Operating System in the AI era

We use operating system (OS) in our day-to-day life while using mobile phones, home devices, desktops, laptops, and many more devices. Without them most of our devices won’t work at all.

We already know that they are a serious piece of work that requires hardcore programming skills and knowledge of hardware and its working. These systems are used to automate tasks that we do daily on our machines. Like for example, mobile phones are used in many ways like a gaming console, an entertainment box, a productivity machine, a health partner, and many more. Do you know most of the work on our phone is done by OS like Android or iOS? These OS’s run on hardware and provide intelligence to the hardware.

In this article, my focus is on a conceptual OS(conceptOS) which is not like the OS’s we use in our daily life, but a minimal code, based on user interaction. Let me put my thought in a statement here.

“An OS that starts from a maximal code and slowly and gradually reduces itself to minimal, based on the user interaction with the machine. The kernel code should be smart enough to add whatever modules are required and delete those which are not needed or seldom required. Intelligence, Performance, and Optimality should be at the heart of the system. The system should adjust itself and keep the applications running inside a container. This way the system will be less affected by bugs in an application. The system should keep its eye on what user is doing and keep adjusting itself on the fly.” —–(1)

Sounds weird right!

Yes, initially but if we try to delve into the challenges operating system designers face while designing the code for a piece of hardware then you will be able to understand the real pain.

Let me start making my point of view on the statement mentioned in paragraph (1) above. The design of an operating system has to be such that the main focus is on reliability, security, and privacy. The heart of the operating system should focus on Intelligence, Performance, and Optimality. Figure 1 demonstrates the idea.

An Intelligent kernel is the one that does all the trimming, moving, doing optimal performance evaluation, and provide the necessary support for security and privacy analysis with reliability. All these features are important features of conceptOS.

The entire OS is plug-n-play from kernel to above layers. Even layers are plug-n-play. If a layer is not required then it can also be moved out of the device and if needed then could be installed.

How conceptOS works:

1. Initially, maximal OS is loaded with all the components required for the device.
2. Slowly, the system learns and creates a model around the usage of the device, behaviour of user.
3. The generic model is constantly updated in cloud and stores data in private cloud disk of the user.
4. When the generic model is fully matured then, the system offloads any module not required and adds or updates any module which is required by the personalized model.
5. If any app is not used for a long time, but could be used based on the heuristics then it could be partially offloaded so that if it is required by the used then in no time it could start working.
6. By using predictive APIs, we can suggest applications to user for better productivity.
7. The security & privacy of the data in cloud is managed by encryption, blockchain technology and by a security model running in cloud.
8. No one is allowed to peep into the data unless user allows it.
9. An intelligent kernel is the one which does all the intelligent work, in accordance to cloud model, and provide necessary support to the above layers.
10. If any module or data is offloaded then it will be uploaded to the cloud disk, but a link inside the OS will always be there so that if any module is required then it could be downloaded from the cloud disk.

The conceptOS architecture, which is described in Figure 2, is a layered model in which each layer is built upon others. The innermost layer is called the kernel, which does mostly all the intelligent tasks like trimming, containers addition/deletion

The result of this could be a virtualMe. A virtual individual who lives in the parallel virtual world and behaves much like a human in the physical world.

References

Morgan, Christopher Edwin. “Self-moving operating system installation in cloud-based network.” U.S. Patent No. 8,984,104. 17 Mar. 2015.