Brain Computer Interface Quotes

Let me tell you as a brain scientist and a computer engineering dropout - transhumanism is to brain computer interface, what nuclear weapons are to nuclear physics.

Mother-infant inter-brain synchrony provides a template for designing compassionate artificial intelligence and social robots.

I often surprise people with the simple fact that your cell phone today has more computer power than all of NASA when it put two men on the moon in 1969. Computers are now powerful enough to record the electrical signals emanating from the brain and partially decode them into a familiar digital language. This makes it possible for the brain to directly interface with computers to control any object around it. The fast-growing field is called BMI (brain-machine interface), and the key technology is the computer.

Hitler and his ilk planned to create superhumans by means of selective breeding and ethnic cleansing, twenty-first-century techno-humanism hopes to reach that goal far more peacefully, with the help of genetic engineering, nanotechnology and brain–computer interfaces

Transhumanism is terrorism, for it is the very antithesis of life. Wasting precious resources on a pompous, narcissistic and megalomaniacal dream of extending life through cold, mechanical means, instead of helping to improve genuine human condition, transhumanists act as modern day terrorists who desecrate the very spirit of life and liberty without ever being held accountable. Let me tell you as a brain scientist and a computer engineering dropout - transhumanism is to brain computer interface, what nuclear weapons are to nuclear physics.

Exoteric machines - esoteric machines. They say the computer is an improved form of typewriter. Not a bit of it. I collude with my typewriter, but the relationship is otherwise clear and distant. I know it is a machine; it knows it is a machine. There is nothing here of the interface, verging on biological confusion, between a computer thinking it is a brain and me thinking I am a computer. The same familiarity with good old television, where I was and remained a spectator. It was an esoteric machine, whose status as machine I respected. Nothing there of all these screens and interactive devices, including the 'smart' car of the future and the 'smart' house. Even the mobile phone, that incrustation of the network in your head, even the skateboard and rollerblades - mobility aids - are of a quite different generation from the good old static telephone or the velocipedic machine. New manners and a new morality are emerging as a result of this organic confusion between man and his prostheses - a confusion which puts an end to the instrumental pact and the integrity of the machine itself.

It is the world’s first fully functional noninvasive brain-computer interface. It allows an OASIS user to see, hear, smell, taste, and feel their avatar’s virtual environment, via signals transmitted directly into their cerebral cortex. The headset’s sensor array also monitors and interprets its wearer’s brain activity, allowing them to control their OASIS avatar just as they do their physical body—simply by thinking about it.

Many of our friends who grew up here now live in Brooklyn, where they are at work on “book-length narratives.” Another contingent has moved to the Bay Area and made a fortune there. Every year or so, these west-coasters travel back to Michigan and call us up for dinner or drinks, occasions they use to educate us on the inner workings of the tech industry. They refer to the companies they work for in the first person plural, a habit I have yet to acculturate to. Occasionally they lapse into the utopian, speaking of robotics ordinances and brain-computer interfaces and the mystical, labyrinthine channels of capital, conveying it all with the fervency of pioneers on a civilizing mission. Being lectured quickly becomes dull, and so my husband and I, to amuse ourselves, will sometimes play the rube. “So what, exactly, is a venture capitalist?” we’ll say. Or: “Gosh, it sounds like science fiction.” I suppose we could tell them the truth—that nothing they’re proclaiming is news; that the boom and bustle of the coastal cities, like the smoke from those California wildfires, liberally wafts over the rest of the country. But that seems a bit rude. We are, after all, Midwesterners. Here, work is work and money is money, and nobody speaks of these things as though they were spiritual movements or expressions of one’s identity.

In all probability there is an infinite variety of mental states that no Sapiens, bat or dinosaur ever experienced in 4 billion years of terrestrial evolution, because they did not have the necessary faculties. In the future, however, powerful drugs, genetic engineering, electronic helmets and direct brain–computer interfaces may open passages to these places. Just as Columbus and Magellan sailed beyond the horizon to explore new islands and unknown continents, so we may one day embark for the antipodes of the mind.

The Archons use 'mind control' techniques. This is known as psychological warfare, but Archontic manipulation far surpasses anything the United States, Russia, Vatican City, Israel, or the United Kingdom has, of yet, invented. The Archons are the ultimate brainwashers. The Archons keep people distracted with pornography and drugs, with sports and alcohol, with material possessions, exotic vacations, artificial reality, addiction to various pleasures, along with dreams of the artificial technological paradise of: radical life-extension, transhumanism, nootropics and Brain Computer Interfaces. The Archons do this so that humanity does not have the time or opportunity to observe what is really happening in the world. Humanity is under siege. The Archons want you to be as uneducated and uninformed as possible. They destroy your passion for learning, and infiltrate and sabotage the educational system. Ultimately, they want to destroy all that makes you human, your hopes, your dreams, your joys, especially they want to destroy your spirituality.

