8 ms·

For all the hype surrounding AI, virtual reality, and augmented reality as being the next big trends in tech, I really feel like brain/computer interfaces are w

For all the hype surrounding AI, virtual reality, and augmented reality as being the next big trends in tech, I really feel like brain/computer interfaces are what is really going to change our world in unprecedented ways. The technology is still a long, long ways from having a visible impact for most people, but I am more interested/excited/scared about this technology than anything else going on in the tech world right now.

happyslobro 10y ago
This is what will make the difference between us becoming the cybernetic overlords, and us getting crushed underneath of them. Whatever powers we grant to the machines, it is critical that we also take these powers for ourselves.
- ythl 10y ago
  I'm still not convinced thinking, living, conscious machines are possible anytime soon, if ever. Until we understand the hard problem of consciousness and other fundamental mechanisms of the brain, we will never build true AI. Increasing system complexity and hoping for a "singularity" event is cargo cult science[1]. It's like building runways on your private island and hoping airplanes will spontaneously land and produce wondrous treasures to trade. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult_science https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult_science
  - tim333 10y ago
    Systems like AlphaGo do something like thinking. I suspect progress will crack along regardless of what philosophical types think about the hard problem of consciousness. Also if you are a materialist the brain already is a thinking, living, conscious machine.
  - happyslobro 10y ago
    Agreed, human equivalent AI is probably several hundreds of years off, at best. but we don't need anything that sophisticated to trigger an "overlords" scenario. I'm picturing something like a very good legal AI, being abused by a foreign state's hackers to ensure the incarceration of political opponents, in preparation for a coup. We're not far off from that being a plausible scenario now, but if we all had the benefit of a personal legal AI, or access to a collective legal AI, then it would be a lot harder for anyone to use the legal system against an individual opponent, as a simple weapon.
    - ythl 10y ago
      That's a really good point. In a world where we use machine learning to decide how to diagnose illness, pass judgment, arrest people, and more, it could be manipulated by bad actors into enslaving us one way or another (no conscious AI needed).
  - CuriouslyC 10y ago
    What if consciousness is an irreducible property of matter? What if computers are already conscious, and their experience of executing code is analogous to our experience of thinking? How could we ever tell the difference?
    - jshevek 10y ago
      If consciousness is an irreducible property of all matter, then it seems to me that the word consciousness has no meaning.
      - drewbug 10y ago
        What about the word mass?
        jshevek 10y ago
        Yes, your question and its answer emphasizes my point nicely.
    - ZeroFries 10y ago
      The computer would still have to solve the phenominal-binding problem. See qualiacomputing.com
  - grondilu 10y ago
    We don't need to fully understand a processus in order to reproduce it. We can proceed by imitation, trial and error. As we mostly did for airplanes, for instance. At some point we may create a machine exhibiting human-level intelligent behavior, and then the question of whether or not it has consciousness will not be answered but that will not matter much. Kind of in 2001: "Well he acts as if he has genuine emotions. Of course he's programmed that way. That makes it easier for us to talk to him. But as to whether or not he has real feelings, it's something I don't think anyone can truthfully answer."
    - ythl 10y ago
      > We don't need to fully understand a processes in order to reproduce it. That's true, but you still need to understand it enough > We can proceed by imitation, trial and error. As we mostly did for airplanes, for instance. Yes, but again, I would argue that initial attempts to create airplanes were cargo cult science, and that's why they failed. It's something you want to avoid, yet I see it all the time when the subject of AI comes up. "In a cargo cult, you reproduce the appearance of the machine without understanding the principles behind the machine. You build radio stations out of straw. The cargo cult approach to aeronautics—for actually building airplanes—would be to copy birds very, very closely; feathers, flapping wings, and all the rest. And people did this back in the 19th century, but with very limited success." (LeCun [1]) [1] http://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/artificial-intelligence/facebook-ai-director-yann-lecun-on-deep-learning http://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/artificial-intel...
      - grondilu 10y ago
        When Yan LeCun started playing with artificial neural networks, did he know why they worked? Aren't artificial neural networks very much inspired from nature anyway, not unlike early airplane wings? I mean between a cargo cult and a very reasonable attempt at mimicking nature, there is whole continuum and being quick at using the extreme label (that is, "cargo cult") to dismiss an approach just because you don't agree with it, seems quite dishonest to me.
    - shostack 10y ago
  - Houshalter 10y ago
