Dr. Schmidt has two areas of emphasis in the field of artificial intelligence (AI):
- How AI can be used to improve the lives of humans and society
- Addressing the risks and threats of AI to humans and society
Applications of Artificial Intelligence for Human Benefit
While Dr. Schmidt is active across the spectrum of AI, one main area of focus is the development of biodigital twins for medical applications. Dr. Schmidt and his team at Sovaris AI (a joint venture of Sovaris Aerospace and Embody Biosciences) are currently building human digital twin technology.
A digital twin is a virtual model of a physical object (in this case a human). It allows real-time interaction and communication between both the living twin and the digital twin to help with the modelling, monitoring, understanding, and optimization of the functions and behavior of the living twin, such as a human going into space. This is much like the use of digital twins in engineering, such as that of an aircraft engine. A digital twin of the aircraft engine can be built to emulate the physical aircraft engine, which can then be tested against many thousands of conditions (counterfactuals; ‘what if’ scenarios) where testing the physical engine could be cost and time prohibitive. Whereas the mechanical digital twin is built from a priori knowledge (engineered from the ground up), the biodigital twin has to be reverse engineered, because we do not yet fully understand all the drivers in human physiology.
The biodigital twin approach is built on the architecture of differential equations and centered on the methods of Bayesian inference, coupled with a range of artificial intelligence tools. The Astronaut Digital Twin (ADT) is Dr. Schmidt’s lead AI program, which is also translational to medicine on Earth, such as in the optimization of muscle performance in athletes (Athlete Digital Twin) or enhancement of cognitive performance.
Dr. Schmidt is also part of the core team developing artificial intelligence for sound and acoustic applications. This involves acoustic systems engineering applications to biological and non-biological systems. It is rooted in understanding the physics of how complex sound waves can be dynamically engineered for tailored effects on a range of open and closed systems, ranging from fluids, to geological, to biological, to electronic, and mechanical systems. Dr. Schmidt is part of the leadership team that developed this technology based on their proprietary artificial narrow intelligence method called Segmented Radial Topology (SRT) and the complementary novel technology termed Low Energy Acoustic Waveform Assembly. The applications range from energy conservation and optimization, to medicine, to media and entertainment. As one application of this technology, Dr. Schmidt and his team have developed an immersive spatialized acoustic biophilic space architecture platform for application to human space analogs on Earth, orbital space platforms, and Lunar/Mars habitats.
Dr. Schmidt has chaired Artificial Intelligence summits, among them the 2025 Artificial Intelligence in Clinical Medicine summit in Rome, Italy, sponsored by the Menarini Foundation, which will be followed by the Artificial Intelligence summit in Rome, Italy in 2026. Dr. Schmidt is also co-editor of the textbook Artificial Intelligence in Clinical Medicine (Elsevier, 2026)
Risks and Threats Due to Artificial Intelligence
A key area of interest and work of Dr. Schmidt is on the risks and threats of AI to humans and human society. While Dr. Schmidt shares many of the key areas of concern of others, ranging from cybersecurity to surveillance, there are three areas at the top of this list:
First, how will AI shape, diminish, or even deprive us of our humanity—that which gives us the capacity for thought, reasoning, learning, compassion, love, human connection, empathy, caring, warmth, conflict resolution, problem solving, and a spiritual life? How will we preserve human dignity in the face of AI? Will AI fundamentally change the human brain, the human condition, and human civilization? Can we put safeguards in place to retain our optimal humanity and that of society before it is too late? What is the architecture of such safeguards?
Second (and related), how will AI transform the brain itself as AI becomes more integrated into the educational process? Will the mechanisms that account for the high complexity of human neural processing as we learn and solve problems be reduced to such an extent that we can no longer reason to the same extent as we once did? And will we then be less able to even evaluate the complexities of what AI is doing, including the vetting of recommendations being offered to us by AI? Are we preparing for this risk by intelligently guiding how we adopt AI in all forms of learning and education? How?
The third area of threat assessment is the use of artificial intelligence by rogue actors to develop molecular and microbial bioweapons without needing any of the long, complex, and technical training that would have been needed in the past. Will governments or individual rogue actors be able to assemble lethal weapons using the tools of AI and cloud labs without even needing any of the skills to carry out such dangerous activities? It’s already been shown that highly toxic molecular variants of such things as ricin (one of the most lethal molecules known) can be predicted using AI. Will an AI-guided cloud lab be able to physically produce these variants of ricin? And will such a rogue actor be able to release them? And, what of novel engineered viruses and viral sequences that might be generated with such tools? What about novel plasmid DNA? And are we prepared with a complex matrix of countermeasures and infrastructure for rapid countermeasure development to address the emergence of this threat?
