INSTINCT Back in about 1980, YAIR Co-founder Alex Blok walked into a Tandy Radio Shack store in Newbury, England and saw a personal computer for the first time, a Commodore PET. "This isn't how I expected a computer to be", he thought. Other than a strange keyboard, it had no obvious manner in which to instruct it to do things, unlike in science fiction where people spoke to screens or scribbled on tablets - an invisible brain carrying out commands instantaneously, as if instructing another human.This was incredibly disappointing.
By Your Command
Surely artificial intelligence would be a far better way to get things done than spending years developing or learning how to use operating systems and 'programs'* custom designed for specific tasks? So, in 1982, Alex made the decision to design machines that would not require programming or training to operate, rather the opposite, assist you! He conceived the term Task Machine to reference a variety of smart devices including hand held satellite linked communicators, stylus driven drawing & productivity tablets and multimedia home control and entertainment ‘Telecomputers’. Each based on a connected AI operating system named Instinct.In 1984 Alex tried to develop a program on the Acorn BBC Micro that by accessing a vast database of all the world's knowledge could pass the Turing test. However, lack of advanced programming skills, storage space, and the yet to become public Internet confined this effort to the 'Fail - Try later' folder.
Between then and now, Alex and his engineers sinned by deviating from this path of AI salvation, producing various regular software applications for early personal computers, including desktop publishing and audio reactive graphics. All whilst keeping the vision for an obedient electronic servant in the corner of his mind.
Later Is Now
Fast forward to today, and the recent excitement over AI has vindicated the on demand do as I ask model of getting things done. In 2022 YAIR began work on the first Task Machine, the TaskPad™, with Instinct being architected to ensure privacy and content copyright are respected.So It Ends.*The term used for turnkey software before the word 'apps' was introduced.