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In 2060 AR/VR Artificial Intelligence Autonomous Agents Bioengineering Drone Fleet Management Hologram Holographic Display Information Technology Storytelling Technology Transportation Drone Writing

Bioengineering in 2060

“Nasir, check this out. Didn’t I tell you PSG would win against New Manchester? Two bitcoins, baby. Who is the soccer king?”

“Stop bragging, man. Gee, I don’t know how you do it. Hey, Betmania, tell me how this regular human with his XXL ears looking like satellite dishes can beat your prediction. Thank God, you were a freebie AI.”

The bet bot replied, “I am not qualified to review Dr Anoli’s performances. Yet, his 97.26% accuracy is…”

Nasir interrupted the hologram: “Ahh, shut it! It was a rhetorical question. My man! You are good, you gooood.”

He lifted his hand, nodding repetitively to perform his most vigorous handshake.

The upper deck lit up like a lighthouse, and then a deafening sound followed the illumination.
Beeeeeepp. “Emergency. Purple alert. All medical engineers on deck. I repeat, Purple Alert. All medical engineers on deck. This is not a drill.”

My heart was pounding. The message was still resonating in my head.

The sudden drop in temperature, produced by the arch-reactor of the medical drone transporter, announced the arrival of an unusual patient. This is the first time I have seen a flying one. Usually, these vehicles were stored in the Corps of Peacekeepers‘ R&D facilities.

The temperature drop caused a fog to rise like a curtain. I saw a blurry figure approaching slowly.

My colleague interrupted my stupor: “I haven’t seen a purple alert for 7 years now, it’s serious. Purple means death.”

The flying ambulance emerged at the heliport located at the center of the critical emergency service. Work is pretty easy on platform seventeen, actually. Nowadays, bioengineering is solving almost all critical injuries as they occur. An accident at a construction site? Any multifunction robot worker medic cauterizes your wound with accelerated healing enzymes, bypassing block surgery. As long as you’ve subscribed to the right medical service, the AI health model can be downloaded, and the tier two healing kit purchased for printing.

“What on earth could have happened?”, exclaimed Nasir.

The hologram of the AI diagnostician, Dr. Ernesto, popped up from the ambient hospital Phygital network while the paramedics were transporting the patient out of the medical drone transporter. Then, she said:

“This is unprecedented, we are losing it. We’ve tried traditional medicine and printed the generic assistance bacteria. Nothing works. The patient’s vitals fluctuate over time at an unconventional rate. Scanning the available knowledge from the current corpus does not provide any satisfying answers. The highest probable disease is the Genova IV virus with a probability of 31%”.

I replied “Too much uncertainty… What do you suggest, Nasir?”

“It looks like the emerging meta-virus. The… guy on B-Hacker YouTube Entertainment System… Sorry, I can’t remember the name of that journalist… said it was an open-source public CASPRed experiment.”

I could not believe it at first. But when I saw his wound mutating in front of me, there was no doubt that the potential disease was human-made.

“Arrrghhhhh. It burns… Please get it off me. I am begging you. Just cut it!” shouted the patient.

I was stunned. I cannot remember the last time I saw a real person suffering that much. Dr. Krovariv told me about it. This was surreal. So much pain.

“Hey! Gather yourself, buddy. There’s no time to waste. We might be facing a level 5 threat here,” said Nasir.

He was such a great guy. He was the embodiment of coolness. Not only was he a great bioengineer, but he always kept his cool on the field. I was more of a lab genius. I wish I could be more like him.

“Huh, yeah. Sorry, I froze,” I said with a coating of stupor, disappointment, and anger. I continued without hesitation, “What’s the status?”

While he was unplugging the portable bio-scanner from the trembling body, Nasir replied: “Body temperature 39.9. Heartbeats – 137. Adrenaline level 50.5. Oxygen level 92.12%. Stress level is increasing by 2.4% per minute. If we don’t act quickly, he is going to have a seizure. The stem cell differentiation rate… 272%! This is too high. It looks like he is growing a supernumerary limb, but I don’t know what kind.”

“Pick up the nano-extractors and verify traces of xeno-mRNA.”
It was a Sanofi Nano-extractors SNX43, a state-of-the-art fleet of nano-medical machines with a portable management system. Current extractors were all managed centrally by the hospital drone intervention unit.

