C:/Stellos/ABRAHAM/Promotional_Files/FUTURE_FEATURE_PODCAST.txt

FUTURE FEATURE

hosted by Dr. Caroline Khan

“Harnessing a Sun: The Science of the Solar Sphere”

with SARAH STELLOS

Khan:	Good evening, listeners. Welcome back to another episode of Future Feature, where we meet with top scientists and technology leaders from around the globe to glean some of their expertise. Today, I am exceptionally grateful to be joined by Sarah Stellos, the President and CEO of ABRAHAM who – I mean, really, she needs no introduction.
Stellos:	[laughing]
Khan:	Thank you for joining us today.
Stellos:	Thank you for having me here, Dr. Khan. I love tuning in to your podcast – I must admit, I’m a little behind on some episodes…
Khan:	But who could blame you? With the work you’re doing on the Solar Sphere and Eden, I’d be surprised if you had any free time.
Stellos:	Oh, I have plenty! You know… a few seconds here and there to use the bathroom… take a nap… [laughing]
Khan:	[laughing] And I’m sure those are exceptionally nice naps.
Stellos:	All twenty minutes of them, yeah…
Khan:	So, Ms. Stellos, the Solar Sphere is outperforming even your analysts’ predictions in terms of efficiency and processing power. Reports from the tech community’s limited interactions with the Advanced Learning Intelligence indicates that it has surpassed all existing general AI models tenfold, making it possibly the first artificial superintelligence. As we head into the Spring, it looks like the only hangup the Solar Sphere has is its ability to communicate with several hundred or more users at once, right?
Stellos:	So… sort of. It’s not that the Solar Sphere is having trouble communicating with users – well, actually, the Solar Sphere doesn’t directly communicate with users at all, but…
Khan:	Wait… it doesn’t? Sorry if it’s obvious. My PhD was in biochemistry, so this isn’t quite my field.
Stellos:	No need to be sorry at all. You seem to know quite a bit about our field already! The way our technology works is… complex, to say the least. In the spirit of transparency, I plan to have my company do a lot better with explaining how it works to the public. We have so many flashy commercials and posters, but a lot of them do dance around the science.
Khan:	Maybe you can walk us through how it works.
Stellos:	Sure. And forgive my lack of technical terminology, I’m sure Tom and Nancy and Clyde and, ah… Arthur will be beside themselves if they hear this podcast. Then again, I don’t know if Arthur fully understands the Sphere either… Sorry! Getting off track. Ready?
Khan:	All ears!
Stellos:	Okay. So, you know that the Solar Sphere is a collection of satellites that orbit the Sun and collect some of its energy. The satellites were designed by Dr. Richard Matthews, my uncle and mentor, to use their energy to power an onboard network of supercomputers. These computers have an incredible amount of processing power and can do or simulate almost anything.
Khan:	As we’ve certainly seen from the tech demos.
Stellos:	Yes. But here’s the thing – those computers are all the way by the Sun, over eight light-minutes from Earth. That means it takes any radio signals that they broadcast eight minutes to travel from the Sun to the Earth. Radio waves are how we send all information to and from the Solar Sphere. If we wanted to send a direct message to the Sphere and have it respond, it would take over a quarter of an hour for that to happen. That wouldn’t work so well for our virtual world, which relies on instantaneous connections between our Eden headsets and the system.
Khan:	So… how do you get past that?
Stellos:	Past the light-travel delay? We don’t. No information can travel faster than light, at least not with our current understanding of physics.
Khan:	Oh, your team hasn’t just invented new laws of physics yet? [laughing]
Stellos:	[laughing] Well now, don’t give us any ideas. But no. We can’t circumvent relativity, so no faster-than-light communication. What we can do, though, is beam the information we get from the Solar Sphere back towards our planet, where it is stored locally in a secondary set of satellites that are in low Earth orbit. These can communicate almost instantly with the Eden headsets, and as a user connects, their central nervous system is linked with those Earth-based satellites, or “Earthsats,” with no delay. Then, data is sent between the Solar and Earth satellites. This enables the Solar Sphere to learn more about its users while sending more and more information to the Earthsats, which also have an almost unlimited storage capacity. The Sphere also sends solar energy in the form of concentrated beams to the Earth-based satellites, keeping them running at peak efficiency.
