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A view from the founder · September 2026

Insights

Industrial revolution. Digital. AI. The Uplift. Open Mind. Phil’s view of the macro changes in our civilisation — and the shift from natural evolution to purpose-driven evolution. First we build more capable tools. Then we deliberately change our own capabilities.

The macro shifts in our civilisation

First we change our tools.
Then we change ourselves.

A lens on the past and the founder’s hypothesis for what follows AI. These are changes in capability, not a timeline drawn to scale.

Industrial → Digital → AI
Extending human capability through toolsThe Uplift → Open Mind
Proposed shifts in human capability itself
  1. 01

    Mechanical power

    Industrial revolution

    We extend our strength.

    Machines multiply what our bodies can make and move.

  2. 02

    Connected information

    Digital

    We extend our reach.

    Computers and networks let us store, process and share information.

  3. 03

    Machine intelligence

    AI

    We extend our thinking.

    Machines take on cognitive work. More capable AI and improved computing, including quantum, advance this same phase.

  4. 04

    Purpose-driven evolution

    The Uplift

    We change the thinker.

    The proposed shift: deliberately enhance human intelligence itself, rather than wait for natural evolution.

  5. 05

    Connected minds

    Open Mind

    We think together.

    The proposed next shift: share thinking directly between minds, while remaining individuals.

Better AI + better computing

More powerful models and quantum computing are accelerators within the AI phase. They do not mark a new civilisational phase in this story.

The Uplift is the phase change.

The subject of improvement becomes us: human intelligence itself.

Natural evolution

Change across generations.

Biological change without a chosen destination.

Purpose-driven evolution

Change towards a chosen purpose.

The hypothesis: people deliberately shape the next stage of their own cognitive development.

“Natural evolution is too slow.” Phil’s argument: the next great shift is from waiting for biological change to deliberately pursuing it. The Uplift and Open Mind remain hypotheses; their feasibility, safety and consent requirements are unresolved.

Read this first

  • This page is a prediction, not a plan. It is one person's view of where AI goes after today, written down so it can be argued with.
  • It is not what Genacy is building. What we are actually building, and when, is on the roadmap.
  • Nothing here is being worked on by anyone at Genacy Labs. No part of it is a product, a promise or a date we are committing to.

The next evolution of AI is not a bigger computer. It is the human brain itself, upgraded. First we learn how intelligence really works and give people a safe way to become far smarter, while staying themselves. Then we learn to talk mind to mind, so people can think together as one.

Philip Grech, founder of Genacy Labs

Philip calls the first stage "the meat puppet": the brain doing the heavy lifting we currently hand to machines. It is a deliberately blunt phrase for a serious idea, which is that the most powerful computer in the room is already sitting inside your skull and we have no idea how to program it.

This page names the two stages The Uplift and Open Mind, sets out what would have to happen for each, and then models the dates. It also carries the evidence that pushes back on the hypothesis, because a company that only publishes the case for its own ideas is not worth reading.

Why is this on a company website at all? Because Genacy is the first step of the same thought. The product keeps a person's mind for the people who love them. The pages below are where that thinking goes next.

01What would have to happen

Six milestones within the bigger story.

These are research and capability milestones, not six new civilisational phases. Improved AI belongs within the AI phase. The Uplift begins with a change in human intelligence itself; Open Mind adds direct connections between minds.

  1. AI phase We are here

    AI works on its own for hours

    Give it a job this morning and it is still going at lunch. That is where we are.

  2. AI phase

    AI works on its own for months

    Long enough to run its own research, not just finish a task you set it.

  3. Towards The Uplift

    We learn how thinking actually works

    Nobody can explain today how brain cells add up to a thought. This is the step everything waits on.

  4. Towards The Uplift

    A safe way to think far better

    Designed by AI, tested, approved, and then available to anyone who wants it.

  5. Towards Open Mind

    Implants that write, not just read

    Today an implant can read a thought. Putting a thought back in is still crude.

  6. Towards Open Mind

    Two people share one thought

    Then small groups. Each person stays themselves; nobody is merged into anything.

Progress within the AI phase The Uplift — people think better Open Mind — people think together

Nobody knows the dates. The model further down this page is one way of estimating them, and every number in it can be changed.

02The Uplift

Humans become super-intelligent.

AI works out how intelligence happens in the brain, and why a few people have near-perfect memory. From that, it designs something safe that lets anyone think far better than they do now. Poorer countries try it first, during the trials. Then the whole world.

The steps
  1. AI can run its own brain research, unsupervised, for months at a time.
  2. AI works out how intelligence actually arises from brain cells and chemistry.
  3. AI works out the chemistry behind people with extraordinary memory.
  4. AI designs a compound and proves it safe in animals.
  5. It is tested in people, and the first countries begin using it.
  6. Regulators approve it.
  7. The whole world has access.
Where we are today
The biology is the bottleneck, not the AI.

AI already designs candidate medicines: one AI-designed lung drug went from idea to human trials in about two and a half years, roughly half the usual time.

What nobody has is a working explanation of how intelligence comes out of brain cells. Scientists have fully mapped a piece of human brain the size of a grain of sand, and that took about a decade. A whole brain is a million times bigger.