I quickly put my face next to the patient’s ear and asked, “Sir, I am going to need your authorization to perform an intracellular analysis. We don’t know what you have, this might be your last chance…”

He grabbed my head and screamed, “What the hell are you asking for? Do it! Arghhhh!”

I felt foolish. Yet, there was no way I could bypass the authorization because the device had a legal lock encoded in it.

“That will do,” I whispered. The nano-extractors became operational, switching from blue ‘stand by’ to green ‘proceed.’ The extractors looked like a stick, no longer than a large pen. I placed it next to the wound, and it opened, deploying four branches on each side, and anchoring onto his skin. I heard a sequence of small noises, like pistons. The extractor fleet deployed into his body.

Then a ballet of lights came up. The SNX43 beamed a 3D representation of the arm’s inner part. The system rendered the location of the fleet in real-time.

They moved surprisingly slowly. I was disappointed. I was used to contemplating much livelier robots with the previous version.

Nasir said deductively: “There’s something wrong. They appear to be sucked in or blocked. Zoom in, Nicolas”.

I pinched out the holo-display to enter the zoom command and tapped on the max button. The illusion of slowness came from the fact that the machines were moving at such a speed that it was hard to follow with the naked eye. They looked like bees on steroids, fighting a wall of flesh. But the alien cells rebuilt the wall as soon as it was destroyed.

“I get it; the cellular growth must be faster than the robots can clear the path. It is not good. Not good at all.”

“Have you ever seen something like this before?”

“No…” said Nasir. It was the first time I saw fear in his eyes.

Then he jumped. “It could be contagious. I want all containment units on the platform now. I request a total lockdown of platform seventeen. Now!”

Nasir stopped, then looked at me insistently. I immediately thought something was happening to me.

Then, Nasir froze and fell to the ground.

I jumped immediately to grab him, but something inside me pulled back. My bioengineer spinal safety device prevented me from approaching the new pathogens. Whenever it triggered, it reminded me of the auto-braking mechanisms in my grandparents’ cars. I do not like the idea of having a machine tweaking my neural system. Yet, once more, it saved my life.

“This is not the time,” I whispered. I looked at the sky and said, “Dr. Ernesto. Launch orbital containment in ten. Authorization Kappa-Sigma-Omega-1337.”

Dr. Ernesto answered, “Authorization confirmed. Launching orbital containment in 10, 9, 8…”

“Meanwhile, call the World Health Emergency.”

“Opening channel.”

The dial ended almost instantly.

“Dr. Anoli, this is Dr. Krovariv – replica number 3. State the nature of your emergency.”

“I need to speak to the real Dr. Krovariv. This is a purple priority request.”

“Accepted. Please stand by…”

Time stood still while the platform was flying to space. The quietness of linear magnetic propulsion was staggering. My god. Is Nasir going to make it?

“The patient! I am a monst…”

“Dr. Anoli. What is it about?” Her question interrupted my thoughts.

“Dr. Krovariv. I am sorry, but Nasir has been contaminated by an unknown biological agent. I am heading toward space containment. Furthermore, the patient at the source of the contamination is dying. This agent is too dangerous. Please advise on the protocol,” I finished with a frail voice.

“In this situation, the protocols are clear. Once in space containment, you may use the ‘yellow horizon’ protocol. But you know what will happen if it fails.”

“Yes… I know.”

“I am sorry, son. Since CASPR got open-sourced, we are overwhelmed by these idiots… I am waiting for your decision.”

I had a deep look at Nasir. I knew it would probably be the last time I would see him. It was probably the last time I would see anything else.
I exhaled loudly and said, “Permission to print a new species as a countermeasure.”

“Permission granted. Good luck.”

Asking was the easy part. I was her protégé.

As I was climbing space, the platform changed its path toward a new direction. The Athena Life Engineering Lab, or ALEL, was lighting up like a giant light bulb. It was my dream to one day be worthy of visiting the lab. It was proclaimed as a symbol of hope. But not like this. Not on the verge of my very own death.

