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Human use of high-bandwidth wireless brain-computer interface
- tyingq 6y agoWow, that's pretty surreal. An actual person with 2 high density connectors on their head. Each one streaming 48mbps of neural data. Parts of Philip K Dick's stories are almost real. Though I get that the data is coming out is still pretty low-fidelity and crude.
- l-lousy 6y agoI can’t wait until I forget to charge my brain reader overnight and can’t access my computer.
- TheOtherHobbes 6y ago"You have been disconnected because payment was declined..."
- bogwog 6y agoMore like "We have updated our privacy policy. Please read and accept these terms to continue"
- IncRnd 6y agoYou have not received the proper number of ad imprints this week. Network functionality will be restored, once your Facebook BCI chip detects that you have fully met the terms of service, which you had legally accepted in order to receive this free implant. Until such time, you will not be able to access Facebook's BrainNet. We urge your compliance, so you may once again virtually chat with friends and family and work remotely with your employer.
- disgruntled101 6y agoHow long until programmers are forced to ditch antiquated methods of input like hands and keyboards in favor of streaming thoughts directly to your IDE? Can't wait to be forced by market forces to adopt such an interface and then promptly get ads streamed back or get brainhacked
- goldenchrome 6y agoAll I can say is, I'm glad I'll be dead in a handful of decades.
- blisterpeanuts 6y agoSuppose that while you're still around, a brain extension enables you to greatly extend your lifespan. Would you agree to the implant? Totally hypothetical, of course; I myself would not have a ready answer. But for paralyzed and nerve-damaged people, it seems to me adopting this technology would be a no-brainer, so to speak.
- goldenchrome 6y agoI think they already covered that in The Matrix
- talmr 6y agoWhat about other thoughts? Does my employer get access to those?
- disgruntled101 6y agoJust meditate on your breath or play pazaak in your mind to distract the mind reading
- PicassoCTs 6y agoOnly for advertisement and performance reviews. You will have to change who you are to fit into the company, im afraid..
- kjjjjjjjjjjjjjj 6y ago> You will have to change who you are to fit into the company, im afraid.. As if you don't have to already? The false consensus paradox in corporations is overwhelming.
- tlibert 6y agoNext stop: telepathy.
- soared 6y agoHow does 48 megabits per second compare to a tasks a computer does?
- burlesona 6y agoSo back in the 60's, people looked back at the progress over the previous decades, imagined the future, and thought about space. We'd have commercial space flight any day now. The most poignant scene I can think of: in 2001 A Space Odyssey, the character flies on a Pan-Am spaceship to the moon, and then goes into a phone booth to make a phone call. Fast forward and it turns out that we had been near the top of an s-curve when it came to space tech, but near the bottom of the s-curve of computers, and few people back then were imagining (could imagine?) how different the world would be 50 years later with everyone carrying around internet-connected supercomputers in their pocket. I think we may be in the same situation today, where people imagine the future and think AI revolution and computational everything, but are mostly missing that we're at the bottom of a biotech s-curve that is going to blow "computer" progress out of the water over the next 50-60 years. My guess is that in 60 years our computer technology will be largely similar to today, just faster and nicer. But in the same way that the mature industrial revolution made high-precision manufacturing possible which made incredible computers possible, our mature computer technology is now enabling incredible progress in biotech. And the explosion of biotech will lead to mind-blowing changes that are difficult to even imagine. From this article: no more keyboards / mice? No typing, you can "think" to write. What about recording your own thoughts and then playing them back to yourself later? How much further can that tech go? And there is so much more beyond BCI, we are just understanding the basic building blocks in many areas, but making amazing progress. I'm excited about it.
- ChrisMarshallNY 6y agoI agree. Your comment made me think of Natalie Woods' last movie: "Brainstorm." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brainstorm_(1983_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brainstorm_(1983_film)
- derefr 6y ago> we had been near the top of an s-curve when it came to space tech Near the top of an s-curve in getting-to-space (“heavy lift”) tech, more like. I’d say the field of actual in-space tech (i.e. technology that takes advantage of low-gravity / low-pressure / low-oxygen environments) is still pretty nascent. We still treat space as “Earth, minus some guarantees” (i.e. something we have to harden for) rather than doing much with the unique benefits of space. It’ll probably take having a long-term industrial base operating from space to see much change there, though. Imagine, for example, living on a space station, and having your food cooked using cooking techniques that assume cheaply-available vacuum and/or anoxic environments. :)
- rocmcd 6y agoCall me a cynic, but I don’t have a lot of optimism for brain-computer interfaces. I can barely control my own thoughts, let alone understand how they are made or where they originate. We would need to make an exponential leap in our understanding of the brain and our consciousness within it to make this in any way a viable input method.
