Since the first modern humans evolved around 200,000 years ago, so much has changed in how we live. We no longer live in caves, we have created so many technologically advanced devices, and we’ve sent people to the Moon. While human brains are virtually unchanged anatomically, the way we use our brains has changed tremendously due to the use of tools, technology and language.
This is demonstrated in cases of children who were isolated since birth. Since they were unable to pick up language at an early age, their brains have been irreversibly affected, resulting in permanent stunting of development, even when reintroduced to society later on. The reverse of this is people who have been exposed to technology at a very young age, the digital natives, where the use of sophisticated technology has become second nature to them.
According to ACSILabs, a company whose founders have been studying human cognition for around 30 years, when humans use language and technology, they extend their cognitive space beyond themselves. The human world is so much more complicated than it was even a century ago, but people are still able to function. This is because human brains have an incredible capacity to adapt to new situations. Social psychologist Daniel Wegner named this concept the “adaptive unconscious” in 2002.
Prior to starting ACSILabs, its founders were researching human cognition, specifically expert thinking, and the forces that affect businesses, including what makes businesses successful and what causes them to fail. The founders worked with economists to help them define models of success, as well as with cognitive scientists to design activities that develop the underlying business capabilities in an accelerated fashion.
Today, ACSILabs’ work involves harnessing the neural and physiological processes of the adaptive unconscious to its fullest extent. It developed FutureView™, a three-dimensional smart space that seeks to help users solve more complex problems, improve the quality and speed of decision-making, and accelerate learning of expertise.
Future View is immersive and dynamic and also features multiplayer capability, this can be used across different locations and continents for large groups of people participating together. ACSILabs has partnered with numerous organizations, both military and civilian, in using FutureView to train members in mission critical or dangerous situations, without exposing individuals to bodily harm. In real-life situations, such as combat or mining, the cycles of iterative experience that are needed to develop high levels of expertise are very risky. One mistake could result in the loss of invaluable human life, as well as long years of training and huge monetary investment being put to waste.
The FutureView™ Suite is composed of four interconnected components: the Dynamic Strategic Modeler, the Patterned Event Generator, the Cognitive Agility Assessment, and the FutureView Virtual World. Using ACSILab’s advanced AI and proprietary cognitive science knowledge, organizations can emulate real world problems, allowing them to “war game” the various scenarios involved and present them to users through an interactive, immersive 3D world.
According to Lia DiBello, Phd, ACSILabs’ chief science officer, FutureView™ is a pioneer in the industry in that it has a powerful engine that tracks the user’s every micro behavior and micro decision and analyzes it for patterns, before giving them feedback on whether they are taking a successful approach to the problem.
This builds on the premise that people make several hundreds of micro decisions in their jobs, and FutureView™ uses specially tailored scenarios to pull users forward to a new level of expertise. By being able to play through numerous scenarios without risk, users are able to gain the iterative experience through trial and error in FutureView™’s virtual environment. This reduces risk by compressing training time and costs by approximately 500:1, eliminates real-world failures, and saves organizations billions of dollars.
FutureView™ is also extremely scalable, and it can be run on a regular laptop without any special graphics cards or equipment. Having a VR headset is optional, minimizing expenses for organizations.
“There’s a common myth that you need 10,000 hours of practice to become an expert at something. But, it’s not the hours that make one an expert, but the iterative cycles of experience,” Dibello says. “Through FutureView™, we are able to make compelling environments where users can experience job-related scenarios that they learn from, while eliminating risk, reducing logistic costs, and compressing time. People don't notice it, but when we do business games, we can do a year of experience in a day, or even sometimes three years in a day. FutureView™provides users with enough iterative cycles of experience that they can pack the learning that would’ve taken a long time into a much shorter period.”
ACSILabs is also developing a solution known as Journey™, which is tailored to individual needs, such as mental health and wellness. It is based on the FutureView™ Platform with all the advanced AI and proprietary cognitive science built in. According to ACSILabs, it can be a way for those who are seeing a therapist to accelerate progress by working on specific goals between sessions. The company is seeking partners and investors to help bring Journey™ into reality.
Media contact:
Name: Lia DiBello
Email: [email protected]
