Author | coffee
Edit | Bruce
Only technology can fundamentally change the way of life and the operation of society.
In our time, technology is advancing at an unprecedented rate, and the combination of humans and machines has blurred the distinction between humans and machines, between reality and virtuality.
- At the beginning of February this year, the AI chatbot ChatGPT became popular all over the world, it can not only talk to users smoothly, but even write poems, write articles, code...
- On May 26, Elon Musk's brain-computer interface company Neuralink announced on social media that it has received approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to initiate the first human clinical study of its implantable brain-computer interface device (BCI). Once realized, this technology can, in principle, repair any brain problem, including improving vision, restoring limb function, and treating Alzheimer's disease.
The world seems to be staging a science fiction movie, and you and I are all group actors.
In previous years, there was a particularly popular word in the field of technology - "singularity": humanity is approaching an event point where existing technology is completely abandoned, or human civilization is completely overturned, and the events after this event are as completely unpredictable as the "event horizon" of a black hole.
Now, the breakthrough of "brain-computer interaction" technology indicates that we are in the early stages of the singularity.
First, the science fiction industry behind the brain-computer interface
To some extent, brain-computer interfaces are a science fiction industry under the grand proposition of "the meaning of human existence".
Brain-Machine Interface (BMI; Brain Computer Interface (BCI), refers to the direct connection created between the human or animal brain and external devices to enable the exchange of information between the brain and the device.
People's initial intuitive impression of the "brain-computer interface" comes from the picture constructed in the movie "The Matrix", where the protagonists are connected to the computer through the electronic chip implanted in the brain, enter the virtual world, and can also control the machine with their minds.
What many people don't know is that "brain-computer interface" was originally just a philosophical concept, not a class of technology or an industry.
The American philosopher Hilary Putnam proposed the "brain in a vat" scenario in his 1981 book Reason, Truth, and History.
A man was operated on by evil scientists, and his brain was cut off his body and placed in a jar containing the nutrient solution that kept the brain alive. The nerve endings of the brain are connected to a computer that is programmed to transmit information to the brain to keep him under the illusion that everything is completely normal. For him, it seems that people, objects, and the sky still exist, and his own movement and body sensations can be input. This brain can also be fed or intercepted memories (intercepting memories of brain surgery and then feeding into various environments, daily life that he may experience). He can even be entered into a code that "feels" that he himself is reading an interesting and ridiculous passage here.
"Brain in a Tank" constructs a supercomputer connected to the peripheral nerves of the brain and is manipulated by the computer, which is the prototype of the "brain-computer interface", and later derived a series of science fiction movies that think about the meaning of human existence, such as the well-known "Matrix", "Inception" and so on.
The "brain in the jar" is often cited to argue that philosophies, such as skepticism, solipsism, and subjective idealism, in a "world of consciousness" created entirely by "stimuli", everything in this world may be false and illusory, "the mind gives birth to all kinds of laws, and the mind destroys all kinds of laws".
Reading this, you may have questions. From the perspective of the education we received in junior high school, the theoretical basis of "brain-computer interface" is purely an "idealistic" philosophical view, right?
Contrary to the idealistic "man is consciousness", the materialist view we now advocate is that human will and spirit must not exist without objective objects, or even just virtual sensory stimuli.
The philosophical basis of the "brain-computer interface" is, "I think, therefore I am."
The biological basis of "brain-computer interfaces" is that everything that a person experiences is eventually converted into neural signals in the brain.
Therefore, the biggest difficulty of "brain-computer interface" is also a problem that human beings have been unable to solve for thousands of years, whether at the philosophical level or at the technical level: consciousness = brain?
A normal brain has about 6 billion ~ 8 billion neurons, and each neuron has to establish nearly 10,000 connections. They are connected in a very special way and different for everyone. Your experiences, your memories, all the things that make you who you are, manifest themselves through the unique patterns of tens of trillions of connections between nerve cells.
