Scientists Watch Thoughts Form in the Brain
scientificamerican.com
scientificamerican.com
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.
Also if you are a materialist the brain already is a thinking, living, conscious machine.
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.
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."
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-intel...
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.
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.
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.
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.
The idea of IR vision firefighting, being able to see the elements in your water, etc, these are all basically ubiquitous computing, and we're kind of getting there with IoT putting sensors in everything. What is missing is a way of intuitively accessing and building it into our thought processes in a manner less clunky than fetching a phone, unlocking, launching an app.
What we need is Google Glass, or equivalent. The real place where Google Glass fell down was not in it's handling of privacy concerns, strictly, it was there attempt to try and make it exclusive and elite, like they did with the Google Mail launch, where you needed invites.
I can't help but feel that if Google had made the "explorer" program humbler and quieter, followed by an accessible general release, we'd have access to so much more today.
I think right now lots of people are trying to boil the ocean and try to make AR truly part of our bodies, when really there's a huge amount of low hanging fruit in simply getting information to be ever-present and available.
Flicking your eyes up is a good first step. Later, overlaying the same information into our field of view. Later still, integration of that data into the body, rather than just presentation of it to the physical senses.
However, I have known deaf people who say they have no interest in "curing" their deafness, and who suggest that the development and widespread use of such a complete cure would destroy a culture.
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-wit...
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/)
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).
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/S1110866515...
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.
This. I might start getting excited about brain-computer interfaces once we have a proof-of-concept non-chemical local anaesthetic. Like, wire something into your finger neurons that erases pain signals sent from finger. That's several orders of magnitude simpler than a full-blown brain-computer interface, yet we're nowhere even close to it.
Here's a good video about it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jAhjPd4uNFY
The success of innervated prosthetics[3] suggests that the peripheral nervous system is a viable point of access as well. And, what's more, these interfaces are already bidirectional.
This is absolutely wild conjecture, but I've had the thought for a while that you could conceivably induce (or externally grow and then graft) a new peripheral nervous "port" somewhere. It'd be a bit like teeing off of a plumbing line (understatement of difficulty level: over 9000), and then you'd have a dedicated cluster of new nerves you could start to "play" with, sending and receiving arbitrary signals. But there are some very difficult ethical questions involved for anyone who were hypothetically interested in pursuing this approach.
Ultimately, that's what I think (rightly) holds us back for BCI: invasive procedures are just too ethically questionable for anything other than self-modification, which is okay in the body-hacking community, but still decidedly un-mainstream.
[1] At this point in time, since we've yet to find extraterrestrial life, caveat emptor, etc etc etc
[2] Points-of-entry for googling and wiki'ing: "neural plasticity" and "sensory substitution"
[3] Terms to search for: "innervated prosthetics" and "targeted reinnervation"
[1] http://qz.com/757516/paraplegics-are-learning-to-walk-again-...
Then you make a necklace as an interface with the noninvasive BCI hardware, communicating through your skin. (considering all the other noninvasive options, a necklace seems to be the most appropriate IMHO)
I've got no idea on how to make the nerves susceptible enough for it to provide useful bandwidth, but maybe a properly primed stemcell injection could provide the growth of usable nerves for it.
From there you can give the brain new senses via various sensors, give us high speed mental computer interfaces (awesome for quick calculations) and ditch the need for physical remote controls.
I think that's very likely to be innately possible, given both research like you linked, as well as existing animal experiments with BCI. The brain is just an incredibly impressive thing.
However there are other options. People have figured out how to hijack existing senses. There was a plate you could put on your tongue that would let you see images through the nerves on your tongue. There was a project that converted video to sound waves, so you could learn to see through your ears. And there was a guy who made a vibrating suit which could let deaf people hear again by converting sound to more noticeable vibration frequencies.
It's unclear what these extra inputs actually add over just presenting information on a computer monitor or HUD and using vision. I think brain interfaces are massively overhyped. Our brain is already super flexible and can learn to process info from existing interfaces just as well.
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.
And paper without paywall from kleinfelds lab: http://physics.ucsd.edu/neurophysics/publications/nmeth.3151...
* Optogenetics advantages: don't need to insert things into tissue. Disadvantages: requires genetic engineering that is not approved for human use. Difficulty reaching deep brain targets. To image many neurons, might need to pump lots of light into an area, causing heat and cell death. Bulky.
* Microelectrode arrays (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multielectrode_array) like the Utah or Michigan array advantages: direct electrical recordings, relatively compact. Disadvantages: low density, invasiveness.
It is worth noting that most behavioral studies are done with MEAs are due to their convenience/form factor.
It is also important to note that these two technologies measure different things: an MEA can record extracellular voltages, so it's a relatively direct measurement of neural activity, compared to optogenetics, which relies on ion channels fluorescing, which is not exactly what most people really want to measure.
A word about invasiveness: when you insert large (>1um) things into tissue, you elicit a foreign body response, starting with inflammation and ending with scar tissue or gliosis. The issue with invasive probes like MEAs is that even if you manage to avoid major blood vessels and you control bleeding and inflammation, ultimately scar tissue forms around your probes. Scar tissue is a much worse electrical interface than plain tissue, and thus the effectiveness of your BCI/BMI implant diminishes.
Disclosure: I run a company (Paradromics, www.paradromics.com) developing next-generation microwire technology for brain-machine interfaces. Also, my strength is in software so while the gist of what I'm saying is probably mostly correct, I can't give details as well as others can.
* optogenetic stimulation: using light-activated ion channels to modulate neural activity
* optical imaging: using genetically targeted fluorescent proteins (mainly GCaMP) to observe the activity of neurons
This article is more the second kind, and the novel aspect is that this technology couples dopamine release to calcium rises, enabling imaging of the calcium signal to be used as a proxy for the neurotransmitter's release. It's more likely to be quite useful for investigating specific scientific questions about neurotransmitter signaling than a general purpose readout for BMI.
Multielectrode arrays pick up spikes or action potentials from individual neurons directly, so you get high temporal resolution but from a sparse sample of cells. This sample turns out to be enough to do a lot of interesting things, such as controlling a mouse cursor or a robotic arm. This is already in clinical trials at a few sites, including (my lab at) Stanford.
Imaging approaches are really powerful, but the signals are often slower. This has to do with the kinetics of the proteins themselves and the signal that is being detected (calcium is slower than voltage transients). But you get to see the activity of lots of neurons. There are voltage sensitive channels that you can image, although the signal to noise ratio isn't nearly as high as yet. It's not immediately clear how this could be used for a BMI in humans, mainly because you would absolutely need optical access to the brain to image, so you'd either be opening up a window or implanting some kind of imaging sensor. The less invasive approaches you were hinting at are mostly in the first category (stimulation), where for longer wavelengths of light you wouldn't need something as invasive.
A not-so-good analogy is before we can measure electrical current in wires, now CNiFER allows us to measure electromagnetic field. This will help to explain why some headphones nearby will beep when your cellphone received a message.
http://www.nature.com/nmeth/journal/v6/n12/full/nmeth.1398.h...
The CNiFER innovation is the ability to visualize neurotransmitter activity.
By the time anyone questions its efficacy it will be too late.
To the thought-extractor citizen -- we'll get to the bottom of this!
And everyone should fear because such tech could also be abused to falsely accuse you of being in some hated group. Police lie about drugs often enough to be a threat to liberty; they need less tools they can lie about, not more.
"Law enforcement" in most of the world is not on the side of regular citizens.
> When many [neurons] fire together, they form a thought.
Is that a definition, an observation, a hypothesis or a result?