In 1990, long before modern artificial intelligence became mainstream, Australian inventor and professional golfer Rick Baker conceived a system that could enable computers to automatically generate personalized audio-visual instruction tailored to an individual user.
The idea was simple but powerful: a computer could receive information relating to a person and/or object, compare that information with stored expert knowledge, generate visual instructional content, generate appropriate audio instructional comments, and combine both into a personalized audio-visual instructional presentation.
The idea began while Rick Baker was thinking about professional golf instruction and how difficult it was for ordinary people to receive personalized coaching from world-class experts.
At the time, video cameras were beginning to be used for sports analysis, but instructional systems were still expensive, limited, and largely non-interactive.
Rick began thinking differently.
What if a person's movement, or an object involved in that movement, could be captured by camera, transmitted over communication networks to a computer database, compared with stored expert knowledge, and then returned as a personalized teaching presentation with both visual and verbal instruction?
That single insight became the beginning of a much larger vision for computer-generated personalized audio-visual instruction and advice.
The major breakthrough was not simply motion capture or computer analysis.
The breakthrough was the computer's ability to automatically create a personalized visual presentation and combine it with suitable audio instructional comments.
Human experts normally teach by showing a person something visually while explaining it verbally.
Rick Baker believed computers could eventually do something similar.
This shifted the computer from being a machine that simply processed information into a system capable of automatically generating personalized audio-visual instruction and advice.
In the early 1990s, many of the technologies needed to fully develop the system were still immature. Motion tracking, telecommunications, graphics processing, sensors, and real-time computing were all far more limited than they are today.
Despite these limitations, Rick Baker pursued patent protection and continued developing the concept across multiple countries including Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, Canada, and the United States.
The invention pointed toward a future where computers could deliver increasingly adaptive, visual, and personalized instruction or advice tailored to the specific circumstances being analyzed.
The story behind Final Step - AI is not only about invention. It is also about persistence.
Over several decades, Rick Baker pursued patents, researched emerging technologies, worked through technical limitations, built Internet businesses, explored motion sensing systems, and fought difficult legal battles relating to the protection of early-stage invention concepts.
As modern computing power, sensors, AI systems, graphics, and communications advanced, the original 1990 vision slowly became more achievable.
The journey became a real-world case study in invention, patent law, after-arising technology, and the challenges faced by independent inventors working ahead of mainstream technology.
Computers have already become faster, more connected, and more intelligent.
But the final step is not merely faster processing. It is enabling computers to generate personalized audio-visual instruction and advice similar to what an expert provides today.
Final Step - AI explores the idea that the future of artificial intelligence is not simply processing information faster, but generating personalized guidance that responds directly to the person, object, movement, activity, or situation being analyzed.
That vision began with a simple idea in 1990: a computer could one day provide personalized guidance in a manner similar to a human expert.