Brave New World: Your Brain on AI

We’ve gone from using a computer at a desk to carrying a computer in our pockets. What’s next? Perhaps a small computer—a brain-computer interface (BCI)—will be implanted in our brains. Very basic versions of it are being used today to help paralyzed individuals move prosthetic limbs and help deaf people hear.

But those basic functions are just scratching the surface of what may be possible if human machine symbiosis becomes a reality. The digitization of our thoughts is set to radically change how we communicate. Most of the Tech Titans are involved in developing this new technology. Let’s take a look at how MIT, Elon Musk, and others are trying to get into our heads:

(1) Powerful thoughts. The MIT Media Lab is working on project AlterEgo. It involves a computing device worn around a person’s lower face and jaw that can read one’s internal thoughts by picking up on neuromuscular signals. Think a question, and the Internet-enabled device will answer it by responding through headphones.

A paper published in March by the MIT research team explains how the device works. Notably, it doesn’t require any sensors to be placed in the skull, so it’s less invasive than other devices being tested—one of its main benefits. It’s also very portable since it connects wirelessly via Bluetooth to any external computing device.

AlterEgo is 92% accurate. If the user thinks up a list of numbers to add, subtract, divide or multiply, AlterEgo can do the calculation and whisper the answer into the user’s ear. It can be used to issue reminders, schedule tasks at specific times, and serve as “a form of memory augmentation to the user.” The device can tell time, too, or it can be asked to shut off home appliances that are connected wirelessly. No more having to clap off lights; with AlterEgo, simply thinking it will get it done.

AlterEgo can be connected to peripheral devices, like lapel cameras or smart glasses to gain additional information. Two people wearing AlterEgo could silently communicate with each other in a meeting or in a noisy environment that makes verbal communication difficult.

“Through the AlterEgo device, we seek to …couple human and machine intelligence in a complimentary symbiosis,” the study’s authors explain. “As smart machines work in close unison with humans, through such platforms, we anticipate the progress in machine intelligence research to complement intelligence augmentation (IA) efforts, which would lead to an eventual convergence—to augment humans in wide variety of everyday tasks, ranging from computations to creativity to leisure.”

60 Minutes did a fantastic job explaining how AlterEgo works in a 4/22 episode about the MIT Media Lab. The researcher working on AlterEgo showed how he could order a pizza by silently commanding: “Order pepperoni pizza.” Likewise, his thinking a question would prompt the device to search all of the information on the Web for the answer.

(2) Brain implants. The BrainGate research team at Brown University, Massachusetts General Hospital, Stanford University, Case Western Reserve University, and Providence VA Medical Center is developing neurotechnologies, or BCIs, to help people overcome paralysis.

BrainGate implants electrodes into a patient’s brain to record brain activity. That activity is transmitted to a device attached to the patient’s skull, which transmits the information to a computer. The information then can be used to control the computer or the “message” could be passed on to a robotic limb or to electrodes in the patient’s limb.

While the project is still experimental, it has enabled quadriplegics to pick up and drink a cup of coffee simply by thinking about moving a robotic arm, as you can see in this video. Hurdles include the inflammation buildup that occurs around foreign objects in the brain, which ultimately reduce their ability to work over time.

There are various forms of BCIs, including retinal implants for people who have lost their sight and cochlea implants for patients with hearing loss. “A small speaker sits on the outside of the skull, and feeds a digital signal to a small computer that sits inside the cochlea, which sends the nerve signals relating to sound to the brain,” explained a 10/19/17 article in TechRadar.

There are BCIs that provide deep brain stimulation to alleviate the tremors affiliated with Parkinson’s. And maybe in the future, there will be BCIs that retain memories to help Alzheimer’s patients.

(3) One step further. In addition to developing electric cars and reusable rockets, Elon Musk has a lesser-known company, Neuralink. It’s developing a technology that would put billions of tiny electrodes into our brains to allow us to communicate our thoughts to others without using language. It would allow us to tap into the computer just by thinking about it, almost as if our iPhones were implanted in our brains.

It is all a bit creepy, to say the least. Neuralink’s success is important, according to Musk, because it will allow us to stay a step ahead of devices using artificial intelligence, the TechRadar article reported. Musk has been very vocal in warning about the risks of AI, especially when AI becomes smarter than humans and learns faster than us. Instead of humans being the top of the food chain, he warns that AI-controlled devices will rule the land.

“We’re going to have the choice of either being left behind and being effectively useless or like a pet—you know, like a house cat or something—or eventually figuring out some way to be symbiotic and merge with AI,” said Musk according to a lengthy 4/20/17 blog post on Waitbutwhy.com.

Musk’s solution is to merge humans and AI to create human machine symbiosis. “The pace of progress in this direction matters a lot. We don’t want to develop digital superintelligence too far before being able to do a merged brain-computer interface,” he told Waitbutwhy.com.

Using Neuralink’s product, we would be able to search the Internet with our minds, watch video in our minds, and communicate wirelessly with the brains of anyone who also has this device implanted. Imagine walking up to your house and unlocking the door with your thoughts. Or perhaps ordering an Uber.

Musk hopes to have a product out in about four years for patients with brain injuries. The more fanciful product for folks without injuries could take eight to 10 more years of development.

In addition to figuring out how to get the brain to accept a foreign object, Neuralink will need to figure out how to access greater bandwidth with which to communicate. In addition, the brain surgery would need to be automated to keep its cost down, and the device would need to be wireless. Achieving all of this is a challenge even for the man who invented reusable rockets and electric cars. Oh, and do we really want Musk messing with our heads?

For more on the Brave New World, see my new book, Predicting the Markets: A Professional Autobiography. My colleague, Jackie Doherty, contributed greatly to this article.