- iamgopal 6y agoThis is what I was thinking. As a creative output device My brain thinks way ahead while I’m typing the current code. This tech will actually slowdown the process with respect to output . What this will thrive at is, giving input to the brain about data by brain generating just enough query. So ultimately future super human will be the guys who can generate precise query much faster.
- tachyonbeam 6y agoIMO, the bigger problem, which nobody talks about, is that if we have brain-computer interfaces, it will be trivial to use them to control our emotions. Once that happens, it seems to me we'll basically stop being human. People are going to want to feel whatever emotion is convenient in that moment. Don't enjoy your terrible dead-end job? Now you do. Don't enjoy your abusive relationship? Now you do. Don't feel comfortable with societal issues at large? Now you do. Empathy gets in the way of doing your job? No problem.
- whichquestion 6y agoOn the other side of this, some people require external emotional regulation because their brains fail to do so for them and take medication for it. So having this as a treatment option isn’t necessarily something we should avoid pursuing for cases where medication isn’t an option for whatever reason.
- tachyonbeam 6y agoYes obviously, just like there is a legit case for brain implants for paraplegic or wheelchair-bound people. However, it's easy to see how things could easily go way too far and lead to a world of VR-addiction and dehumanization. https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1200/1*gQVf0RpFjaYfS7GJJtuzQg.jpeg https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1200/1*gQVf0RpFjaYfS7GJJ... As always, technology is a tool, and a double-edged sword. It's just hard to predict how it will change society sometimes. IMO brain implants are actually way more dangerous than genetic engineering ever could be. People creating designer babies with blonde hair and a higher IQ is nothing compared to the risk of people no longer being able to feel empathy and sadness in response to problematic situations. Maybe we'll even stop feeling love, because it's just too inconvenient. Oh and uh, yeah: brain implants could also make it possible to implement the notion of thoughtcrime. I hope, for your own sakes, that your political beliefs and opinions are in line with that the majority has deemed correct.
- unchocked 6y agoSo the innovation here is not the neural probes (200 neurons, same state of the art), nor the connection from the neural probes to outside the skull (physical port, not wireless), but only that there is a wireless dongle that sits on top of the physical port and connects to a server somewhere? Yawn?
- tyingq 6y agoI think, yeah "Yawn" from a tech perspective. But for average people, the idea that these folks are hooked up and streaming from their homes, with minimal visible hardware is new. It feels more sci-fi than someone in a research center with a ton of wires on their head.
- o_p 6y agoI doubt thats physically possible, its like trying to access your RAM by reading EM fluctuations from the outside of your computer, sure, you can see when theres a lot of read/write instructions but theres no way you read memory.
- tyingq 6y agoIt seems like it's closer to measuring which areas of the "die" are busy. Like "the MMU is doing something hard" or "this adder circuit in the ALU is idle", etc.
- lallysingh 6y ago> In the current study, two devices used together recorded neural signals at 48 megabits per second from 200 electrodes with a battery life of over 36 hours. So roughly 10 Gbps, not bad. But this isn't about the raw tech. For people doing medical research, it lets them gather data all day instead of just appointments. That's the big change.
- tyingq 6y agoI didn't read it as 48mbps per signal, but rather 48mbps per device. Did I read it wrong?
- daenz 6y agoI guarantee that at some point in the future, if we make it far enough, there will be an overwhelming social argument made that everyone should get super integrated brain interface devices implanted, "for the good of everyone." The argument will probably go something like this: >The brain interface device X smooths out volatile emotions, reducing risk of angry outbursts that result in violence. By not getting a device installed, you are putting everyone at risk to your violent outbursts. Employers and businesses have the right to exclude someone who is at a higher risk of inflicting violence.
- srswtf123 6y agoI suspect you're right, and I already don't want this technology to exist, or its creation to be pursued. A brain-computer interface will, IMO, most likely be used to control brains, not computers.
- newsbinator 6y agoIf anything, the argument to get brain interfaces implanted would be that it’s cruel to children not to implant them. It’d be like withholding a vaccine against a genetic flaw, when the vaccine is cheap and sitting on the shelf ready to use.
- lenkite 6y agoYep, get a [Brain Passport] for [Public Safety] or be denied public services. Actually, this is something that will likely happen. It will first start with violent criminals and then gradually make its way into the general public - with appropriate cherry-picked data and statistics showing its advantages.
- oliv__ 6y agoThis unfortunately makes a lot of sense in the current context in which we live, but I am optimistic enough to believe that sometime, somewhere in the world, people will join forces to push back against such use of the technology and in favor of a "free-er" society of individuals. I like to think of the ideas behind the formation of the USA as a similar spirit.
- joe_the_user 6y ago
- gallerdude 6y agoThis is huge. From what I’ve read, a lot of neuroscience is bottlenecked by having a hard time reading neurons through the skull. This will remove the bottleneck in whole new types of brain/mind/consciousness research.