    Thats a very strange belief. Akin to believing we can't build cars until we understand how horses work exactly. AI has made huge progress in the past few years, without any input from neuroscientists. Stupid evolution made human brains with just random mutations and selection. Surely human engineers can do better. The hard problem of consciousness is especially irrelevant to AI. The hard problem is a philosophical issue that by definition can't be solved with science. We could make an exact simulation of the brain that exactly reproduces human behavior in a computer, and philosophers would still be debating it.
    - ZeroFries 10y ago
      Natural selection selected for complex, globally-bound unitary conscious experiences for a reason. Strong AGI probably requires it.
      - Houshalter 10y ago
        It requires it, in the same way that cars require legs and submarines require fins, or planes require flapping wings. I don't think strong AI will be anything like humans. If nothing else, it will follow a totally different evolutionary path than the conditions that created human minds. Minds designed for navigating the social hierarchy of primates. But the second point of my comment is that the philosophical debate about "consciousness" is disconnected from any empirical matter or anything connected to reality. Some of the advocates of the "hard problem" have stated that if neuroscientists came up with an exact theory of the human brain, that perfectly explained our behavior, they would still not be convinced. It's complete quasi-religious nonsense that's irrelevant to real AI or brain research.
        ZeroFries 10y ago
        The hard problem actually extends to the bedrock of reality. What is the relation of matter and qualia? You don't have a clear understanding of the hard problem, nor of your own experience, if you can deny it so off-handedly as you've done here. I do agree with you, though, that AI will be completely different from human intelligence.
Balgair 10y ago
The disease and safety aspects alone are pretty cool. Blindness and deafness will be cured, as will vertigo and a host of other diseases and malformations. Think Stephen Hawking, but actually walking around and talking again, having a totally normal life again. Also, imagine having IR vision for firefighters in a house fire, or a surgeon having basically X-Ray vision, or being able to see the elements in your tap water with the aid of an inbuilt spectrometer. Really cool stuff.
- bsbechtel 10y ago
  Absolutely, although I've always been interested in the aspect it can have on internal corporate communication. This is the #1 challenge/cost driver in every company today. Maybe I'm thinking in the realm of science fiction still, but to be able to effortlessly communicate the precise info every individual in an organization needs at the instant they need it would unleash an unprecedented explosion of economic growth around the world.
  - Balgair 10y ago
    I hope not! I downsized to a dumbphone just to get away from email at night. The last thing I want to know is my boss's every whim for me. I think you are thinking of a eusocial hivemind organization. Though they are very good at getting goals done, like building these tunnels or that termite mound, they are not very adaptable outside of their environmental niche. It's the opposite of capitalism you speak of. Democracy is a thousand voices all yelling different songs to make a chorus, and it is slow and messy. However, it tends to find the 'right' choice at a higher rate than the top down model.
    - bsbechtel 10y ago
      Well I was thinking more in terms of not only top down communication, but also bottom up (reporting, identification of problems on the ground floor, etc). The vast majority of our economy is goal-driven, with a very small percentage of workers actually defining the goals, doing creative work, or doing research. Consider the impact on the world if the latest research from the lab was instantly decimated to the entire community, feedback provided, and new knowledge spread to industry. This is the positive aspect of the technology I am thinking about (of course many, many years in the future).
rimantas 10y ago
Watch "Black Mirror" for some of the possible ways.
randomdrake 10y ago
I'm really interested in those interfaces as well. Some posit that one of the big advantages of the ways our brains evolved were in the increased size of our frontal lobe. They say this ultimately led to increased processing power by allowing our brains to have access to more data for making decisions or analyzing thoughts. I feel like we've continued this growth in some ways. Low bandwidth access to information that doesn't reside in our brains, allowing us to further our capacity for thought and understanding. Ray Kurzweil is an interesting fellow who's very much into this as well and sees our extension as an inevitability in the next few decades. Direct interfaces between the brain and the Internet (or some other network) to allow for even lower bandwidth access to information. Since you said you were interested: there was an episode of Star Talk[1] a few months back where he dives into this stuff along with Dr. Tyson and a neuroscientist. Definitely recommend it as a fun primer for where we are, what we're doing, and where some people think we're going to go. [1] - http://www.startalkradio.net/show/gazing-into-the-future-with-ray-kurzweil/ http://www.startalkradio.net/show/gazing-into-the-future-wit...
- ekianjo 10y ago
  > Ray Kurzweil is an interesting fellow Are we talking about the same guy who sells supplements and takes hundreds of vitamins everyday, despite there being no evidence of positive effect ? (http://www.rayandterry.com/ http://www.rayandterry.com/)
