a head and a computer chip with arrows between them, pointing in both directions.

 

He continues, "We’re exploring BBCIs as a rehabilitation tool for stroke and spinal cord injury. We’ve shown that a BBCI can be used to strengthen connections between two brain regions or between the brain and the spinal cord and reroute information around an area of injury to reanimate a paralysed limb.

 

Rolf adds, "With all these successes to date, you might think a brain-computer interface is poised to be the next must-have consumer gadget."

 

Rolf continues, "The first demonstration of a non-invasive brain-controlled humanoid robot avatar named Morpheus was in the Neural Systems Laboratory at the University of Washington. The non-invasive BCI infers what object the robot should pick and where to bring it based on the brain’s reflexive response when an image of the desired object or location is flashed."

 

Hermann adds, "All these demos have been in the laboratory – where the rooms are quiet, the test subjects aren’t distracted, the technical setup is long and methodical, and experiments last only long enough to show that a concept is possible. It’s proved very difficult to make these systems fast and robust enough to be of practical use in the real world. This work is difficult."

 

Now Rolf speaks again, "Even with implanted electrodes (ie brain surgery) another problem with trying to read minds arises from how our brains are structured. We know that each neuron and their thousands of connected neighbours form an unimaginably large and ever-changing network. What might this mean for neuro-engineers?

 

Juliette speaks, "Imagine you’re trying to understand a conversation between a big group of friends about a complicated subject, but you’re allowed to listen to only a single person. You might be able to figure out the very rough topic of what the conversation is about, but not all the details and nuances of the entire discussion. That's the challenge. Even our best implants only allow us to listen to a few small patches of the brain at a time. We can do some impressive things, but we’re nowhere near understanding the full conversation."

 

Juliette continues, "There is also what we think of as a language barrier. Neurons communicate with each other through a complex interaction of electrical signals and chemical reactions. This native electro-chemical language can be interpreted with electrical circuits, but it’s not easy. Similarly, when we speak back to the brain using electrical stimulation, it is with a heavy electrical 'accent.' In other words, we can't yet speak 'Brain Language' very well. This makes it difficult for neurons to understand what the stimulation is trying to convey in the midst of all the other ongoing neural activity."

 

Hermann added, "Finally, there is the problem of damage. Brain tissue is soft and flexible, while most of our electrically conductive materials – the wires that connect to brain tissue – tend to be very rigid. This means that implanted electronics often cause scarring and immune reactions that mean the implants lose effectiveness over time. Flexible biocompatible fibers and arrays may eventually help in this regard. We were hoping to get some thoughts from our contacts working on the chemistry of neural pathways, and maybe this will follow."

 

I realise that this was a sideswipe at the non-appearance of Simon Gray, nor of anyone from his lab.

 

Juliette picks up the latest headgear."We used to call it the ServoCask, from casque de cerveau but then Brant asked us to change it to Cyclone."

 

Juliette explains, "This Cyclone 2 headgear records brain signals without the need for surgery and can either measure the electromagnetic fields generated by groups of neurons or detect small changes in blood oxygenation, which correlate well to nearby neural activity."

 

She added, "We are using magnetometers to measure tiny changes in magnetic fields and light pulses through the skull and into the bloodstream in order to measure how much oxygen the blood is carrying at any given time."

 

Juliette continued, "It's a similar concept to the way that smart watches or oximeters measure blood oxygenation but has a vastly extended coverage. The headgear takes advantage of the relative transparency of the skull and brain tissue to near-infrared light by beaming photons through the skull and measuring their scattering and absorption, allowing inference about blood flow and oxygenation. That's something called haemodynamics."

 

Hermann added, "This headgear offers the resolution and sensitivity of state-of-the-art haemodynamic systems across the top layers of cortical tissue.

 

Herman produced an animated diagram, "Traditional 'continuous wave' near-infrared spectroscopy devices apply light to the head continuously, which then scatters throughout and is detected at various locations upon exiting the head. It has a decent level of accuracy but the processing time (we'd call it latency) of the system means it is like having very slow reactions. In fact they are more like the reactions from someone on the other end of a satellite phone call."

 

Hermann explains, "There is something odd about the software created by Levi Spillmann. Its as if he took Zero Trust to the nth degree. It's as if there is a whole extra layer of software in the Createl design, but I can't work out what it is doing."

