The history of humanity is shaped by monumental events. Every nation, and each generation, has been defined by the policies of its leaders and the actions of its peoples. Humanity has endured catastrophic wars, revolutions and dictators. Human behaviour can lead to injustice and misery, as well as the common good. Human behaviour lies at the heart of almost every challenge we are faced with. We live in very uncertain times. New technologies, climate change, and a new world order are just some of the challenges our generation must navigate. The decisions we make now will have far reaching consequences.

What if we could find a way to explain, predict and influence human behaviour?

Imagine a model, created from data so big it takes a large part of the human world into account, a model of complex human behaviour dynamics so sophisticated it can drive public policy and lead to clear and actionable strategies to improve the health, sustainability and security of our nation.

Professor Andrew Heathcote is a cognitive scientist. His research is focused on how people make rapid decisions, particularly how they balance the speed with which they do things and the accuracy. He uses mathematics and high-performance computing to simulate how people make these decisions in their minds and brains.

‘I am looking at it from a dynamic perspective,’ he explains. ‘How our knowledge of an event rapidly accumulates until we feel we have enough evidence to make a decision and take an action, something that we do thousands of times a day.

‘To understand the mind, words are too slippery and ill-defined to describe its complex processes’ he says. ‘The theories I create are quantitative, equations running on a computer. It’s like virtual reality for the brain. We are simulating the mind and making virtual minds, virtual decision makers, and then analysing their behaviour. We study the properties of these artificial minds and compare that to what people do.’

Professor Heathcote gets people to perform tasks that require them to make decisions about computer displays. He then makes a cognitive model, which simulates the person’s thought processes and determines if it can account for their behaviour. In future, he plans to simulate interactions among the individual models in order to understand decisions made by groups of people.

We are now in the position to be able to take this understanding of how the mind works and put it in the real world to solve pressing problems.

‘My work is a prime example of why the science of the mind – cognitive science – combined with the revolution in computing power, is so important,’ explains Professor Heathcote. ‘If we can understand the mind, and then understand how to put aspects of it into silicon, we can greatly augment our abilities by teaming humans with artificial intelligence.

‘The methods I am developing, combined with the “big data” that is available about human behaviour in our increasingly computerised world, can help predict what people will do, and I believe that capability should really be in public hands and used for the public good, instead of serving the interests of big companies,’ he says. ‘In order to create optimal public policy, we first of all need to understand why people do things. This highlights the importance of developing models that show the causes of human behaviour rather than just predict the effects, because this way it’s possible to intervene and achieve the desired outcomes of some of the big problems we face.

‘These models, and the data they provide, could drive policy for defence, health and climate change,’ says Professor Heathcote.

There’s a flood of data about all of us out there. But, the issue of privacy is becoming a huge concern. Shouldn’t the information large companies access for their own personal gain be used to transform cultural knowledge instead?

‘We want to be able to take this data and use it for the public good while ensuring privacy and making sure the information can’t be used against individuals,’ explains Professor Heathcote. ‘My passion is to understand how the mind works, create more and more intelligent artificial cognitive agents, and understand how to harness their abilities to work with us and in our interests.’