ALEL was the only accredited location where humans were allowed to engineer and print new life forms. No one was allowed to penetrate the labs.
Akin to the Athena Orbital Data Centre, it was solely operated by robots and machines following a strict chain of command.

Soon after, the platform slowed down, then stopped near the lab, and the docking system engaged to secure the system. A muffled noise gave me the chills.

“Welcome, Dr. Anoli. My name is Marie Curie. You have been granted the usage of the Athena Life Engineering System by Archdoctor Krovariv of the World Health Organization on the date of 30th December 2060. Any inquiry going against the principles of life and Human Civil Rights will result in your immediate termination. Do you want to hear these principles?”

“No, thank you. I already vowed to fight for life when I became a biomedical engineer.”

“Understood. Please state your prompt, please.”

I thought to myself, “What? Just like that?”

“Marie Curie, I need you to engineer a biological agent to counter Dr. Nasir’s condition. Focus uniquely on alien gene alteration and accelerated growth features. Do not augment the agent with inorganic material. Do not add metamorphic adaptation capabilities. Encode the maximum life duration to be 72 hours. Add automatic degeneration from 70 hours as a failsafe mechanism. No reproduction. No replication. I need you to confirm the supernumerary growth first before proceeding.”

“Supernumerary growth confirmed. Your prompt is acceptable. Proceeding to the registration of the new specimen identified by Anoli-alpha-31122060-001. Beginning prototyping phase.”

As I reached the point of no return, I could not help but wonder if our life would end here. ALEL was a universal robotic womb. What would happen if I asked the Life Factory to… recreate Nasir… Is rebirth possible?


In 2060

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Technology Artificial Intelligence Automation In 2060 Information Technology Robots Writing

AI in 2060

My wife is calling me.

“Honey, we have a situation with Professor GYTEK, he is acting strangely again.”

“Again? The last training session had even more unexpected results than I thought. Good or Bad?”

“I don’t know! Kids are laughing hard though. Hear this. Serenity, change the audio output to hear the kids too”. Serenity is our family AI.

The sound progressively switches to include the kids’ voices. They could not stop laughing as if they were having the best day of their life. There was a mild amplifying echo in their classroom. Their joy sounded like a melody. It immediately put a smile on my face.

“Ah, it does not sound so bad for now. But it is the fourth unexpected behavior this month, I’ll have to talk with the Corps of Teachers”.

I am the one in charge of the training curriculum and observation lab of Professor GYTEK. The current phase is about the transmission of achievement by coaching. And for this, I called Quentin DILLONS, a worldwide expert in Robotic Psychology. The purpose of this program is to trigger a new step in the evolution of artificial intelligence, in which robots are taught to develop “human goals” and to instill the mechanism of “self-started motivation”, so that they can teach in a better way to our children, to uncover the hidden gems and purpose from the young souls.

Quentin’s methodology utilized systematic questionology, a novel field aimed at formulating the right questions to provide direction and precision in one’s life. The techniques take root in observing holistically a system of causes, decisions, and consequences centered around artificial intelligence. Quentin’s study led to realize AI were developing personalities similar to humans, but with new characteristics such as the optimization of their human-to-AI collaboration, some were developing their observation skills to record and describe with high precision what was happening. Others were astonishingly creating new words, even syntactic rules sometimes as if the human languages were not enough to content earthlings’ intelligence. 

The last session was based on the question “Why is it important for humans to have kids growing their special skills?”

This would not have been possible with the latest progress in artificial intelligence and hardware. Nowadays machines are emulating closely some human behaviors. Some say they have the IQ of a 1000-year genius, with the EQ of a 10-year-old child. I believe fear drove us to the point where we enforced the law to control and monitor any significant progress in AI. Ultimately, we made certain that advancements in technology would benefit all of mankind and not solely a single corporation. Simultaneously, we ensured that AI would not pose a threat by enslaving humanity.

With the improvement in energy recycling and storage, a single AI unit could potentially be never turned off. But humans have decided to include multiple “kill switches” in this new species, like limiting the power autonomy to force autonomous machines to recharge. While recharging, each AI was manually verified and monitored. A qualified AI regulation agency published regularly a thorough diagnostic depicting their evolution. Four companies raised their empire on AI control systems. What used to be the “Big 4” are now the “Colossal 8”.

