What Should We Check Out Next?

We’ve checked out thought-controlled robotic limbs, and are now lining up brain-to-brain communication with thought alone. Where shall we go next? Some ideas of things going on around the US:

  • The race to commercialize brain-hacking (Neuralink vs Kernel)
  • Women’s brains and research focused specifically on that, at the Wyss Center
  • Brainet, Duke University’s networked brains and its implications
  • Neuroethics and surrounding discussions/questions, with Duke, UW and Tristan Harris
  • Video games for cognitive enhancement/adaptation at UCSF
  • Superhumans — super human cognition and those possibilities
  • Neural Engineering — surgical implants at Case Western University that have helped a tetrapalegic move his limbs again

“Cognitive Evolution” and are we okay with that?

Some notes from an not-yet-released film on this topic:

Scientists are now developing technologies that could radically alter the way we are as human beings
Linking biological brains directly to machines
What is unnatural, what is inhuman?
We are transforming into a technological species, we don’t know what the outcome will be
If we start tinkering with the brain, we start changing it … are we about to fundamentally change what it means to be human?

Bill — bicycle accident, now tetraplegic treated at the VA
“I always want to do more … and I can’t do anything for myself. People in my situation, they just never move again. I want to move from this point to that point, without help.”
Paralysis cuts off the communication between brain and the body parts … if we can figure out what exactly is connected to what from the brain…
The attempt to understand what part of the brain does what it does, that’s the idea. It’s the most complex system we’ve ever seen in the universe.
The brain is so unbelievably complicated and yet somehow it is us. “If we could crack the code of the brain, you could solve mental illness, cure people who are sick, restore capabilities that disease has taken away…”

Ann — artist with Parkinsons, so her brain and hands are no longer communicating
Exhausted and disorganized mentally, blocking the way she can be with people the way that she used to
“So far we have no way to slow down the progression or stop the illness”
So much brain related disease around the world, a “massive epidemic” because we have no ways of stopping or preventing these illnesses
Doctors implanted electrodes in her brain … to provide around the clock electric stimulation to the parts of her brain that were atrophying.

Stephen — lost his vision later in life
“everything’s white … it’s like the whole world basically collapsed”
Got prosthetic eyes — could they be MORE advanced? Crank up the magnification? Add infared eyes? They are camera-eyes so why not get eyes as good as a cats? etc.

Technology is taking off in understanding the brain. In the near future we’re going to see ways of fixing problems and ENHANCING humans. Capacity to define a left turn in evolutionary history. Questions about the future, the risks, the potential. So far, this is off the radar.

Bryan Johnson/neurotech entrepreneur
Started Braintree. In 2013, it was acquired by EBay. Then he could use his own money to solve larger problems. Venture Fund invests in hard science. And the company Kernel, which is based in Venice.
“We can overcome our biological limitations”
We can reject the things that stop us from moving forward.
Predicts advanced brain hacks to merge human brains with tech will be on our doorsteps in 15-20 years.

The Wyss Center, Switzerland
John Donoghue, founder
Trying to interpret the code of signals coming out of the brain.
The brain consists of billions of neurons that all speak together. You can hear the crowd of neurons but not the details. You need more accurate information. Need to go inside. Pass the barrier of the scalp and skull and go in contact with the brain. Developing a brain electrode, avoiding dust, biologic and bionic contamination. These powered electrodes get worn, by implanting the electrode into or onto the brain. By implanting the electrodes you can activity of SINGLE neurons. The electrical impulses of the neurons and convert them into a signal scientists can understand, a digital piece of data, but then you can do with it anything you do with data. WHAT DOES THE CODE MEAN can be broken down.

Brain Computer Interfaces give us the ability to understand the brain’s electrical signals to replace lost function. Brain science is showing us how to understand ourselves at the level of the machine. What happens when we fully understand the brain?

“We are linking biological brains DIRECTLY to machines.” The human is fragile but it’s creative and smart and can push beyond. Now we’re bringing them together to use the human and advantages of the machine in a symbiosis.