 

Rolf adds, "Yes we'd assumed that the base code of Createl was good and pretty much the way that Levy intended it, but the more we drill into it, the stranger it looks."

 

Hermann said, "I think Levi built the system with a protective layer around it. It seems to need a key to unlock it and then it will run smoother and many times faster."

 

I noticed that we were already running on an Exascale computer - which was one of the fastest on the planet.

 

"You mean it's like a 'diagnostic layer?' I ask, "To help iron out bugs and to prevent viruses?

 

"That's what we thought first, but I think it is something more subtle. Something which downgrades the software unless a security token is served to it," answers Hermann, "Except we don't have the token nor a means to serve it."

Artificial : C10 Zero Trust Architecture

 

Amy van der Leiden joins us and she has noticed my expression of slight dismay.

"Not convinced?" she asks looking at me.

 

Hmm. I'm suddenly in the hot seat.

 

"Well, there seem to be some gaps in the concept at present."

 

"That is why we are blending the ideas from this version of Cyclone with the version which Rolf and Hermann showed you yesterday."

 

"Then we are adding a zero trust layer on top," she goes on to explain, "So that the Cyclone can't be hacked."

 

"So is zero trust more than a marketing sticker?" I ask.

 

"Oh yes. And especially pertinent to this system. Think of the intersection between people, process and technology (PPT). It is exactly the area that zero trust systems are designed for."

 

I see Rolf smile and then he speaks, "Yes. Harold Leavitt may have come up with the ideas back in the 1960s, but it's taken until now for there to be actual interface requirements. Then I can remember Levi Spillmann saying it was important to add a trust layer. He felt that these Cyclones were immensely dangerous and had to be handled with great care. He warned about the commercial risks being taken too early, before the design had been stabilised. He even hinted that he would build a failsafe into the Cyclone but never actually did anything about it."

 

"But won't there need to be extra diligence applied?" I ask, "So that none of the three components is compromised? For example, people and their diverse cultural attitudes, process versus the efforts towards frictionless operation. Technology and the need to manage so many diverse segments?"

 

"Correct on all three and it is just what Brant is aiming to resolve with the Cyclone in a de-perimeterised battlefield."

 

"I see. Strengthen the internal defences because it is just too difficult to predict all of the outer ones?"

 

Amy answers, "Yes. Embed Zero Trust Architecture into the hybrid Cyclone. Use Secure Access Service Edge - SASE - thinking to make the Cyclone impenetrable. Make it unbreakable. It's a high risk, high reward endeavour."

 

Okay then. Difficult but rewarding. Once again, I remembered that thing about unintended consequences.

Artificial: C9: The Rightmind Helmet

By the next day, we've settled into a kind of pattern. I catch the bus, say hello to Simon Gray and a couple of others at the bus stop. They seem to be 'more than just friends' and are not especially sociable with me.

 

Simon talks about his time in Brant and that he works in the pharma division. When we get to the Brant complex he even leaves the bus at a different stop.  I'm soon at my stop and meet Hermann and Rolf on the way in. They have come along together in Schmiddi's car. We get into the Lab where Juliette is already working on the Cyclone - It looks slightly different to the one that Rolf and Hermann showed me yesterday.

 

Juliette speaks, "This Cyclone headgear records brain signals without the need for surgery and can either measure the electromagnetic fields generated by groups of neurons or detect small changes in blood oxygenation, which correlate well to nearby neural activity."

 

This is a different story from the one told by Rolf and Hermann and I'm both intrigued and confused. 

 

Hermann smiles, "I can see you have been paying attention. This different helmet  - Call it Cyclone 2 - has a whole different software system and and we are in the process of combining the two systems. Call the hybrid Cyclone 3, but the effects give a much better resolution."

 

Juliette smiles and adds,"We are using magnetometers to measure tiny changes in magnetic fields and light pulses through the skull and into the bloodstream in order to measure how much oxygen the blood is carrying at any given time. It's a similar concept to the way that smart watches measure blood oxygenation but has a vastly extended coverage. The headgear takes advantage of the relative transparency of the skull and brain tissue to near-infrared light by beaming photons through the skull and measuring their scattering and absorption, allowing inference about blood flow and oxygenation. That's something called haemodynamics."