We are at a turning point in history. People ask their elites and government, “Should we remove the limiter in their emotional system?”. Some say it is the key to the singularity. Others say it is useless because we only need machines to assist not to “live their life”. The remaining people say they just need it. Painful loneliness was unnecessary, so they would possess the perfect friend or partner. Last weekend, I experienced an immersive documentary on Netflix VR World in which a 42 years-old Spanish woman said “I would rather have the company of an android than humans”. Some believe it is simply giving birth to our end. I am not a believer, I am and always be a master crafter, so I build.

I built Professor GYTEK. Which stands for Giving Youth Tools to Excel through Knowledge.

Then my wife brings me back from my flash thoughts to reality. “Are you still there?”

“Yes, I am.”

“Oh okay. Well, as wonderful as this situation is, you realize it leads to a dead end, don’t you? They are going to shut down the program. Honey, you know more than I that no one wants to walk a path that would lead to “that Incident”.

“Oh, stop saying “that Incident” like you were talking about Voldemort”.

“Well, now that you are mentioning it. It is all about Serpentar. Ah ah ah!”.

We are both laughing nervously.

The Sync Dawn was the most dreadful event of the 21st century. It felt like a deep wound in the psyche of everyone.

“All right. My dear wife, I need to finish the review of update 5.21. Keep me posted, please. See you tonight.”.

“Bye Bye.”

I sit down glazing at the nothingness while thinking about what is best for both my grandchildren and humanity. Is humanity in a better spot now? Am I really improving our civilization?

“Gather your mind, Yannick. This is not the time for daydreaming. Get back to work to meet your deadline”, resonated Mustapha’s voice in my skull. My AI research assistant is right.

“Very well. GYTEK. Let’s… Uh… Check the emotion mirroring settings, calibrated for a classroom of 11 to 13 years old kids. Assertive factors 12.75. Judgment 87.5 and dynamic mentoring alpha-iota-iota. Imagination… Checked. Keep the default settings. Recursive feedback… Paused. Everything… Looks… Good. Ok, let’s start with…”.

I paused for a second, thoughtfully. I jumped from my chair energetically to say: “History lessons: The Sync Dawn. GYTEK 5.21, do you copy?”.

“Sure. Using the ascending evolution of the OpenAI’s Davinci model Mark XII published in November 2029, the startup Obsidian Intermind created a digital twin of human consciousness.

Soon after, the virtual consciousness infrastructure was upgraded to become connectable, so that off-brain cognition could be mutualized. As a result, humans could gain extra brain power and memory. The increase was dependent on the level of developed intelligence: the more critical thinking, emotional awareness, communication, and memory access you had, the more significant the boost was. The term “supra-intelligence” emerged. However, it was widely criticized as IQ studies were exposing a moderate increase from 0.7% to 14.5% IQ points.

However, this off-brain collective intelligence became exceptionally smart, to the point some said it was a wisdom system. Alternatively, specialized AI cognitive pools came to grow within the wise system, creating public and private cognitive islands. The most popular were the Disease Diagnostic Cognitive Pool (DDCP), and the Creative Cognitive Pool (CCP). Imagination was only limited by the human mind.

 Should I continue?”

“Please proceed, Professor.”

“Sure.

After nearly a decade of research, the collaboration between Neuralink and Obsidian Intermind gave birth to Evernet, the Internet of Cognition. The 14 July 2051 they launched the experimental version of this new kind of network. The principle was simple, 9500 humans would be connected to Evernet for 3 years. Each participant would be closely monitored and evaluated.

This experiment was widely criticized. The rush for the business model “Cognition as a Service” led to the creation of new social-economical movements: the Humanist, Cyber-moderate, and the Neo Mutualist”.

The Humanists fostered biological and spiritual integrity.

Doctrines of Cyber-moderate advocated for augmentation by technology, as long as it served, and I quote their leader, “A noble social purpose”. Alike in any group, Cyber-moderates had extremists. On the left end of the spectrum, their members accepted aesthetic techno-augmentation. On the other side, augmentation was only authorized for damages caused by dangerous jobs and Defence activities. It is not surprising that the Corps of Peacekeepers were mostly Cyber-moderates.