The upside of restoring brain activity is enormous.

NEUROETHICS
Breakthroughs happening faster than we imagined. As we unlock secrets of the brain, will something change fundamentally about what it means to be human?
YOU is in your brain.
If you start implanting electrodes in it, at what point is it problematic?
To what extent do we want to integrate tech into mainstream society?
Where’s the line between healing and enhancing, when you can tap into the brain?

Should we proactively improve the brain we have?

Kernel — mainstream tools to solve problems and improve what works
Trying to make a brain interface that shows you all your brain activity.
The QUANTIFIED BRAIN
Can we help you push away an unproductive thought? If we have tools to nudge our behavior, can we re-think the things that have always held us back?
Then does it become a matter of choice — what we want to become?
Where are the edges? Could we communicate the emotion you’re feeling to a loved one? Could we teach a new skill more easily?

UW lab:
Speaking without words
brain signals from one to another, you could understand my memories and emotions without me talking about them
increasing empathy? or terrifying
they can read your brain… couldnt they manipulate and control it?

TALK TO TRISTAN HARRIS
DARPA is super involved in brain machine tech, what if it’s used as weapons?
China has a huge brain mapping effort, ditto South Korea, Japan
China is going to be the biggest investor in science in the world by 2020
This then becomes a race for power
Who gets the tech? What do we use it for? Under what conditions do we use it?

The companies who control these tech have societal impacts. Cannot predict the consequences but some are thinking about it.

Kernel: Commercializing Hacking of the Human Brain

Kernel is one of the two companies (the other being Elon Musk’s Neuralink) that’s working with researchers on brain-computer interfaces. We had an intro call this morning so I could learn what they’re up to. Loose notes:

Speaking with Alanna & Shayna, the communications team at Kernel. They run all of Brian’s comms and marketing for Kernel and for the VC he runs and for his thought leadership.

Foundational insight — everything the world looks like frlows from the capabilities and limitations of the human brains. how we understand each other, how we understand the world, the awesomeness that is the human brain and the evolutionary limitations that are there.

Kernel is somewhat unique in the space in that we’re not starting from a “how to tackle disease” or “move their bodies again” but starting from a place of “how do we expand cognition” with the understanding that once we understand how to do that then we can understand how to tackle problems. We’re starting from the other side, which is there’s so much potential here. How do we build on potential. Solutions will come from that.

Organizing principle is build on understanding. We have very little understanding of how the brain works right now. How do all elements come together to make us who we are? Think about it like FitBit when we learned that we could measure biometric data like heart health and sleep. We’re not at that place in the brain, and that’s partly because we don’t understand how it all works. Right now the tools for measuring and reading it are rudimentary. Anything we do have is enormous and have to be institutionalized, like fMRI.

FOCUSES

  1. is it possible to have non-invasive (wearable) for our brains? What are the tools for read out, the neuroscience of readout, with the physics of miniaturization?
  2. Once you figure out how to read, then it’s can you write? Can you deliver nudges to the brain? Is there a way to know, based on something you’re wearing, when you’re dwelling on something unsuccessfully? Would it be possible to nudge your thinking inside your brain? What are most useful and enhancing modes?

KERNEL offices and labs are in LA, in Venice.

Smaller operation in Boston

Hire researchers … Hired the pre-eminent neurophysicist to come in-house and partners and advisers from mostly from

TIMING

Right now what’s going on is entirely proprietary … off record or would have to hold. Kernel and Neuralink are in a race. Whoever gets the first thing that can go to market.  Embargoes are necessary. Hooman the CTO can do the explaining on video. He’s lovely. Really wonderful way of understanding complex things. Center of all kinds of modalities. Can do that in February.

  1. Documentary is being produced … called I Am Human, a doc about this journey to forge man and machine. Focused on the existing things to market around solving problems. Follows three patients, one with Parkinson’s, one blind and one with paralysis. Then to Brian and what he is doing to enhance himself. Releasing in April in Tribeca. Sending a preview.
  2. Presently working with the Future of Everything team at WSJ to do a deep dive on a narrower focus on what’s coming to market. What’s the process of coming to market?

