The British Bill Gates finds a formula for bad times

David Crow meets Mike Lynch, the computer scientist whose firm, Autonomy, makes software that knows how humans think — and can spot when they’re committing fraud

The plush Piccadilly offices of Autonomy are decorated with complex mathematical equations, written in buzzing neon lights and frosted onto glass doors. Although the formulas underpin technology that would have been unimaginable 20 years ago, they were first penned by an 18th-century vicar, Thomas Bayes, who spent his life trying to prove the existence of God through mathematics. ‘He never succeeded,’ Autonomy founder and chief executive Mike Lynch tells me, ‘although he probably has an answer by now.’

Autonomy has taken so-called Bayesianism and built technology that enables computers to understand human interaction. Its software can sift through emails and telephone calls and, using algorithms, work out what they mean. It is, according to Lynch, a huge departure from established thinking in the tech- nology sector.