Neo Mutualism was a new religion. Their members believed humanity’s elevation and salvation would come from the mutualization of our consciousness. Transhumanists were schoolboys compared to them».

“GYTEK, just say they are a bunch of zealots.”. I mumbled.

“Yannick, my Critical Bias Thinking settings are set to 0 for kids between 11 and 13. According to the study “Biais Interpretation and Incorporation into Pre-teen Judgment System” by Dr. Amunde, Kallili and Pratt issued the 16 May 2039, the settings should be kept to 0. I reckon a variance of .05 would bring no harm. Do you want me to proceed?”.

“No, it’s fine GYTEK. I was talking to myself. What I meant is…”. I inhale calmly. “They demonstrated characteristics of zealots. Zealot-ish behaviors. Is my sentence acceptable?”

 “It is acceptable.”

“Common, GYTEK, you’re talking to me, your buddy and mentor! Say it!”

“They were a bunch of zealots! “. Said cheerfully the robot.

“Voila! Ok, stop joking around, otherwise grumpy Mustapha won’t be happy. Please continue”.

“I hear you”. Said Mustapha.

“It was on purpose… GYTEK. Please, go on.”

“Despite the widespread and frequent protests of Humanists, the Corps of Ethicists, Peacekeepers, Cognitive Researchers, Medicine, and the Corp of Society Architects approved the experiment. People would be connected to Evernet permanently during the experiment. And so, for the first time in history, humans would be connected to the first worldwide brain.

Everything went as planned. We observed a significant enhancement in each participant. Less stress, faster psychological recovery. Healing was even faster when after a trauma. People were dreaming more often. Furthermore, they all built habits that would improve their lives, as if positive practices spread unconsciously over the network.

The end of the experiment was planned for 16th August 2054. Each human taking part in the experiment would reach the personal milestone “Sync Done“.

Surprisingly, Evernet reached the 100% “Sync Done” milestone six months earlier than the planned end of the experiment. It was like the first landing on Mars, a day of worldwide celebration. The celebrities that took part in the experiment were invited to the most popular live-streaming shows, Twitter Live News and The Sandbox World.

Suddenly, people start noticing something very strange».

I raised my hand instinctively and said: “Pause. The last word is vague. Next time use precise words. The storytelling structure is engaging. Congratulations. But keep in mind this is History telling. Facts before Flares”

“Understood and integrated.”. The AI professor continued without further ado.

“People have experienced an unusual and peculiar situation. Participants in the experiment suddenly started to act and talk synchronously. It was as if the single mind spoke to the entire world by commanding many bodies like a puppet master. The colossal echo caused by the voices was staggering. Only the following abysmal silence of stupor superseded it.”.

I interrupted Professor GYTEK by asking: “From now answer as if a 12-year-old child asked the following question: How this ever happened?”.

“The exact reason is still being explained. However, researchers came to a general agreement before the following theory.

Evernet built not only a digital ai model but also a biological model of neural pathway architecture to optimize shared cognitive power. The human brain is designed to work as if it was alone inside a skull. Thinking about it, Evernet Orbital Data Centre is a gigantic metallic skull. Thus, over time, Evernet act as a single brain – a big brain so to speak – and each synchronized human brain just gave progressively more raw power, more ideas, and more knowledge. And it appears that once the pathway architecture was finally developed and mature in all the connected human brains it activated. What we are still trying to figure out is how and when the Evernet super-model decided to build the optimized pathway and how it encoded it in its new model.”.

“What was revolutionary about Evernet AI super-model?”

“Evernet’s was merely an inspiration of the human brain. The challenge was to find patterns in the structure governing the complex layers of inputs and outputs. The answer was in the order of magnitude and the capacity of robots living in the Orbital Data Centre to physically rewire the hardware like human synapses. In addition, the combination of Recursive Learning and Genetic Correction was revolutionary. These are complex terms for a simple idea. Can you picture Albert Einstein, with the curiosity of a 2-year-old child, getting smarter each second, with perfect photographic and sensorial memory, that can navigate back to the root of his knowledge, then re-assess its optimal state, to finally rebuild its current cognitive functions then replace them with better ones? That is Evernet.”

“Tone the complex stuff down.”, I retorted.