 

 

Helpful Links on Brain Machine Interfaces

With thanks to the team at the Center for Neurotech at the University of Washington!

  1. Overview of brain-computer interfaces (BCIs)
  2. Introductory book/e-Book
  3. arXiv article for Current Opinion in Neurobiology on combining AI and the brain using neural co-processors.
  4. Neuroethics research at our center

 

Prepping for Our Exoskeleton Tryout

Finally, we have lined up the ideal exoskeleton experience to try out and get on video. The researchers at the University of Houston, led by Jose Contreras-Vidal, have one-upped the traditional exoskeleton that assists with aging limbs and joints and created an exo that you control with your brain.

From a business standpoint, exoskeletons are huge for the future of industry, as the workforce ages and more people want to work for longer without pain. From a medical and science standpoint, exoskeletons are helping those born with genetic disorders or who have lost limbs.

Contreras-Vidal has an exoskeleton that’s designed for children… and candidates to be fitted for it are available for us to see them move through the entire process. From Smithsonian Mag:

“A number of researchers over the years have helped paralyzed people move using electrodes implanted in their brains. Contreras-Vidal’s patent-pending system is different because it is noninvasive—users take the electrode cap on and off at will. This is particularly useful in the case of patients who will only need the exoskeleton temporarily, such as stroke victims who might use the exoskeleton to regain walking ability, then learn to walk unaided.”

NOTES from brainstorm call w/Team Video (Mito, Nick) plus editor Uri:

Questions: If our bodies fail and our brains are still working, do we still exist? At what point are we brains in a jar?

Is this a question we could address in 30 years?

What is the far end of this, implication wise?

What are the future iterations of exoskeletons?

What are the implications of BMI’s, generally?

At what point does a “human” end and “machine” begin, i.e. cyborgs?

Exoskeletons protect your body, older people or joints — then build on that from there. Tell it in steps. So people can imagine how this evolves.

1) this is a thing and protect a worker or a 90 year old person. but this is just the beginning.

2) what is possible? the brain will break down, too. maintain mobility while body is deteriorating.

3) Is there a suit or other materials to help. How does the design evolve into something more efficient?

There’s exoskeletons. Then there’s BMI. Which could have many applications for the body. Then there’s the future of the human body, which involves gene therapy, etc. What are other applications of BMI that can cover the field?

The cyborg question: Ground level. An exoskelton supplements movement. Needles in the brain. How many different replacement categories can we think of? Movement, speech, cognition. Rachet it up and somewhere is a line people are uncomfortable crossing.

Where do you see the technology being developed now? Is there more lifelike or muscle type exo work being done?

There’s three tiers: Exoskeletons, BMI, Human Body

Addressing the so what? question, i.e. These are some applications and developments so you can see how this ties together. We are doing a baby step to introduce BMI in the exoskeleton feature, since it is the most obvious place to see signals are getting sent and programed by scientists into artificial limbs. It introduces how this level of exoskeletons really work. Maybe we can touch on Lowe’s exos work…

But then we escalate into far more ethical/philosophical questions by introducing different BMIs over time.

Three Questions About The Human Body in 2050

To explore our first chapter of the 2050 project, I’m going to drill down on three questions or areas that seem to have the most movement right now:

  1. How will the human brain function by 2050? How much of it is the biological brain as we know it, and how much will be aided by an AI layer? What impact will that have on neurological disease i.e. Parkinson’s? Will brains be able to communicate with other brains using thought alone?
  2. What will it mean to age, or be old in years, in 2050? A tremendous amount of work right now is focused on the greying population and how to make someone who’s grown old not feel old. This is a crucial question as the developed world faces drastically aging populations without working-age populations to replace them. The United Nations projects that by 2050, 32 countries will have a greater share of senior citizens than Japan — well known for its population decline and preponderance of seniors — does now. (Note to self: Try out Cyberdyne exoskeleton at CES)
  3. What ‘superhuman’ powers will humans be capable of? Will humans function without sleep? How will our attention spans be able to be lengthened?