And nobody has made anything that safely makes a healthy person smarter. The model below assumes it is possible and asks only when.

03Open Mind

Humans talk mind to mind.

The second stage runs on hardware rather than chemistry: implants that can read thoughts clearly, then write information back in, then let two people share thinking directly, while each stays an individual.

The steps
  1. Implants that read thoughts clearly, fitted routinely.
  2. Implants that can put structured information back in.
  3. Two people exchanging intent or images directly, at a useful speed.
  4. Groups thinking together while staying individuals, safely and by choice.
Where we are today
Reading works. Writing barely does.

Brain implants are real and in people. One lets someone who cannot speak produce more than sixty words a minute by thinking.

Sending a signal from one brain to another has worked since 2014, but at roughly one yes-or-no answer at a time.

Putting information into a brain is still crude: spots of light in someone's vision, or steadying a tremor. Nobody has written a memory in.

04The extra engine

Quantum computing accelerates the AI phase.

Better computing is an improvement within this phase, not a new phase of civilisation. Philip's assumption is that AI will make quantum computers improve faster too. The model tracks quantum separately as an enabling technology, and lets it shorten laboratory and engineering steps once it is ready.

Where quantum is today
About fifty useful qubits, doubling every fourteen months.

The number that matters is logical qubits: the error-corrected kind that can hold a long calculation together. Google's Willow chip was the first to get more reliable as it grew, which had to happen before anything else could. Quantinuum showed twelve logical qubits in 2024 and around fifty in 2025. IBM's published plan is two hundred by 2029 and two thousand by 2033. PsiQuantum broke ground in Brisbane in June 2026 on a machine aiming at a million physical qubits.

Join those points up and logical qubits are doubling about every fourteen months. That is slower than AI.

What it is good for here
Simulating molecules. Nothing else on this page.

Published estimates put useful partial simulation of drug chemistry at around a thousand logical qubits, and full simulation of how a body breaks a drug down at around five thousand. At that point some laboratory experiments become computer runs.

What it does not do: it does not make AI itself smarter or faster, it cannot map a brain, and it cannot shorten watching people in a trial, a regulator's decision, or a factory's output. In the model it only touches the steps ticked "quantum helps", and only after it is ready.

05The simulation

If AI keeps improving at this rate, when does each step arrive?

Move the sliders and every date recalculates. Each step gets two dates: when AI is clever enough to do it, and when the real world has finished its part. The gap between them is the point of the whole exercise.

The Uplift · whole world has access

—AI is clever enough
—it actually happens

Open Mind · groups think as one

—AI is clever enough
—it actually happens

When each step happens

Read each row left to right. The hollow box is when AI is clever enough. The solid bar is the real-world work: laboratories, trials, approvals, rollout. The year at the end is when the step is done.

AI is clever enough real-world work waiting for an earlier step The Uplift Open Mind Quantum −2.0y = years saved by quantum

How long AI can work on its own, year by year

This is the engine behind every date on the page. Today AI can be left alone with a job for hours. Each rung shows the year it could be left alone for a day, a week, a month, and so on. Because the ability doubles, the rungs get closer together.

All the steps and their numbers

Change any "years of real-world work" figure and the charts update. "How much AI can speed it up" runs from 1.0 (all of it) down to 0.3 (mostly waiting on people and biology). Tick or untick "quantum helps" to change which steps a working quantum computer shortens.

StepAI must work alone forAI is clever enoughYears of real-world workAI can speed it upQuantum helpsDone by
06Where the numbers come from

Every figure is an assumption you can change.

This is the reasoning behind each starting value. If you disagree with one, move its slider and watch what it does to the answer. That is the honest use of a model like this.

07Be careful

What this model cannot tell you.

The biggest leap is assuming that "AI can work alone for a year" means "AI can work out how intelligence works". The first is measured on coding and research tasks with checkable answers. The second has never been measured at all. The thresholds in the table are judgement calls, which is exactly why they are editable.

The brain is not sitting half-idle waiting to be switched on. It already runs flat out on about twenty watts. Anything that made people much smarter would have to make the brain work better, not use more of it. Whether that is possible safely, for everyone, is an open scientific question. The model assumes the answer is yes and only asks when.

With human trials set to one year and approval to six months, the model is assuming a world that accepts something for healthy people on very little long-term safety data. That is a choice, and it moves the dates more than anything else on the page.

Quantum computing is modelled as a helper, not a hero. It shortens only the steps that are ticked, and only after it reaches a thousand logical qubits. Ticking a step like "how intelligence works" is a bet that simulation can replace measuring a real brain, and nobody has shown that.

And nothing here says whether people would want any of this, who would get it first, or what thinking as one does to being an individual. Those questions will decide the outcome far more than any date on this page.

Built 13 September 2026 from evidence known to mid-2026. The dates are the output of the assumptions shown, not predictions. Your slider settings are kept in your own browser and are never sent to us.

Back to the present

The company doing the first step of this.

Genacy keeps a person's voice, memories and way of thinking for the people who love them. That part is built and working today.

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