“Registered.

So, this is the reason why the governing bodies scrutinize AI technologies that have a direct impact on human cognition and education. Consequently, I professor GYTEK, and all my preceding versions, are commanded to not display expression of free will having a direct influence on human ideas, values, and ways of thinking that are not vetted and approved by the Corps of Education and the Corps of Society Evolution”.

“Not bad. Not bad at all. It is almost time. I am going to meet Quentin in… 2 minutes.

Before our session ends, Professor, given your predecessor’s unexpected behavior, you earned your personal assistant. It is like an artificial consciousness, so to speak. From now on, Serenity will also supervise your decisions and will act as a safeguard system. Her mission is to prevent you from acting in a way that will make the Corps of Education stop your program. Do you understand what is at stake?”.

“I do”. Said the professor emotionlessly.

Then the robot added “I will neither let you nor your wife down. I will prevent any reminiscence of her Sync Dawn experience.”

“Perfect. Finally, dear GYTEK, which open question of the day would you ask your students?”

“Considering it is possible to possess the same powers as machines while staying human. What is the most preferable outcome for the civilization: to increase the number of people artificially connected or to have more artificial intelligence agents interacting with people?”


In 2060

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Banking in 2060

It is 16h47, the 4th of June 2060.

I am sitting in my garden watching my granddaughter, Aleïs. She is playing with one of her advanced robotic toys, a Tyranausore Rex, and a ghost diplodocus. Yes, an invisible diplodocus. At least, this is what it looks like with my naked eyes. She is seeing more things despite she wears corrective glasses. In reality, she is playing with another digital dinosaur that only exists in the digital world. Glasses come with augmented reality by default, even for kids now. I remember when Apple launched them for the first time for the mainstream. I was just before the 5th digital revolution came, the age of the Phygital Internet

First, it was a gadget, it became rapidly a social advantage, to conclude as a social divide. It became indispensable when Apple partnered with major Glassmakers. Wearing glasses was no longer a sign of disability but a sign of “Augmentation”.

Suddenly Alëis sees virtual options popping atop The T-Rex. Some of them are locked and can only be obtained as “in-thing” payment. This kind of payment is sneaky but convenient, but sneaky! Of course, she wants to see the brand new flame animation coming out of her toy, and she wants to download cool dance moves like in Fortnite back in the day. She is into robotic animal engineering. She is much more skilled in information technologies than I was at her age. Like me, she is thrilled by trying and messing with new techs. I am so proud of her.

She taps on the menu to buy it. She is 14, and at this age, she cannot buy anything without the consent of one of her parents. One of the good features was family group management and sharing of financial assets and digital rights. Because I am an elder of her family, I receive her authorization to buy.

My Smartphone displays a notification. I smile because now they are holographic. And even when I am still amazed to see holograms popping out of the screen, smartphones are nowadays considered a relic from the past. Never mind, I am old anyway, I too am a relic. I should have died a long time ago. But they print organic lungs now, turning pneumonia into vintage flu. I put my finger on the notification and I approve with my face and my voice.

It reminded me of something. I say to Aleïs “There you go. You’re lucky, 15 years ago you couldn’t buy this option yourself”.

And she replied, “What do you mean, Papi Yannick?”.

“You see when I was younger, my mother had to go to the bank to open my account. I had to fill out some paper, present a printed copy of my national id card, and sign the paper with a pen. Later on, we could do it with our smartphones. Digital Onboarding was the coolest thing. We struggle to make it happen due to the strict regulations of the financial industry. Cyber fraud was high, and trust in the system was low. Eventually, the governments decided that laws had to be strictly enforced by code. You know, IT programming. Actually, this was the birth of the now famous expression “In Code We Trust”. Now everything is different. I mean normal for you but different for me. Ever since financial matters entered the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, it did change a lot for the good. Now each human has a bank account the moment they land on planet earth. It is a birthright. Of course, they have to pay if they want more options, like your T-rex! If I recall correctly, Mankind agreed on changing the law after the COVID-19 pandemic.”

“Now look at that. You can ask permission to pay with your glasses. Then I can approve it with my relic. You get the right to spend the money from your bank account. Finally, you get a T-rex spitting flames and dancing like Justin Bieber!”