  - tlow 10y ago
    I believe that very little is known on the effects of this kind of supplementation. Avoiding dangerously high mineral content which could lead to illnesses like kidney stones, there doesn't seem to be strong evidence AGAINST. I therefore suggest perhaps we defer judgement as there also appears to be little evidence FOR.
tlow 10y ago
I think that one of the major hurdles to BCI is the mechanism of connection. When electrodes are connected to neurons they have a tendency to be destroyed. However, one might imagine the development of sophisticated electromagnetic equipment which might suitable focus and modulate "receptor pathways" in the brain. This seems far off. Eyes are convenient sensory organs to utilize for input. Getting directly to the brain seems more like trying to manipulate electron flow in a PCB without removing the external enclosure. (not to say that's impossible, just not as easy as cutting a trace and soldering in a connection)
- selectiveshift 10y ago
  The great thing about our brains is how malleable they are. We should be creating as low tech a mechanism as possible and then train our brains to use it.
  - tlow 10y ago
    I wanted to discuss an expansion of this idea, I am so glad you brought it up. Less than 100 years ago we as humanity largely believed that we were fated with the brains and capacity we were born with. Today, we know this isn't true. In fact, cases like Phineas Gage make one wonder.[1] Now to respond to you comment. There is no reason that we couldn't develop methodologies for utilizing our sensory input to train our brains in mechanisms we've not even considered or dreamed of today. Maybe we can achieve a hyper-reality where reality speed is 5x but after a small period our brains can adjust and then we can learn at 5x. Our brains are limitless. Our ability to directly interface to them with electronics seems tenable today (but that may or may not always be true). [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phineas_Gage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phineas_Gage
ericjang 10y ago
There are some very difficult challenges in brain-computer interfaces (BCI), some of which involve huge barriers presented by human biology. It's rather depressing. Presently, there is no good way to read data from the brain to a device. You can drill a hole in your head and patch-clamp some electrodes to your brain tissue, but this procedure is only recommended for treating debilitating diseases like Parkinson's. Furthermore, there is the issue of scar tissue developing over time as a small region of your brain is being bombarded with electricity / contact with foreign metals that trigger immune response. I do think a spinal tap of some sort might make more sense (rather than patching directly into brain tissue like in the Matrix), but you still get scar tissue. Non-invasive methods don't have scar tissue, but it's unclear whether measuring the surface activity of the brain yields sufficient information. Furthermore, they are highly noisy due to ambient static and muscle activity. You shouldn't move much if you want o.k. readings. The BCI dream is to have a lightweight headset that you put behind your ears like in Iron Man 3 or Big Hero 6 (and then you control robots with your mere thoughts). However, I think that kind of technology is really far away, short of some huge breakthroughs in compressed sensing and possibly superconductor physics. Even more difficult than reading data is writing it back in. There have been very early results with getting monkeys to telepathically control each other's muscle movements, but my understanding is that it's not very reliable. A reasonable survey can be found here: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1110866515000237 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1110866515...
- andrewjl 10y ago
  What about circuits / probes made from biological materials rather than metal/silicon?
- avz 10y ago
  > There are some very difficult challenges in brain-computer interfaces (BCI), some of which involve huge barriers presented by human biology. It's rather depressing. Completely agree. I don't think BCI is likely to take off seriously until we assert more confident control over our own biology. In particular, techniques like CRISPR may eventually open the door to temporary, local and reversible genetic manipulation of body tissues that would allow human body to grow and shed tiny BCI connectors with desired specs. This is probably a few hundreds of years of development (and political and moral arguments) away though. Depressing indeed.
roscoebeezie 10y ago
I had thoughts for some bci product. I have no clue about the feasibility. Take an EEG like the emotiv Epoch. Get lucky and hope you can still get the raw data via emokit or something like that. Construct some sort of low level two character alphabet representation. I'd imagine something similar to EBCDIC cause I'm a tortured mainframe soul, so C1 is A and so on. Using some fancy ML (deep learning?), train for your alphabet representation using EEG data while loudly subvocaling "C" or something. Once you get lucky and train a model, use your alphabet as some sort of string of consciousness recording/ instant note taking. Some how tag your thought notes so you can come back later or do some fancy searches. Do some fancy NLP on your notes or some conceptual blending or whatever is cool. Sell the software, but keep the notes "open" somehow. I'd go on but that's my idea. Steal it and hire me.
- 36bydesign 10y ago
  The direct problem would be that we don't think in letters, but I like the idea.