 

Hermann adds, "This headgear offers the resolution and sensitivity of state-of-the-art haemodynamic systems across the top layers of cortical tissue.

 

Hermann produces an animated diagram, "Traditional 'continuous wave' near-infrared spectroscopy devices apply light to the head continuously, which then scatters throughout and is detected at various locations upon exiting the head. It has a decent level of accuracy but the processing time (we'd call it latency) of the system means it is like having very slow reactions. In fact they are more like the reactions from someone on the other end of a satellite phone call."

 

I was thinking about some of Brant's early uses for the tech. They wanted to deploy it in military scenarios. It would be like using slightly dim low-fidelity mogadon-zombies in a war-zone. Hopeless.

 

Hermann continues to explain, "Changes in the detected light intensity allow inference of optical-property changes inside the head, like those resulting from neural activity. An analogy would be using a sonar device to detect the movement like shoals of fish in a lake."

 

I thought this all sounded too slow and only good for tracking big objects. 

 

Hermann puts up a new diagram, "Time-domain systems capture a much richer signal by applying the light in short pulses and precisely capturing the arrival time distribution of scattered photons for each pulse. On average, photons that arrive later travel deeper through the tissue, which reveals additional depth-dependent information about the optical properties of the tissue - allowing for more detailed inference of brain activity."

 

Inference - there was the word again. It was still mainly guesswork.

 

Hermann triumphantly concludes, "In other words, this Cyclone headgear is about the most advanced non-invasive haemodynamic and photon inference machine-to-brain communication device anywhere."

 

I'm thinking it is a solution looking for a problem.

 

Juliette adds, "With all these challenges, we’re very optimistic that our bionic future. BCIs don’t have to be perfect. The brain is amazingly adaptive and capable of learning to use BCIs in a manner similar to how we learn new skills like driving a car, using varifocal lenses or using a touchscreen interface. Similarly, the brain can learn to interpret new types of sensory information even when it’s delivered non-invasively using, for example, magnetic and light pulses.

  

I was thinking that it was still a case of join the dots, but someone has erased some of the dots too.

 

Too slow. Too much guesswork. Over-reliance on predictive capabilities. All before the system was hooked up to the shonky AI system. By itself, I couldn't see this working, but I couldn't tell them so. Not in my first week.

Artificial : C8 Schmiddi and Rolf explain

The next day I'm in the Lab with Schmiddi and Rolf. They are eager to tell me that I'm not the only person from Ireland joining the lab. Next week Matt Nicholson will also be joining. 

 

"I think I know something about that," I explain, "Matt was being recruited before me and I think I came  along as an afterthought."

 

They both smile.

 

Rolf speaks, "They say that Herr Nicolson knows plenty about Human to Computer interfacing. It's my specialism, so I will be keen to discuss some techniques with him."

 

I still haven't seen the Cyclone, which I'm told is part of the interface between the human brain and the computer world. 

 

Hermann goes to a locked cupboard. He opens it and brings out what looks like a heavily wired cycling helmet.

 

"Hier. See if you can work out what is happening with it," he hands it to me and I take a look inside the helmet. I'd expected it to be smooth, but now I can see several bands of small spikes criss- crossing the inside section of the helmet. I work out they must be sensors.

 

"See how the Brain Computer Interface in this is on an altogether different scale from the systems trialled previously?" asks Hermann.

 

Rolf chips in, "Cyclone technology builds on decades of BCI research in academic labs, some of which is currently being tested in ongoing clinical studies. Levi Spillmann was a clever guy and this system uses many more electrodes than the systems used in previous studies. Earlier systems used laboratory equipment and personnel to be present. Cyclone's challenge is to build a safe and effective BCI that is wireless yet behaves like an implant. It must scale up the number of electrodes yet remove the need for external equipment (other than the device being controlled), and that users can take anywhere and operate by themselves."

 

"You sound like someone presenting a crazy wish list," I say.

 

"You won't believe how many times I've had to give The Talk," answers Rolf, smiling.

 

"There's been a few false starts, but now we can microfabricate the electrode threads out of thin film metals and polymers. We’ve developed new microfabrication processes and made advances in materials science to include the integration of corrosion-resistant adhesion layers to the threads and rough electrode materials that increase their effective surface area without increasing their size."

