Human-Machine collaboration about which you probably didn’t know.

There is a lot of talk about how artificial intelligence can change our lives. Instead of discussing how AI will start ruling the world and destroying humanity, I encourage you to become interested in how human beings and AI can change the world. The topic is very wide. However, I would like to show you an example of collaboration, most probably of which, you have not heard.

The human mind processes information with or without our conscious engagement. Generally, you need a stimulus lasting more than 0.2s to make a man experience it. Does it mean that anything shorter than the mentioned 0.2s is undetectable for our brain? The answer is of course NO! A man may not notice things consciously, but our brain responds to the stimulus. It is the same mechanism that makes us close our eyes instinctively when something approaches us quickly or run away from a lion long before we become aware of the danger.

How can this potential of our subconscious be used?

The US Army began to research in this area. Identifying specific military objects is a very time-consuming activity. It is still a man, who apart from standard mechanisms based on image recognition and machine learning should ultimately recognize whether the object on the photo is a rocket or a tree. The scientists came up with a brilliant idea. They connected the soldier-analyst to the EEG and told him to concentrate on what should be looked for in the pictures (creating intentions). Then, they showed him pictures on the screen, but each display lasted no longer than 0.2s. He could not consciously process them and mark them for further analysis. Photos, however, were marked by an algorithm for analysing brain activity.

In a situation where there was something in the picture that an analyst was looking for (his intention), the EEG registered it as specific brain activity. The photo was marked and went to further analysis. The result of this experiment was very interesting. The analysis took less time than the same activities performed by a computer programme and is often better than the performance of the image classification algorithms.

Recently, I have also read about the concept that our brain signals, or our subconscious, can contribute to keeping road safety by detecting whether the level of our attention is sufficient to drive a vehicle. The above examples show a trend. Thanks to technology we may even further explore our hidden potential.

How can this potential of our subconscious be used?

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