happyslobro 10y ago

This is what will make the difference between us becoming the cybernetic overlords, and us getting crushed underneath of them. Whatever powers we grant to the machines, it is critical that we also take these powers for ourselves.

ythl 10y ago
I'm still not convinced thinking, living, conscious machines are possible anytime soon, if ever. Until we understand the hard problem of consciousness and other fundamental mechanisms of the brain, we will never build true AI. Increasing system complexity and hoping for a "singularity" event is cargo cult science[1]. It's like building runways on your private island and hoping airplanes will spontaneously land and produce wondrous treasures to trade. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult_science https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult_science
- tim333 10y ago
  Systems like AlphaGo do something like thinking. I suspect progress will crack along regardless of what philosophical types think about the hard problem of consciousness. Also if you are a materialist the brain already is a thinking, living, conscious machine.
- happyslobro 10y ago
  Agreed, human equivalent AI is probably several hundreds of years off, at best. but we don't need anything that sophisticated to trigger an "overlords" scenario. I'm picturing something like a very good legal AI, being abused by a foreign state's hackers to ensure the incarceration of political opponents, in preparation for a coup. We're not far off from that being a plausible scenario now, but if we all had the benefit of a personal legal AI, or access to a collective legal AI, then it would be a lot harder for anyone to use the legal system against an individual opponent, as a simple weapon.
  - ythl 10y ago
    That's a really good point. In a world where we use machine learning to decide how to diagnose illness, pass judgment, arrest people, and more, it could be manipulated by bad actors into enslaving us one way or another (no conscious AI needed).
- CuriouslyC 10y ago
  What if consciousness is an irreducible property of matter? What if computers are already conscious, and their experience of executing code is analogous to our experience of thinking? How could we ever tell the difference?
  - jshevek 10y ago
    If consciousness is an irreducible property of all matter, then it seems to me that the word consciousness has no meaning.
    - drewbug 10y ago
      What about the word mass?
      - jshevek 10y ago
        Yes, your question and its answer emphasizes my point nicely.
  - ZeroFries 10y ago
    The computer would still have to solve the phenominal-binding problem. See qualiacomputing.com
- grondilu 10y ago
  We don't need to fully understand a processus in order to reproduce it. We can proceed by imitation, trial and error. As we mostly did for airplanes, for instance. At some point we may create a machine exhibiting human-level intelligent behavior, and then the question of whether or not it has consciousness will not be answered but that will not matter much. Kind of in 2001: "Well he acts as if he has genuine emotions. Of course he's programmed that way. That makes it easier for us to talk to him. But as to whether or not he has real feelings, it's something I don't think anyone can truthfully answer."
  - ythl 10y ago
    > We don't need to fully understand a processes in order to reproduce it. That's true, but you still need to understand it enough > We can proceed by imitation, trial and error. As we mostly did for airplanes, for instance. Yes, but again, I would argue that initial attempts to create airplanes were cargo cult science, and that's why they failed. It's something you want to avoid, yet I see it all the time when the subject of AI comes up. "In a cargo cult, you reproduce the appearance of the machine without understanding the principles behind the machine. You build radio stations out of straw. The cargo cult approach to aeronautics—for actually building airplanes—would be to copy birds very, very closely; feathers, flapping wings, and all the rest. And people did this back in the 19th century, but with very limited success." (LeCun [1]) [1] http://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/artificial-intelligence/facebook-ai-director-yann-lecun-on-deep-learning http://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/artificial-intel...
    - grondilu 10y ago
      When Yan LeCun started playing with artificial neural networks, did he know why they worked? Aren't artificial neural networks very much inspired from nature anyway, not unlike early airplane wings? I mean between a cargo cult and a very reasonable attempt at mimicking nature, there is whole continuum and being quick at using the extreme label (that is, "cargo cult") to dismiss an approach just because you don't agree with it, seems quite dishonest to me.
  - shostack 10y ago
- Houshalter 10y ago
  Thats a very strange belief. Akin to believing we can't build cars until we understand how horses work exactly. AI has made huge progress in the past few years, without any input from neuroscientists. Stupid evolution made human brains with just random mutations and selection. Surely human engineers can do better. The hard problem of consciousness is especially irrelevant to AI. The hard problem is a philosophical issue that by definition can't be solved with science. We could make an exact simulation of the brain that exactly reproduces human behavior in a computer, and philosophers would still be debating it.
  - ZeroFries 10y ago
    Natural selection selected for complex, globally-bound unitary conscious experiences for a reason. Strong AGI probably requires it.
    - Houshalter 10y ago
      It requires it, in the same way that cars require legs and submarines require fins, or planes require flapping wings. I don't think strong AI will be anything like humans. If nothing else, it will follow a totally different evolutionary path than the conditions that created human minds. Minds designed for navigating the social hierarchy of primates. But the second point of my comment is that the philosophical debate about "consciousness" is disconnected from any empirical matter or anything connected to reality. Some of the advocates of the "hard problem" have stated that if neuroscientists came up with an exact theory of the human brain, that perfectly explained our behavior, they would still not be convinced. It's complete quasi-religious nonsense that's irrelevant to real AI or brain research.
      - ZeroFries 10y ago
        The hard problem actually extends to the bedrock of reality. What is the relation of matter and qualia? You don't have a clear understanding of the hard problem, nor of your own experience, if you can deny it so off-handedly as you've done here. I do agree with you, though, that AI will be completely different from human intelligence.