- EMM_386 6y agoThis does not read neurons "through the skull". It wirelessly transmits the data from probes already in the brain. The innovation is that they do not have to be physically tethered to get the data. > The unit sits on top of a user’s head and connects to an electrode array within the brain’s motor cortex using the same port used by wired systems.
- gallerdude 6y agoI’m aware, that’s why I said this will remove the bottleneck :)
- escape_goat 6y agoFrom the moment I read "full broadband fidelity," I began looking at this press release as a product of dark-pattern science communications rather than an announcement of scientific progress. The news is that the connection is wireless and high-bandwidth. Low-bandwidth wireless communications have already succeeded elsewhere. Innovation could have occurred regarding the interface device in the brain, the broadcast chip in that device, the physical link link layer, the protocol layers above that, the external receiver, et cetera, but there are no details we can clean except that the connection is 'virtually' as good as a physically wired connection. Wherever details are missing, we can assume neither that they were overlooked by the writer, nor that they were deliberately left out. We can assume, however, that they did not contain any information which furthered the author's purpose.
- whowe1 6y agoNeuralink's tech is definitely more advanced, but they haven't gotten it into humans yet and there are still issues with the longevity of the threads inside an actual human brain.
- Erlich_Bachman 6y agoDoes it look like they have some good avenues of fixing that?
- pier25 6y agoSo what constitutes high/low bandwidth in this context? The article doesn't mention any specific numbers (eg: 1Mbps).
- echelon 6y agoBCI could unlock human immortality. BCI is a hard problem, and the risk to reward ratio for current generation tech is too high except for a few isolated cases: non-invasive, which is low-resolution, and disease remediation, which is basically a measure of last resort. Given the poor payoff, the technology isn't invested into. If we can get out of the gravity well / steep energy slope that prevents us from reaching the pinnacle, we can maybe one day become capable of performing brain copies and uploads, which effectively achieves immortality. This would be the most impactful technology ever developed for humans, should we still be relevant at that point. There's a huge hill to climb in getting there, and it's unlikely we'll see it within our lifetimes, if ever. AGI, if developed first, would probably see little need in co-opting messy and overly-complicated human machines. And there's always the chance we destroy ourselves first.
- blisterpeanuts 6y agoWell, a brain copy is not exactly the same as immortality; it just means your memories and an amalgamation of the neural networks that form your unique personality can be duplicated. The entity that results would be a separate individual.
- scsilver 6y agoIm not sure I would notice or care.
- watercooler_guy 6y agoI think what they are saying is that you would not continue to perceive and have experiences through that digital mind; it may as well not even be a duplicate of your mind, as far as you’re concerned. Unless there’s some yet unknown quality of consciousness that says if your brain system stops, and another brain system just like it arises, that’s enough to have continued perception through that new mind. Is that what you meant?
- echelon 6y agoDoes that matter? We still value digital photographs. They're not the original scene, but they have value.
- bradgranath 6y agoHigh-bandwidth wireless link, for existing human brain interfaces. They miniaturized the reciever and slapped a wifi chip on it. Cool. They aren't beaming thoughts into brains tho.
- loliko 6y agoall these great brains working on such commodities when we have climate change, poverty, authoritarianism and other issues much more pressing. seems that we live in an era where it's easier to make human talk with machines than to work on helping humans talks peacefully with each other.
- jmfldn 6y agoThis stuff is no doubt promising, not least for disabled people but this neuralink-type stuff seems terrifying. Anyone who is excited about having an Internet connection into their brain needs their head examined. Us humans don't exactly have a good track record of avoiding awful unintended consequences when we introduce new tech, no matter the benefits. It all starts out with an innocent sales pitch, "we're just connecting people" etc etc, but whatever we build ends up reflecting human nature and our social and economic context in all its myriad ways, good and bad. We don't control technology or even have the foggiest idea how anything we build will pan out. We just make it look like there was a masterplan after the fact when in reality it was a headless blunder. I'm the sort of person that yearns for computing to be done sitting on a chair looking at a big screen. I don't even like mobile internet devices that much in terms of what they've done to us. Beaming this straight to our brain? I'm out thanks.
- 0x4d464d48 6y ago"Anyone who is excited about having an Internet connection into their brain needs their head examined." Perhaps you can have this done with a POST request in the future and kill two birds with one stone.
- oliv__ 6y agoI've been thinking about this quite a bit: there seems to have been a shift sometime during the last 50 years where instead of computers and computing being a tool to be mastered and controlled by humans, we've seen computers switch the power dynamic and render us humans the tools. To me, that clash of "visions" was supremely represented in Apple's "1984" advert. I'd love for computing to get back to that utopian vision of the bicycle for the mind but if you look around these days it's more of a train-wreck of the mind.
- ascotan 6y agoNext step: add a telnetd server and give it the root password of 123.
- tibbydudeza 6y agoNeuralink ???.