Just read the free executive summary of a report entitled “Emerging Cognitive Neuroscience and Related Technologies” prepared by the National Research Council for the Department of Defense. Mostly predictable, but a couple of things stuck out. First is the burgeoning military interest in “culture studies”. It’s a relief to see, even in this roundabout way, the US military’s failure to communicate across cultures acknowledged or addressed. I hope the motive for cross-cultural research isn’t merely tactical, but strategic, foundational and systematic. If the military sees understanding of cross-cultural unversality and difference as simply means to the end of, say, more effective mind-reading, that would miss the point. A glimmer of light: “Conventional social science models based primarily on Western ideas may be challenged by invisible biases.”
Second, the report seems pretty naïve about AI. It jumps from a paragraph about expert systems directly to speculation about “an intelligent machine that uses the Internet to train itself”. The internet, of course, is “by far the closest we have come to a total database of knowledge”. Whoa there, guys.
More coverage at Wired and MetaFilter.