Balgair 10y ago

The disease and safety aspects alone are pretty cool. Blindness and deafness will be cured, as will vertigo and a host of other diseases and malformations. Think Stephen Hawking, but actually walking around and talking again, having a totally normal life again. Also, imagine having IR vision for firefighters in a house fire, or a surgeon having basically X-Ray vision, or being able to see the elements in your tap water with the aid of an inbuilt spectrometer. Really cool stuff.

bsbechtel 10y ago
Absolutely, although I've always been interested in the aspect it can have on internal corporate communication. This is the #1 challenge/cost driver in every company today. Maybe I'm thinking in the realm of science fiction still, but to be able to effortlessly communicate the precise info every individual in an organization needs at the instant they need it would unleash an unprecedented explosion of economic growth around the world.
- Balgair 10y ago
  I hope not! I downsized to a dumbphone just to get away from email at night. The last thing I want to know is my boss's every whim for me. I think you are thinking of a eusocial hivemind organization. Though they are very good at getting goals done, like building these tunnels or that termite mound, they are not very adaptable outside of their environmental niche. It's the opposite of capitalism you speak of. Democracy is a thousand voices all yelling different songs to make a chorus, and it is slow and messy. However, it tends to find the 'right' choice at a higher rate than the top down model.
  - bsbechtel 10y ago
    Well I was thinking more in terms of not only top down communication, but also bottom up (reporting, identification of problems on the ground floor, etc). The vast majority of our economy is goal-driven, with a very small percentage of workers actually defining the goals, doing creative work, or doing research. Consider the impact on the world if the latest research from the lab was instantly decimated to the entire community, feedback provided, and new knowledge spread to industry. This is the positive aspect of the technology I am thinking about (of course many, many years in the future).

rimantas 10y ago

Watch "Black Mirror" for some of the possible ways.

randomdrake 10y ago

I'm really interested in those interfaces as well. Some posit that one of the big advantages of the ways our brains evolved were in the increased size of our frontal lobe. They say this ultimately led to increased processing power by allowing our brains to have access to more data for making decisions or analyzing thoughts. I feel like we've continued this growth in some ways. Low bandwidth access to information that doesn't reside in our brains, allowing us to further our capacity for thought and understanding. Ray Kurzweil is an interesting fellow who's very much into this as well and sees our extension as an inevitability in the next few decades. Direct interfaces between the brain and the Internet (or some other network) to allow for even lower bandwidth access to information. Since you said you were interested: there was an episode of Star Talk[1] a few months back where he dives into this stuff along with Dr. Tyson and a neuroscientist. Definitely recommend it as a fun primer for where we are, what we're doing, and where some people think we're going to go. [1] - http://www.startalkradio.net/show/gazing-into-the-future-with-ray-kurzweil/ http://www.startalkradio.net/show/gazing-into-the-future-wit...

ekianjo 10y ago
> Ray Kurzweil is an interesting fellow Are we talking about the same guy who sells supplements and takes hundreds of vitamins everyday, despite there being no evidence of positive effect ? (http://www.rayandterry.com/ http://www.rayandterry.com/)
- tlow 10y ago
  I believe that very little is known on the effects of this kind of supplementation. Avoiding dangerously high mineral content which could lead to illnesses like kidney stones, there doesn't seem to be strong evidence AGAINST. I therefore suggest perhaps we defer judgement as there also appears to be little evidence FOR.

