4SI Research
A smarter world.
Still in your hands.
We research how technology can recognise your presence, respect your decisions and stay simple to use—even as AI becomes more capable.
The questions behind everyday trust
Your home. Your money.
Your decisions.
As more of life moves through software and AI, how do we keep important actions connected to you?
01 · Verification
You are more
than a login.
A correct password tells a service something about an account. Our question is how it can also check that you are physically involved in a specific action.
What this could mean in your day
Opening your door. Approving a payment. Recovering an account. A connected service could ask for your activated Key at the moment that matters.
The research asks what that physical check can establish, how it might fail, and how the service should use the result.
Understand the evidence gap02 · Usability
Easy to use.
Clear to understand.
A useful check should help you make a decision. You should know what you are confirming, who is asking and how to say no.
The experience we want to test
- Can you understand a request before approving it?
- Can one familiar gesture work across different services?
- Can you decline, correct a mistake or recover access without confusion?
- Does the experience work for people with different abilities and needs?
These are design and research questions. They guide what needs to be evaluated with users.
03 · AI & human control
Let AI help.
Keep the final say.
Imagine an assistant that finds the right purchase or prepares a payment. The important question is where its permission ends—and where your decision begins.
- AI preparesA proposed action.
- You reviewA clear request.
- The service checksPermission to proceed.
Why this is an AI safety question
We study how consequential actions could require renewed authority rather than relying on an earlier sign-in or an open-ended instruction.
A physical check would be one part of that control. It cannot make a harmful request safe or stop someone from misleading you. The request, device, recovery process and service must also be protected.
Read the authority researchExplore the thinking.
All publications
Verification as a
Control Primitive
Why an intelligent system should still need permission to act.
Read the researchPhysical Trust at the
Digital–Physical Boundary
What a digital record can establish—and where physical evidence matters.
Read the researchOur approach
Ask clearly.
Test rigorously.
Good research makes its assumptions visible and gives others a way to challenge them.
From a question to evidence
- Define the decision. Who or what must be verified, and what happens if the check is wrong?
- Set the test. Specify threats, operating conditions, human factors and success criteria before measuring.
- Keep the whole result. Record failures, false decisions, recovery paths and unresolved limits.
- Decide what follows. Continue, revise or stop against the agreed criteria.
How to read our research
The public work includes two non-peer-reviewed reports, an economic note and a perspective. The reports develop frameworks and conditional arguments; they do not establish validated product performance.
Usability is a research direction here, not a claim of completed user studies. A prototype result and a deployment evaluation answer different questions. Neither should be inferred from a paper.
Publication records and full textsSources, review and corrections
We separate documented facts, interpretation and proposed mechanisms. Original records and the assumptions behind material claims remain available for review.
From research.
Into everyday life.
Explore the Key and app these questions are helping shape.
Meet Presence