In his book The Story of the Brain, David Eagleman vividly illustrates the complexity of the brain's operating mechanism:
People seem to effortlessly recognize a friend's face, drive a car, understand jokes, decide what to take out of the refrigerator, but in reality, all of this is possible entirely by the enormous computation carried out under conscious awareness. At this moment, like every moment of your life, the network in your brain is engaged in a variety of activities: billions of electrical signals running along the cell, triggering chemical impulses in the trillions of connections between neurons. Simple behavior relies on the support of the huge labor force of neurons. You are naïve and unaware of the activity of neurons, but your life is shaped and rendered by them: how you act, what you find important, your reactions, your love and desires, the ideas you believe or dismiss. The final output of these invisible networks forms your experience. Well, who exactly is at the helm of this ship? The computing power needed to accomplish this feat would require dozens of the world's fastest supercomputers.
The brain is a complex system, and Musk's Neuralink is the company that has the most understanding of neuronal research in the world. At the end of May, Neuralink announced a new development: successfully unlocking 16,000 channels for electrode and neuron communication.
This study is equivalent to studying only one hair of the brain.
That is, "consciousness = brain?" "This question can only be answered by one percent with our current research progress.
From the perspective of brain activity, "the human brain is only 10% developed" is a widely circulated garbage view, which can be easily falsified by an MRI (magnetic resonance). But from the perspective of how brain waves are produced, "the brain only develops 10%" is extremely correct, for example, the brain waves produced by human depression are abnormal, but why there are such brain waves, human beings do not know.
Therefore, the biggest challenge facing the "brain-computer interface" technology is that it is necessary to further understand the principle and mechanism of brain information processing, and clarify the characteristics of neural circuit activity and its regulatory process corresponding to brain functions such as sensation, movement, memory, emotion, and choice.
The cool "brain-computer interface" scene in your mind is actually only the first step in a long march.
Musk's American media called "Interstellar Capitalism", that is, through huge capital investment and long-term layout to achieve industrial transformation in frontier fields, and then obtain the largest technological dividend and the most favorable market position.
But from the perspective of philosophical thinking and technical research on brain-computer interfaces, it is more appropriate to call it "science fiction capitalism".
The breakthrough of brain-computer interface technology will change the long-term philosophical concepts and scientific laws of human beings, and "what is consciousness" may have part of the answer. Just as quantum mechanics subverted classical mechanics and fundamentally changed human understanding of the structure of matter and its interactions, the significance of brain-computer interface technology is that it can build new worlds far from the original world.
II. The "Singularity Moment" of Human Technology
The wave of "science fiction capitalism" brought about by the cutting-edge technological change of brain-computer interface has excited the world.
According to the "Brain-Computer Interface Standardization White Paper 2021" released by the China Electronics Technology Standardization Institute, the global brain-computer interface market is expected to reach US$3.7 billion in 2027, with a compound annual growth rate of 15.5%, and the downstream healthcare field currently accounts for 62%, followed by disease treatment. McKinsey made a bolder prediction: in the next 10-20 years, the global brain-computer interface industry will generate up to 200 billion US dollars (about 1.42 trillion yuan) in economic value.
Brain-computer interface technology is prominently applied in the four major fields of serious medicine, big health consumption, assisted living, and entertainment games, and is also closely related to the popular meta-universe and artificial intelligence industries.
So at present, to what extent has brain-computer interface technology been developed?
Taking Musk's Neuralink as an example, the path that the company's mature patents can support initially presents such a sci-fi scene:
Make a small hole in your head, put a chip, and finally upload the information collected by the chip to your brain to a computer or mobile phone.
Step 1: "Drill" a hole in the head
Patent: US11446084B2, Laser drilling of pia mater
In the past, the "sewing machine" method was used to pass electrodes through the pia mater with difficulty. Neuralink came up with a way to use a laser to evaporate the water in the soft film to ablate the tissue, for the purpose of drilling.
Step 2: Put the electrodes "in" your head
Patent: US20200085375A1, Electrode fabrication and design.
Conventional electrodes implanted in the brain can inflame or damage brain tissue, create an immune response, and even risk electrode rupture. In short, with conventional electrode implantation, patients are prone to "brain watts".
On May 26, 2023, the FDA approved Neuralink for real human surgery, presumably after animal experiments on mice, monkeys, and pigs, the advantages of the new electrode described in this patent were partially verified, including:
Smaller miniature electrodes with an area of less than 350 square microns per electrode contact. With improved biocompatibility, stability, elasticity against mechanical strain, recording and stimulating brain tissue in tissues and deeper locations with greater precision.
Step 3: "Translate" the information in your brain
Patent: US11630516B1, Brain-machine interface (BMI) with user interface (UI) aware controller.