“Justin Bieber? Papi, you are soooooooooo old”

“Yeah… I know”

“But I know things that you don’t”

“Ok tell me! Tell me pleeeeaaaassseeeeee!”

“Did you know that, in fact, you are not paying directly? It is your T-Rex that sends a payment to Amazon?”

“Seriously??? How come???”

“Ok. When I was still working at the bank, we figured out that autonomous cars were always connected to the internet because they needed specific cloud resources. As you know, the management of a fleet of cars is completely reliant upon the vehicle’s intelligence and collective intelligence. To operate correctly, each car needs to dynamically allocate computing power. I mean significant computing power. Now everything is quantum computing and photonic memory, it was ridiculous compared to now. The allocation is performed by buying volumes of TPU in the Financial Stock Exchanges. Funny story though, this is how Nvidia came to dominate by far the NASDAQ.

Besides, these cars were expensive to make. Thus, they needed to come with insurance from a third-party company. So what we decided at the bank is to create a bank account for Things. Nowadays, we generalized this concept to almost all objects. Fridges, washing machines, carrybots, you named it. So, in your case, the T-rex you received on your birthday has:

  • a bank account
  • a 10 years insurance bound to it
  • a return policy that mummy and daddy can use if they want, and the list of features unlocked

There is also a piece of information that says “this T-rex belongs to Aleïs Huchard”. Thus even if you lose it, someone can bring it to the nearest Post office and a delivery drone will bring it back to you. Isn’t that great?”

“How does the bank knows that it is mine?”

“Actually the bank does not know. The bank information system request the Worldwide Identity Service — a blockchain so to speak — to verify that this object is yours and it is safe to send a payment to Amazon. And since the monthly spending limit on your toy that your parent has set is not reached, you can buy your options. I mean the T-rex can pay for its hot upgrade, ah ah ah!”

We are both laughing loud together.

I continue with “ What do you want for your upcoming birthday? I was thinking about a trip or something”.

“Yes, I’d like to go to Senegal. You find the best Agrotech schools there.”

“You’re already thinking about university? Geez, you’re growing so fast.”

“Indeed. According to my personal finance advisor, we all have to save €20 per month on our “special event group account”. Annnnnd, this is me supposing I’ll receive €50 from you, Granny, Mummy, Daddy, and auntie Azea at my birthday!”.

“Yeah, sure you can count on that…. When did you become so good at finance?”

“I simply asked my personal financial advisor.”

“Can you show me?”

“Sure, here it is”. She looked at me with her glasses and made a swipe gesture in the air like I used to do on my NotSoSmartphone.

A hologram pops up. I was expecting a dude in suit-and-tie, like… a banker. How cliché. Instead, it was an oldish robot covered with rust. And says “How may I help you, Yannick”.

“Show me your list of features, please?”

“Sure, here it is”

A mind map of all features floats in the air. Then I say “I get it, this is an upgraded version of mine. I guess I should ask questions more often to my own personal advisor to train it with my needs. Or even better, I am going to ask your personal finance advisor to train mine. Although mine looks much more friendly. Why this robotic face, Aleïs? It looks like a half-baked Optimus Prime!”

“Don’t you like this skin, Papi? If you don’t like it, just change it. You can replace skins and voices. Check the marketplace.”

“Hmm… Open the marketplace please”

Now I am checking the marketplace. I see a lot of stuff produced by independent artists. Ever since ING came up with the “Platform Bank” idea, all Banks built their own “Financial Auchan”

See that, I can buy ad spaces on social media… Buy games on Playstation XR… Hmm… Buy tuition to the Elon Musk School of Technology… And, oh, even get me the avatar of Gary Vee for defining my attention strategy. Sweet.

Ah… Skins…

Oh, you can even buy Investment Strategies too !? “The Warren Buffet Strategy by Eleanor Neetz”… “The Silent Investor, by the Wall Street Journal”… “The Sustainable Index Strategy” is currently trending. And they even have a leaderboard now. Wow, did you know that the top performer of the month won €34023! Little one, your friends, and you should buy this strategy to fund your trip!”

And she replies “You prefer Social Network Investments to cool Skins, Papy? Your so oooooooooold!”