tlow 10y ago

I think that one of the major hurdles to BCI is the mechanism of connection. When electrodes are connected to neurons they have a tendency to be destroyed. However, one might imagine the development of sophisticated electromagnetic equipment which might suitable focus and modulate "receptor pathways" in the brain. This seems far off. Eyes are convenient sensory organs to utilize for input. Getting directly to the brain seems more like trying to manipulate electron flow in a PCB without removing the external enclosure. (not to say that's impossible, just not as easy as cutting a trace and soldering in a connection)

selectiveshift 10y ago
The great thing about our brains is how malleable they are. We should be creating as low tech a mechanism as possible and then train our brains to use it.
- tlow 10y ago
  I wanted to discuss an expansion of this idea, I am so glad you brought it up. Less than 100 years ago we as humanity largely believed that we were fated with the brains and capacity we were born with. Today, we know this isn't true. In fact, cases like Phineas Gage make one wonder.[1] Now to respond to you comment. There is no reason that we couldn't develop methodologies for utilizing our sensory input to train our brains in mechanisms we've not even considered or dreamed of today. Maybe we can achieve a hyper-reality where reality speed is 5x but after a small period our brains can adjust and then we can learn at 5x. Our brains are limitless. Our ability to directly interface to them with electronics seems tenable today (but that may or may not always be true). [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phineas_Gage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phineas_Gage

ericjang 10y ago

There are some very difficult challenges in brain-computer interfaces (BCI), some of which involve huge barriers presented by human biology. It's rather depressing. Presently, there is no good way to read data from the brain to a device. You can drill a hole in your head and patch-clamp some electrodes to your brain tissue, but this procedure is only recommended for treating debilitating diseases like Parkinson's. Furthermore, there is the issue of scar tissue developing over time as a small region of your brain is being bombarded with electricity / contact with foreign metals that trigger immune response. I do think a spinal tap of some sort might make more sense (rather than patching directly into brain tissue like in the Matrix), but you still get scar tissue. Non-invasive methods don't have scar tissue, but it's unclear whether measuring the surface activity of the brain yields sufficient information. Furthermore, they are highly noisy due to ambient static and muscle activity. You shouldn't move much if you want o.k. readings. The BCI dream is to have a lightweight headset that you put behind your ears like in Iron Man 3 or Big Hero 6 (and then you control robots with your mere thoughts). However, I think that kind of technology is really far away, short of some huge breakthroughs in compressed sensing and possibly superconductor physics. Even more difficult than reading data is writing it back in. There have been very early results with getting monkeys to telepathically control each other's muscle movements, but my understanding is that it's not very reliable. A reasonable survey can be found here: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1110866515000237 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1110866515...

andrewjl 10y ago
What about circuits / probes made from biological materials rather than metal/silicon?
avz 10y ago
> There are some very difficult challenges in brain-computer interfaces (BCI), some of which involve huge barriers presented by human biology. It's rather depressing. Completely agree. I don't think BCI is likely to take off seriously until we assert more confident control over our own biology. In particular, techniques like CRISPR may eventually open the door to temporary, local and reversible genetic manipulation of body tissues that would allow human body to grow and shed tiny BCI connectors with desired specs. This is probably a few hundreds of years of development (and political and moral arguments) away though. Depressing indeed.

roscoebeezie 10y ago

I had thoughts for some bci product. I have no clue about the feasibility. Take an EEG like the emotiv Epoch. Get lucky and hope you can still get the raw data via emokit or something like that. Construct some sort of low level two character alphabet representation. I'd imagine something similar to EBCDIC cause I'm a tortured mainframe soul, so C1 is A and so on. Using some fancy ML (deep learning?), train for your alphabet representation using EEG data while loudly subvocaling "C" or something. Once you get lucky and train a model, use your alphabet as some sort of string of consciousness recording/ instant note taking. Some how tag your thought notes so you can come back later or do some fancy searches. Do some fancy NLP on your notes or some conceptual blending or whatever is cool. Sell the software, but keep the notes "open" somehow. I'd go on but that's my idea. Steal it and hire me.

36bydesign 10y ago
The direct problem would be that we don't think in letters, but I like the idea.