1997 Predictions About Humans & AI

This is from a Wired magazine feature in 1997, which predicted what 2020 would be like. 

“Right about the turn of the century, the third of the five waves of technology kicks in. After a couple false starts in the 1980s and 1990s, biotechnology begins to transform the medical field. One benchmark comes in 2001 with the completion of the Human Genome Project, the effort to map out all human genes. That understanding of our genetic makeup triggers a series of breakthroughs in stopping genetic disease. Around 2012, a gene therapy for cancer is perfected. Five years later, almost one-third of the 4,000 known genetic diseases can be avoided through genetic manipulation.

Throughout the early part of the century, the combination of a deeper understanding of genetics, human biology, and organic chemistry leads to a vast array of powerful medications and therapies. The health care system, having faced a crossroads in 1994 with President Clinton’s proposed national plan, continues restructuring along the more decentralized, privatized model of HMOs. The industry is already booming when biotech advances begin clicking in the first decade of the century. It receives a further stimulus when the baby boomers begin retiring en masse in 2011. The industry becomes a big jobs provider for years to come.

The biotech revolution profoundly affects another economic sector – agriculture. The same deeper understanding of genetics leads to much more precise breeding of plants. By about 2007, most US produce is being genetically engineered by these new direct techniques. The same process takes place with livestock. In 1997, the cloning of sheep in the United Kingdom startles the world and kicks off a flurry of activity in this field. By the turn of the century, prize livestock is being genetically tweaked as often as traditionally bred. By about 2005, animals are used for developing organs that can be donated to humans. Superproductive animals and ultrahardy, high-yielding plants bring another veritable green revolution to countries sustaining large populations.

By the end of the transitional era, around 2020, real advances begin to be made in the field of biological computation, where billions of relatively slow computations, done at the level of DNA, can be run simultaneously and brought together in the aggregate to create the ultimate in parallel processing. So-called DNA computing looks as though it will bring about big advances in the speed of processing sometime after 2025 – certainly by the middle of the century.

Then comes the fourth technology wave – nanotechnology. Once the realm of science fiction, this microscopic method of construction becomes a reality in 2015. Scientists and engineers figure out reliable methods to construct objects one atom at a time. Among the first commercially viable products are tiny sensors that can enter a person’s bloodstream and bring back information about its composition. By 2018, these micromachines are able to do basic cell repair. However, nanotechnology promises to have a much more profound impact on traditional manufacturing as the century rolls on. Theoretically, most products could be produced much more efficiently through nanotech techniques. By 2025, the theory is still far from proven, but small desktop factories for producing simple products arrive.

By about 2015, nanotech techniques begin to be applied to the development of computing at the atomic level. Quantum computing, rather than DNA computing, proves to be the heir to microprocessors in the short run. In working up to the billion-transistor microprocessor in 2010, engineers seem to hit insurmountable technical barriers: the scale of integrated circuits has shrunk so small that optical-lithography techniques fail to function. Fortunately, just as the pace of microprocessing power begins to wane, quantum computing clicks in. Frequent increases in computing power once again promise to continue unabated for the foreseeable future.”

Project Update: Human Body Ideas

I’ve spent the past couple of weeks really immersing myself in futurism and people who think about the world on a timeline three decades out. That’s led me to a framework for our areas of inquiry that both holds up for organizing changes of the past — and can stand up to the changing winds of the future: human-centeredness. Each chapter can be organized by a basic human need.

I’m going to start exploring the human body, and what enhancements both biologically and technologically to humans-as-we-know-them will look and feel like by 2050, and the potential consequences and possibilities from that.

From that layer we can build out. From individual human bodies to human-to-human connections, with an exploration on love, sex and connection in 2050. And then further out, to human-to-human-human — communities and cities in 2050, where the urban question and transportation and such can be explored. The questions of economy, and power and governance could then flow from that, into another area of inquiry. But we’ll start with the most basic unit — the human body, and go from there.