Khan:	Wait… so we’re not actually linking our brains to the Solar Sphere?
Stellos:	Technically, no. Well, usually no. Most users won’t be transmitting their nervous system data to the Solar Sphere. During testing at ABRAHAM, however, some of us do link long enough to transfer brain data and establish a sort of pseudo-connection with the Sphere itself. But that requires a hefty “portal” machine to get done, so for most users, that won’t be the case. However, we are working on new possibilities that will allow users to connect their Brains directly to the Sphere, which would allow long-term engagement with Eden.
Khan:	Okay, so… most users are only using a nearby set of satellites for all of their needs. But I’m still wondering… why do we need the Solar Sphere if we’re not actually connecting to it?
Stellos:	That’s a good question. The reason the Solar Sphere is so vital to our work is because that’s where all the energy-intensive, heavy-lifting computing takes place. You need quantum supercomputers to map and render detailed virtual worlds, to perform calculations that you simply couldn’t do on Earth, and to assist in collecting and beaming back solar energy, which keeps the Earthsats running. As far as users are concerned, the Solar Sphere is only half of our network. It creates and stores the vast amount of data needed to make Eden so realistic, and that data is constantly being sent to the Earthsats for users to interact with.
Khan:	Got it. So, users connect their brains to the Eden headsets, which then connect to the Earthsats. Those receive and transmit information to the Solar Sphere as needed, acting like a sort of virtual world… postal service, delivering information and energy all over the place.
Stellos:	Yes. Postal service… I like that analogy, though I tend to think of our system as a giant tree.
Khan:	A tree? Oh, isn’t that what you’re calling the network of communication towers ABRAHAM is building?
Stellos:	Yeah. You mentioned earlier that we were having some major communication issues with our Earthsats. Even though they can communicate with the Solar Sphere just fine, the Earthsats have a much tougher time connecting to the Eden headsets. It’s too much data for the headsets to transfer on their own, and there are a lot of geologic and atmospheric variables that affect things. So, our company came up with the Eden Tree, which is a system of towers that will give the headsets a boost so that they can easily stay connected with our Earthsats. Think of the Solar Sphere as the “roots” that send information through space – or along a “trunk” – up to the Earthsats, which connect to each tower like a set of “branches.”
Khan:	What would be the “leaves,” then? Each user?
Stellos:	That’s right! I suppose it’s a cheesy analogy.
Khan:	Not at all. So where is the ALI in all of this? Is it only stored on the Earthsats, since users have to constantly interact with it?
Stellos:	Well, Ali, she – we prefer to call her “she” – is stored on both, and constantly controls what information is sent between the Solar Sphere and Earthsats. Most of her processing power does reside in the Solar Sphere, but the elements of her that users do interact with – elements which are also very powerful – travel to the Earthsats, acting as her avatar.
Khan:	Her avatar… the famous girl in white?
Stellos:	That’s our Ali!
Khan:	In that case, would you say that there are really two pieces of the Advanced Learning Intelligence? One that stays back at the Solar Sphere, working on the virtual universe from that end, and one that travels to Earth – Ali, that is?
Stellos:	That might be a bit of an oversimplification, but, when you put it that way… perhaps. I’ll admit, that one might be a better question for our Intelligence Oversight Manager.
Khan:	Or the Intelligence herself, maybe?
Stellos:	Indeed. I can ask her later and let you know.
Khan:	Absolutely! This is really great information. Ms. Stellos—
Stellos:	Sarah, please.
Khan:	Sarah… thank you for explaining so much about the Solar Sphere. It’s a lot of advanced science, but I can tell you really care that people understand how your technology works.
Stellos:	Absolutely. I want people to place their trust in our Solar Sphere, and trust starts with understanding. Believe me, the Solar Sphere will be an inseparable part of all our lives moving forward.
Khan:	We can send so much information to the Sphere and have it respond with breathtaking virtual worlds, but… [laughing] Maybe it’s silly, but there’s something I can’t help but wonder.
Stellos:	Sure.
Khan:	What happens if the Solar Sphere sends something back to us… that isn’t virtual?