As a research program, augmented cognition was a great idea, Cummings maintained. The problem with the program, she said, was that researchers were being asked to show concrete results in an area that was still basic science. “Where DARPA started to fall overboard is when they started to try and make it applied, ready for some sort of operational results,” she said. The allure of science fiction, without the checks and balances of rigorous science, had led the promising field of augmented cognition down a rabbit hole.
