Sandia researcher Bob Abbott
What We Have Here Is a "Revolution of the Mind"
December 2007 / January 2008
Volume 5 Number 6
Imagine a world where a machine creates a "virtual you" by modeling how you think and your expertise on a subject. Or one where your car's computer assesses your driving skills and compensates for your limitations.
That's the world Sandia has entered full throttle through its Cognitive Science and Technology Program, known as CS&T. A revolution is at hand, says Chris Forsythe, a member of the cognition research team. It's not one of just better guns and weapons for national security. Instead, "It's a revolution of the mind—€”of how people think and how machines can help people work better."
"I believe that a fundamental level, science-based understanding of human cognition will, indeed, revolutionize the world," says Steve Roehrig, CS&T program lead. "Our long-term CS&T program emphasizes teaming with outside institutions to research and apply the spectrum of science underlying human cognition—€”from neural basics to the integrated brain, to understanding the mind and individual behavior. With an emphasis on national security, Sandia can have major impacts ranging from aiding neural scientists with new technologies and computational approaches to developing cognitive aids for humans on the other end of the spectrum."
A large portion of Sandia's program today focuses on the uniqueness of the individual interacting with others and with machines. It involves using machines to help humans perform more efficiently and embedding cognitive models in machines so they interact with users more like people interact with one another.
The result is the ability for researchers to take advantage of the basic strengths of humans and machines while mitigating the weaknesses of each.
Cognitive projects and research at the lab span the gamut from student training to assisting with Yucca Mountain licensing, from designing "smart" cars to using video-like games to train military personnel, and from determining how neurons give rise to memory to global terrorist threat detection.
Funding for the research has come from the Office of Naval Research, Sandia's Laboratory Directed Research and Development (LDRD) program, DOE, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), and other government agencies. The CS&T program also benefits from collaborations with the University of New Mexico, the MIND Imaging Center in Albuquerque and most recently the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Cognition and National Security
The initial decision for Sandia to develop cognitive technologies is based on the belief that "there are numerous positive impacts cognitive systems technologies can have on our national security," says Russ Skocypec, senior manager of the Human, Systems and Simulation Technologies department.
"Everything in the world is becoming more individualized, including conflicts," Russ says. "You see this all the time in Iraq and other places where terrorists are taking their toll. Security threats are more personalized."
Skocypec believes that today's conflicts are unlike others over in the past century. He says that although all wars are driven by humans, major influences on the outcomes have differed. World War I was a chemists' war, World War II a physicists' war, and the Cold War an economic war. Today, he believes, "we are engaged in a human war that is influenced primarily by individual human beings rather than technology or bureaucracy."
That is why he considers it appropriate for Sandia, a laboratory with national security as its mission, to use its resources to better understand the minds of this country's adversaries, as well as to use machines to enhance the labs' abilities to recognize patterns, deal with massive amounts of data, solve perplexing problems and perform complex activities.
Most people who are well-versed on cognitive issues—€”like Danny Rintoul, manager of computational biology, whose department has several people involved in cognitive research efforts—€”believe that the "near-term high-impact effect of cognitive science research would be to enable people to do complex, dangerous tasks in a safer manner.
"This includes, of course, protecting and augmenting the warfighter, but eventually could be used to help people with a broader set of tasks that are not just dangerous, but unpleasant and tedious," Rintoul says. "In the long-term, the real goal is understanding the inner workings of the mind. This is probably a 100-year goal, but the payoff for this would probably revolutionize human life as we know it. Sandia is one of the premier places in the world where disparate groups of researchers have been able to work together to solve large complex problems. Cognitive science is probably the largest complex problem that scientists are considering right now, and our ability to bring together computational scientists, engineers and neural scientists to tackle this problem is critical in solving it."
In speaking about the importance of understanding the brain, Gerry Yonas, vice president and principal scientist, says, "Our best role is to harness the power of our computing and modeling, as well as sensors, to assist in the rapidly advancing field of neuroscience for national security applications. Sandia can apply neuroscience to national security problems in a variety of ways—€”by improving our understanding of brain functions and of the implications of stress, confusion and ambiguity on decision making, all in an effort to enhance our own performance and degrade the performance of our adversaries."
John Wagner, manager of cognitive and exploratory systems and simulations, says the new area of research means "profound opportunities exist for the labs. The Cognitive Science and Technology Program's ambitious direction may not be realized for many decades, but the information required for progress is emerging today," he says. "It is reasonable to expect future discoveries will become the Nobel-class achievements for the cognitive and neuroscience communities at large in the years to come."
What is a Cognitive System?
The term "cognitive systems" has been used worldwide to identify a variety of programs, initiatives and technologies. However, so many varied uses have led to ambiguity of meaning. Sandia has established its own definition: "Cognitive systems consist of technologies that utilize as an essential component one or more computational models of human cognitive processes or the knowledge of specific experts, users or other individuals."
"It is important to note in this definition and in all of Sandia's work in the area of cognition that the human is always part of the equation," Chris Forsythe says. "Technology might try to take the human out of the system, but the human element never goes away. A machine might be able to do the work 10 humans can do. But a human has to be in the loop—€” there was a human who designed it, most likely, a human who uses and maintains it, and in the end, a human will probably dispose of it."
To Russ Skocypec, "the goal is to have seamless and sophisticated unions between humans and computers. Extending human cognition in such a way offers people the unprecedented ability to increase their productivity as well as improve the quality of their work."
Further research, he says, on how behavior and the mind work together is needed before research can go much farther. knowledge of the brain is deep in specific areas but much is still unknown, particularly in understanding brain function at different scales and as integrated systems.
John Wagner says that cognitive research at Sandia—€”like most worldwide—€”is in its infancy. He anticipates that within the next decade research that seems like science fiction today will be a daily part of everyone's lives. The cognitive revolution will be in full bloom.
"Once that happens, the best of both worlds can happen," John says. "If we understand human cognition better, we can work together as a nation to reduce tension, find problems before they turn into armed conflict and work toward actions that establish and maintain peace worldwide."
Chris Burroughs is a staff writer, media and communications, Sandia National Laboratories.
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