 

"But it is still the wrong side of the skull," I say.

 

"That's where we've produced the second breakthrough," explains Rolf. I see Hermann nod as well.

 

"You may have seen the material science descriptions of liquid metal microparticles that can be steered and reshaped by external magnetic fields? It's only just being published by ETH Zurich." Rolf looks excited.

 

I had to admit I'd never seen anything like the technology that I was now hearing about,

 

Hermann takes over, "By blasting collections of microparticles with magnetic fields at alternating currents, we can increase the microparticle temperature to 35 Celsius causing them to morph from a solid into a liquid state in just over a minute. It is the first time a material capable of both shifting shape and carrying heavy loads has been identified for use in microbots.

 

Rolf adds, "Because skin is a stratified squamous keratinising epithelium, it is impermeable. Otherwise we'd have a few problems!  The clever thing is how microparticles emulate the layers of cells, which are routinely renewing and these particles  migrate to the lower skin layers and on into the body. Its a phenomenon."  

 

"Wow, isn't that defeating a major natural defence?" I ask, slightly worried that this science is becoming too god-like.

 

Hermann looks excited,"Exactly. Now these are such small particles and by emulating skin layers they find their way through the protection offered by the skin and other body defences. Do you see the possibilities? We can reconstitute the slivers to create terminators for some of the main neural pathways inside the brain and body. It is much less painful than drilling holes in the skull to implant electrodes.

 

"I see," I say, "It is allowing accessible and addressable connectors which can interface to human neural pathways?" 

 

Hermann nods again, "Yes, we can in effect perform a brain implant from outside, using magnetic forces to guide the positioning of the necessary sensors. The shape-shifting material is the latest in a string of developments across the field of microbotics — as scientists look for potential medical and mechanical applications for tiny robots in everyday life.

 

"Recent microbotic innovations include microbots small enough to potentially crawl through human arteries, intelligent enough to be taught to swim, and others capable of flying through the air powered by tiny onboard power supplies."

 

Hermann adds, "In their liquid form, these microbots can be made to elongate, divide, and merge. In solid form, they can be steered at speeds exceeding 3 mph and carry heavy objects up to 30 times their own weight. The combination means a microrobot made from the sliver material could be deployed to fix electronics in difficult to reach places. The early design used neodymium iron boron which is toxic to humans. It would only be clinically safe for use inside humans if it were completely removed from the body afterwards. The newer designs are organically integrated. The human body cannot tell they are there, so it doesn't try to put up a fight.

 

“Our microbot still needs an external heater for melting and external magnetic field for controlling the movement and shape changing,” he said, "That use of an external force prevents the microbots from being able to 'run riot'. Without the external fields, they cannot do anything."

 

"Although if we have positioned them to the right nerve complexes, they still provide the valuable transitional gateway function," says Rolf.

 

"Does this mean that the neural processing can be conducted outside of the body?" I ask.

 

"Yes," says Rolf, "That is the beauty of the approach. As long as the receptors work and the signal can be detected, an outboard signal processor is entirely feasible. Look."

 

Rolf holds the Cyclone helmet up and I can now see several small circular fitments, each about the size of a wristwatch. He explains, "Those are receivers, which handle incoming signals from the brain. The same sensor can also transmit into the brain, sending it instructions.  The link needs to convert the small electrical signals recorded by each electrode into real-time neural information. Since the neural signals in the brain are small (microvolts), the Brain/Computer link must have high-performance signal amplifiers and digitisers. Also, as the number of electrodes increases, these raw signals become too much information to upload with low power devices. Scaling our devices requires on-chip, real-time identification and characterisation of neural spikes. 

 

Hermann looks at the helmet, "See how much of the system we have managed to put outside? Anything inside the head (or the rest of the body, come to that) needs to be protected from fluid and salts. Making a water-proof enclosure can be hard, and it’s even harder when that enclosure must be constructed from biocompatible materials. 

 

"With the Cyclone we are allowing over 1,000 electrical channels to pass to external decoding and processing and that is in both directions. It is as complex as any microprocessor."

 

It's Day 2 for me at the Brant Lab and I'm blown away.