Chapter One ICES AI

It started like any other day for Ben Prolo. Ben, a hardware engineer had been given the lead designer role for the International Consortium for Engineering and Science, ICES, which is the leading organization in the world, responsible for developing the high speed parallel processing units for the five country joint top secret project in artificial intelligence. United States, England, Germany, Japan, and Switzerland all have invested interests in the ICES projects.

Starting out on his daily grind to the South Bay from the San Ramon suburbs, to an office complex that from the street in San Jose looks like any of the hundreds of other business parks, Ben arrives at his office a little after nine in the morning. Little would anyone know what goes on behind closed doors here.

"Good morning, Ben," pipes up the lovely receptionist Miss Jill Wexford.

"Good morning, Jill."

"You're running a little late."

"Yeah, the traffic was really heavy this morning."

"Dr. Penske is waiting for you."

"Give me 10 minutes, and tell him I'll meet him in his office."

"OK"

Jill Wexford is not your typical platinum blond. While she sits behind the desk as the receptionist, she has also been trained by the ICES Security branch. This 5'7" 135 lb. small frame is actually the security guard for the ICES office. She could take out a 250 lb. guy in no time flat. What most people don't know is that ICES receives billions of dollars annually for all types of top secret projects. Many of the projects, if known to the outside world would likely create a stir from the International community and the liberal media would have a heyday if they only knew.

Jill buzzed Ben into the back room where a group of 12 engineers with more IQ brain power than would be found in the top engineering class at Stanford, are mulling over the latest problems associated with the 1,280 parallel processing units and the neural interface network. Every time Ben sees this group of engineers he has to wonder how in the world he was ever appointed to be the lead designer and hardware engineer for this artificial intelligence project. Many engineers have tried to develop artificial intelligence that would be a source for learning and solving of many of the worlds problems. But, the fact is, artificial intelligence requires more than just computing power alone. Even computational speed is not the answer.

Ben thought back to his days at Cal Berkeley, where he graduated in the lower half of his class for Computer Science and how he sloughed through his school days. He remembered most of the attention was to the Stanford protégés and how Silicon Valley was all hot with the new Internet startups that were defining the role that search engines were having on the world. Ben was really tired of the liberal professors that were devoid of any belief system other than their own science. In fact these professors, if they were to really listen to themselves would realize that they had the religion of science. But, for all these professor's intelligence, they would quickly forget the first rule of science, "that which can be observed, and measured" and would build one false supposition upon another. The pride of these professors would prevent them from ever taking a step back and analyzing the building blocks to begin with.

Several years back, Ben was working for a small startup firm CPAT, developing high tech oscillators used to map out brain functions. These low frequency oscillators, LFOs, were used in a type of low frequency ultrasound. But unlike ultrasound which reflects the tissues and gives a picture of the area, the LFO creates an active signal which then can be monitored by measuring the brain heat and electrical activities of the various brain lobes. Ben's job was to build the hardware interface between the LFOs which could be adjusted in frequency, duration, and intensity to the computer monitoring systems for feedback from the brain. The early stages of this mapping program were quite promising in that they were starting to understand how to develop a neural network to be able to interface computers to humans. This job for Ben was really right up his alley. Ben had studied under professor, Lotfi Zadeh, Ph.D., considered the father of fuzzy logic at Berkeley and was heavily involved in neural networks. Professor Zadeh had taken a liking to Ben, not so much for Ben's intellectual prowess but because Ben showed an innate ability to simplify the complex and extract the roots for developing new ideas and never thought of ways of implementing theory into applications. After several years on the job at CPAT, Ben had completed his task and was let go as downsizing at CPAT had taken place because of lack of additional investor funding.

Ben was quite disillusioned with his not quite three years with CPAT. He had put his heart and soul, along with many times 16 hour days into developing the interface only to be let go. He was angry. He had enough money to last about six months and his wife was working in the teaching profession which would help tide them over till he could find another job. Ben was not looking forward to having to go through all the job interviews again. Would anyone see his potential for getting the jobs done?

Unknown to Ben, someone did indeed take notice of Ben's accomplishments. Two months after being let go from CPAT, he gets a call on his answering machine from a Dr. Brad Penske of ICES.

The message: "Ben Prolo, I am Dr. Brad Penske of ICES, International Consortium for Engineering and Science. We have seen your work at CPAT and are very interested in talking with you about a new project. I have spoken with professor Zadeh concerning your involvement in neural networks while at Berkeley. He thinks you would be an ideal candidate for what we have in mind. Give me a call at my office number 408-555-1212 ext, 47."

Ben had heard of ICES in the past, for some underwater exploration of the tectonic plates and special mapping techniques used to chart the movements of the land masses. What in the world would ICES want with neural networks? That day in late October when he called Dr. Penske would change his world forever.

Dr. Penske saw in Ben the ideal candidate for what they had in mind for this new artificial intelligence project. With Ben's understanding of fuzzy logic along with his studies of neural networks and his hardware background in computer interfaces he was right at home with the project. As months went by and the work became more complex, specialized engineers were required for all facets of computer science and even in the realms of biological sciences. It seemed as though every month had a new engineer hired that would have been out on their own making grand discoveries. The pay to hire these engineers was mind boggling. ICES paid top dollar to retain their expertise.

The computer equipment used was always the highest end, fastest processors available. Thousands of computers had come in to the facility in the past two years which required obtaining extra power service from PG&E. It amazed him that when ever additional power was required, PG&E would have a crew hook up the new service in no time flat. What kind of pull did ICES have to get updated service this fast? Other companies would have to wait six months to a year before new transformers and a higher amperage service could be installed. MIT had recently come out with a new computer system that could take the parallel processing units and mesh them together to obtain a quantum leap in the speed from input to output of data. ICES purchased two of these systems and proceeded to build a new type of neural network based on the concept of electrical signals from the brain which Ben had discovered with his work at CPAT which could easily be captured with a helmet device embedded with super sensitive electrical sensors.

As Ben walked past the engineers, many of them greeted him, with "Good Morning," while others were deep in thought and paid very little attention to his presence. Several of the engineers had put in an all-nighter and it showed. Coffee cups were strewn everywhere; on top of computer cabinets, desks, and even the work carts. This was typical for many of the engineers to spend some long hours on the job. Ben, had even spent countless extended hours himself, enmeshed deep into the inner workings of the system.

Ben figured he could check his emails to see if there was anything important that had to be attended to before talking with Dr. Penske. Ben sat down at his chair and logged onto the system. He pulled up the latest emails with a couple of general emails from a group in Switzerland dealing with neuro transmitters. Nothing urgent there, but there was another email from a friend he had worked with at CPAT with a urgency that was somewhat cryptic in the writing style.

It simply said, "Ben, this is important, we need to talk. Give me a call at your earliest convenience. C. Stutgar"

Ben could not imagine what this was about. He would have to call Chris Stutgar later.

Time to see Dr. Penske