This patent uses a BMI decoder to convert neural signals into commands, and paraplegics can issue commands to external devices to "move". At present, experiments with monkeys have achieved their goal.
In the tide of human scientific and technological innovation, "science fiction capitalism" has spread around the world, and China's brain-computer interface technology has also entered the initial stage from 2021 under the impetus of policy and capital. Internet giants have entered the market, and startups have also emerged.
Image source: Lieyun.com
However, compared with Neuralink, from the level of patent applications, the brain-computer interface technology of domestic companies is very rudimentary.
The picture shows the patent composition analysis diagram of Braintiger Technology Company
In The Singularity Approaching, the author explains the important idea behind the approaching of the singularity: the pace of human creation of technology is accelerating, and the power of technology is growing at an exponential rate. Exponential growth is confusing, it starts with tiny growth, and then explodes at an incredible rate.
At the end of May, Neuralink announced that it had successfully unlocked 16,000 channels for electrode and neuron communication. That number, which was 500 in 2014, was 1,024 by 2020. Brain-computer interfaces, which are in the rhythm of the "singularity" of human technology, may usher in disruptive technological breakthroughs like artificial intelligence.
Musk has made it clear that he is "not interested in physical longevity", and his ultimate goal is more inclined to "digital immortality of human beings". But the current technological progress is that in the field of implantable brain-computer interfaces, there is not a single approved commercial product in the world.
Humans are just beginning to discover something, but what it is, we haven't fully figured it out yet. But what is certain is that we are at an unprecedented historical juncture, and brain science and technology are developing together, building a road to a new world.
Third, some things I want to say
Talking about the sci-fi industry of "brain-computer interface", it is inevitable to enter the grand narrative of philosophy, science and human beings and the universe.
In "The Three-Body Problem", in order to combat the voyeurism of humans by the "Chiko" of the Trisolarans, the earthling Bill Hines invented the "Thought Steel Printing Machine". The earthlings who are marked with the thought stamp by the thought stamp machine, the way of thinking is controlled.
"We discovered the mechanisms by which the mind makes judgments in the neuronal network of the human brain. This mechanism can have a decisive influence on human behaviour. If the process of human thinking to make judgments is compared to computers (computers input data from the outside world, make calculations, and finally give results), then this calculation process can now be omitted and the result can be given directly. That is, when a piece of information enters the human brain, scientists exert influence on a certain part of the neuronal network, reducing its thinking and judgment discrimination process, so that the brain makes judgments without thinking, believing that the input information is true. ”
The core of the thinking seal is: optimism, that is, always full of optimism and hope for the future of mankind.
There will always be people who criticize Musk's "horse grabbing" and idealism, thinking that he has been dreaming. But five hundred years ago, no one would have thought that airplanes would go to the sky and machines would write poetry.
Optimism is not utopia, but optimism requires utopia.
It is the so-called utopia that allows Musk to pull the technological civilization level of human society to leap upward, and many breakthrough ideas and explorations of human beings in "heaven", "escape" and "brain" are slowly realized.
Human science and technology evolution is too long, a major technology from the emergence, research and development to industrialization, often through tens of hundreds of years, we may only see a small breakthrough in an emerging technology in our lifetime.
Therefore, people who are worried that brain-computer interface technology will subvert the world and replace humans do not have to. Please be optimistic about scientific and technological innovation, and encourage pioneers and creators to break through the shackles of the universe and peek into the truth.
Ma Huateng once asked in Zhihu:
"What basic scientific breakthroughs will affect the Internet technology industry in the next decade? What changes will the integration and innovation of industrial Internet and consumer Internet bring? ”
The number one answer at the time was about brain-computer interfaces. The author writes at the end of the answer:
The reality is that we are racing on a path to a tragic goal, and no one knows what our destination will look like. Many people find it scary just to think about it, but I think it's exciting. Because we were born in this era, we don't need to live an ordinary life like ordinary people, but can live like in a thriller movie.
Yes. If we can experience this sci-fi and thrilling scene in our lifetime, it is a great fortune in our lives.
(This article represents the views of the author and does not represent the position of intellectual property.) In some cases, the title of the article is intelligently generated by the headline platform, if it is inappropriate, please contact by private message to delete the corresponding title)
Image source | Internet