How to connect to a mind?

Discovering the incredible neuroplasticity of the brain has led to some progress in using this reconfigurability to add new inputs or senses, such as using the tongue’s surface to send light signals to the brain, or a wearable vest that converts speech into vibrations, and the ability to control outputs such as a computer cursor or prosthetic limbs. The promise here is that with these new physical connections to our brain, we can learn to communicate and interface directly to a computer or datastream as if it was an extension of the body or another sense.

In addressing possible routes for the emergence of ‘superintelligence’, Nick Bostrom makes some points about the role brain-computer interfaces may play. He argues that to improve the information bandwidth, we will need to not only plug in a high bandwidth input but also upgrade the brain, as our current limitation is not the speed of input but rather how quickly the brain can make sense of data. An example he uses is the human eye, which currently takes in 10-million bits per second, and has specially evolved and optimized wetware to process this data into meaning.

While this is true, I would argue that our current method for inputting data into our minds is via projecting data onto our retinas as visual symbols, or onto our cochlea as sounds, which requires some processing-heavy conversions due to how we have to make sense of and interpret this data from its representation in the real world.

For example, the processing and layers of neural networks required to turn raw color signals into edges, textures, shapes, features and eventually to an abstract concept such as an “excited golden retriever” may not be required if we could bypass that and just communicate the abstract concept directly. This abstract concept also needn’t stay abstract, or unvisualized, when output — using a generative process like GAN’s we could render our imagined “excited golden retriever” in full glorious detail for others, potentially iterating the subtleties to our satisfaction quickly enough that the effort to conjure up such a detailed image may be imperceptible to the conjurer. This way we can offload some of the generation and decoding of lower level features to external hardware, limiting our raw data bandwidth requirement.

When considering direct communication with a neural lace, we need to consider that brains do not use standardized data storage and representation formats, rather each of our brains develops its own distinctive representations of higher level content. So to map neuron firing patterns in one brain onto the semantically equivalent firing patterns of another, will require decomposing them into symbols according to some shared convention that allows them to be correctly interpreted — which is the function of language. This may require or result in us developing some new form of language, spared of the requirements to be able to easily encode it into interpretable sound waves via the larynx.

Why we should we create a brain interface?

Humanity would not be where it is today if it wasn’t for a few extra layers of cortical matter. The expensive bet that evolution placed on developing this extra gray matter, made all the difference that allowed us to solve innumerable problems and reach new potentials. Extrapolating forward, there may be no limits to what expanding our mind’s potential, and being able to connect and cooperate with each other, may allow us to achieve.

Ramez Naam, in his previously mentioned novels, succinctly summarizes the virtue of such a technology being released into the world through a quote by one of the protagonists:

“We think of ourselves as individuals, but all that we have accomplished, and all that we will accomplish, is the result of groups of humans cooperating.”

We could imagine how these extra cognitive abilities can allow us to collaboratively brainstorm, design or compose new levels of invention and expression. Or how they would enable us to visualize, interpret and feel data about the world around us, to create and share new understandings, higher level abstractions and mental models that were previously impossible to fathom. We can also imagine a world without unnecessary screens or interfaces, and instead knowing the temperature of your home, health of a crop, price of a stock, status of a project or location of a loved one upon just requesting the information in your mind. And these cognitive abilities can keep the human mind in the loop as we continue to make progress in building artificial intelligences with higher level thought abstractions, ensuring a greater probability that we are aligned with and in control of the future we are building.

Beyond just the extra cognitive abilities, it may be like trying to explain color to a blind person. But we can try to empathize how it might feel, by drawing parallels to where we, or others, have experienced an expanded sensory input or a sense of connection to others. Experiences such as emotionally connecting with another mind, physical touch with a loved one, or conversely the aversion we have to solitary confinement, loneliness or trapped-in syndrome. We can look at the value we place on the diverse sensations we can experience, from the mundane to the profound, and conversely the agony experienced by those that have lost the ability to feel through injury or paralysis, or emotionally through depression. Or by empathizing with the extreme joy and bewilderment when someone that was blind or deaf, can see or hear for the first time.

We recognize these feelings as being the peak of human experience. If connecting and upgrading our minds is in pursuit of heightening and expanding these experiences, creating such a technology could help make us more human than ever. And before we reach that point, we will undoubtedly discover new ways to cure diseases, prolong life, and understand more about how the most complex structure in the universe, our mind, works. This is why I believe it is so important to work on this.

The path forward

Humanity has never just played by the rules, but rather worked to rewrite them to change what is physically possible. This holds especially true when expanding our cognitive abilities with brain interfaces. As we create this technology that will fundamentally change the playing field, we need to be critically vigilant that we are creating the best future for all. Watch this space.

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Also, if you enjoy the technical and philosophical aspects of creating hardware products, check out some of my other writing