Nick D’Aloisio, a clever British college student and computer scientist whose company sold the so-so Summly news app to Yahoo in a very strange deal, began raising venture capital when he was just 15. The biggest red flag ever! Now 19, he dreams of predictive systems that answer our every question even before we’ve asked them. For a look at what (some of the) kids are thinking about these days, an excerpt from Ian Tucker’s Guardian interview with the wunderkind:

Question:

Are the visions of AI outlined by film-makers in movies like Her pretty good guesses of where we are heading?

Nick D’Aloisio:

I think Her is a pretty good guess. Not in terms of how it ends but the stuff about a virtual assistant which has a personality and can adapt around you. I think it won’t be as great as what it is in Her, but the Siri is now a very primitive example of what it can be. My dream is an assistant who would teach me about things around me. I think that’s coming in the next 10 or 20 years.

Question:

What do you mean by that?

Nick D’Aloisio:

So as I’m sitting at this table, it’s explaining about convection currents and the heat. It’s telling you what calories are in that chocolate eclair. If you say something I don’t understand it explains what that word means. It’s aware the whole time.

Question:

Sounds like more information overload.

Nick D’Aloisio:

I guess it is but it’s relevant information. Basically it’s a virtual brain. I would love that.

Question:

So we’re 10 years from a virtual brain?

Nick D’Aloisio:

I don’t know about the singularity but I think predictive systems are getting better at determining what you want to learn or what you want to ask.

Question:

The virtual brain knows what you want before you realise it yourself?

Nick D’Aloisio:

No, but without me having to actually input “what’s the weather like”?, it can tell from sensory data that my body temperature’s changed, and therefore I might be wondering why has the change happened. So it’ll tell me that the weather’s just dropped or whatever. There’s a lot of things you can do with prediction based on the sensory stuff. The Apple Watch is a great example of prediction through biometrics.•