So here are few angles I think we could hit for a single “episode” or chapter of this project. Each idea could be its own explainer and then we can piece them together for an episode.

    1. Past predictions for the human body, that is, how “futurists” of the 1980s believed humans would operate by our present. Will it need food and water to survive? How long will humans live in 2050? Will genetic disease be eradicated by then? What were PREVIOUS predictions for how humans would be by 2020? (The look back would be a feature of every chapter/episode).
    2. Everyone wants to live longer, but no one wants to grow old: The focus these days is increasing longevity while avoiding or delaying the stigmata of biological aging. Billions are now being spent to prove that advances in medicine will slow the aging process so that the average 90-year-old will feel as good as today’s 70-year-old. Google’s Calico is in the forefront of these efforts. Other companies have focused on specific diseases, but Calico is targeting the cellular degradation involved in aging that plays a role in most deadly diseases.
    3. Cryonic preservation: The Cryonics Institute in Michigan has over 100 people in “cryonic suspension” at its facility. SO MANY QUESTIONS. Alcor in Arizona charges $80,000 for “neurocryopreservation” (the head only) and $200,000 for the whole body but this includes all costs and perpetual maintenance. Cryopreservation can be covered by special insurance policies!
    4. Real time emotional state detection: Facial and tonal recognition analytics will help machine learning systems to detect consumers’ emotional state in real-time. Algorithms will harness your data in order to assess your predicted success at work, how likely you are to bounce around jobs and more. (This would then lead right into the 2050 dating/love chapter, in which future dating is predicated on systems that can read your physiological response to potential partners — you don’t even HAVE to decide!)
    5. Nanobots for targeted therapies: Teeny tiny robots could become mini-surgeons, squished into a pill that you swallow, under work being led by CSAIL at MIT. Because magnetic fields are able to transmit through our bodies without harming us, future surgeons could ask patients to ingest these nanobots and then direct them magnetically in order to deliver targeted therapies.
    6. Communicating with thought alone: At the University of Washington’s Center for Sensorimotor Neural Engineering, researchers built a system allowing one person to transmit his thoughts directly to another person. Using electrical brain recordings and a form of magnetic stimulation, one researcher sent a brain signal to another person elsewhere on campus, causing his finger to tap a keyboard. At Duke, researchers at the Center for Neuroengineering  built a real-life Iron Man suit, allowing a young man suffering from complete paralysis of his lower body to walk out onto a soccer field and kick the first ball of the 2014 World Cup.
    7. Computerized Brains, and brain hacking.  Devices implanted in your brain could function in two main ways: “Not only send signals to the brain as a means of treatment, but also gather data about the nature of these maladies.” There are several labs currently looking at ways in which computer interfaces will be operating within our brains, and the social implications of it. There is a cybersecurity angle in which brain hacking could become a thing. The hot brain implantation right now is neural lace: a new kind of flexible circuit implanted via injection, a grid of wires only a few millimeters across can insinuate itself with living neurons and eavesdrop on their chatter, offering a way for electronics to interface with your brain activity, perhaps curing diseases like Parkinson’s. (Engineers at Kernel, Charles Lieber at Harvard).
  3. NOTE: The Bergguen Institute here in LA has a dedicated topic area called “Transformation of the Human,” which we can partner with or report on as they explore the same area. I don’t know where it fits in but I am imagining using them as talking heads or as co-travelers/co-hosts in exploration. I have a visit scheduled with the head of the Transformation of the Human project on October 9. More info:

“Humans have historically defined themselves by contrast to machines and animals, by having language and intelligence, and by the idea of a soul. Just as earlier changes such as the evolution of language, literacy, and better nutrition changed what it means to be human, so are new technologies changing our material realities and thus destabilizing old definitions of the human. We are interested, for example, in artificial intelligence and gene editing, as well as developments in neuroscience, bio-engineering, and interventions into the human microbiome. At the same time, we recognize that changing social and cultural norms are part of the process of redefining of the human, not least as different civilizational traditions inform and challenge each other.”