An improved neural interface also might allow soldiers and AI | Arm Me Against Uni(n)Formation

An improved neural interface also might allow soldiers and AI systems to better work as a team. “Let’s say you’re working with an AI system that is a decision aid, which is sorting through large amounts of data. … You’re seeing too much data. You’re trying to process too much data. If it knows your cognitive state, that you may be getting overloaded, maybe it changes how much data it’s giving you,” Emondi says. He adds that if a soldier’s eyes are overwhelmed with data, the system could begin using haptic signals, or the sense of touch, to alert the user to some types of data.
The program is divided into concurrently running technical areas known as TA-1 and TA-2. “One of them is completely noninvasive. Nothing goes in the body other than ultrasonic fields or magnetic fields or electronic fields or light. We’re basically playing around with those four modalities in different ways … to figure out how best we could interoperate with the neural tissue,” Emondi says. The TA-2 effort will allow technology, such as a transducer, to be attached to the brain but only through nonsurgical techniques. “That could be through injection or it might be through ingestion, or it could be intranasal, could be transdermal, pretty much any way you can think of … without having to do surgery,” the program manager elaborates.
Once the technology is inside the brain, researchers must have a way of moving it to the proper location and of interacting with it. That also could include magnetic, electric, acoustic or light signals aimed at that neural transducer, which interacts with the neuron. The program includes three phases. The first is 12 months long. During that time, the six teams—led by Battelle; Carnegie Mellon University; Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory; the Palo Alto Research Center (PARC); Rice University and Teledyne—must prove they can interact with neural tissue and provide metrics. https://www.afcea.org/content/mind-control-machines-isnt-brain-surgery-any-more