Hackers could even install brain spyware into the apps and devices you are using. A research team led by UC Berkeley computer science professor Dawn Song tried this on gamers who were using neural interface to control a video game. As they played, the researchers inserted subliminal images into the game and probed the players’ unconscious brains for reaction to stimuli—like postal addresses, bank details, or human faces. Unbeknownst to the gamers, the researchers were able to steal information from their brains by measuring their unconscious brain responses that signaled recognition to stimuli, including a PIN code for one gamer’s credit card and their home address.

5 PM CHRIS TAKES THE STAGE Announces that before the African lady, there will be a surprise talk, a mind-bender, he promises, on brain-computer interface. People snap out of their truffle-and-bacon haze. Chris introduces Elgin Branch from… wait for it… Microsoft Research. Research is the only half-decent group at MS, but really? Microsoft? Audience deflating. Energy dissipating. 5:45 PM HOLY CRAP Disregard snarkiness of 5 PM post. Give me a second… I’m going to need some time… 7 PM SAMANTHA 2 Thanks for your patience. This talk won’t post on the TED website for a month. In the meantime, let me try to do it justice. Big shout-out to my blogging pal TEDGRRRL for letting me transcribe her phone video. 5 PM Branch puts on headset. On the big screen:

Healing is the initial justification for every upgrade. Find some professors experimenting in genetic engineering or brain–computer interfaces, and ask them why they are engaged in such research. In all likelihood they would reply that they are doing it to cure disease. ‘With the help of genetic engineering,’ they would explain, ‘we could defeat cancer. And if we could connect brains and computers directly, we could cure schizophrenia.’ Maybe, but it will surely not end there. When we successfully connect brains and computers, will we use this technology only to cure schizophrenia? If anybody really believes this, then they may know a great deal about brains and computers, but far less about the human psyche and human society. Once you achieve a momentous breakthrough, you cannot restrict its use to healing and completely forbid using it for upgrading.

The Soviets were not 50% right, they were entirely wrong. They weren’t quantitatively wrong about the amount of variance due to the environment, they were qualitatively wrong about what environmental manipulations could do in the face of built-in universal human machinery. Having said this, though, I now feel no particular impulse to vote Republican. Also, it’s quite possible that someday you could create perfectly unselfish people… if you used sufficiently advanced neurosurgery, drugs, and/or brain-computer interfaces to engineer their brains into a new state that no current human brain occupies. Whether or not this is in fact possible isn’t something that ideology gets to decide. The reasoning errors of past communists can’t prohibit any particular future technological advance from being possible or practical. Having said that, I feel no particular impulse to turn “liberal.

the wider world’s reaction has often been disdainful. In 1984, the first Mac’s graphical user interface was widely derided as “a toy.” Bill Gates was mystified that people wanted colored computers. Critics initially called on Apple to open up the iPod. Without a strong belief in his vision, a passion for what he was doing, it would be much harder for Jobs to resist the critics.

Brain entrainment: Neurofeedback (NFB) Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS) Brain Computer Interface (BCI) Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy (HBOT) Floatation Tanks (REST) Reduced Environmental Stimulation Therapy Nootropics: Caffeine Nicotine Lion’s Mane mushroom Adderall Ritalin Modafinil Brahmi Winter Cherry (Ashwagandha) “Qualia Mind” a proprietary blend Ginkgo Biloba Maca root Yerba Mate Green Tea Aniracetam Phosphatidylserine Plant Medicines & Psychedelics: Ketamine LSD Psilocybin Iboga MDMA

The Archons keep people distracted with pornography and drugs, with sports and alcohol, with material possessions, exotic vacations, artificial reality, addiction to various pleasures, along with dreams of the artificial technological paradise of: radical life-extension, transhumanism, nootropics and Brain Computer Interfaces.

The dream of Strong Artificial Intelligence—and more specifically the growing interest in the idea that a computer can become conscious and have first-person subjective experiences—has led to a cultural shift. Prophets like Kurzweil believe that we are much closer to cyberconsciousness and superintelligence than most observers acknowledge, while skeptics argue that current AI systems are still extremely primitive and that hopes of conscious machines are pipedreams. Who is right? This book does not attempt to address this question, but points out some philosophical problems and asks some philosophical questions about machine consciousness. One fundamental problem is that we do not understand human consciousness. Many in science and artificial intelligence assume that human consciousness is based on information or computations. Several writers have tried to tackle this assumption, most notably the British physicist Roger Penrose, whose controversial theory suggests that consciousness is based upon noncomputable quantum states in some of the tiniest structures in the brain, called microtubules. Other, perhaps less esoteric thinkers, like Duke’s Miguel Nicolelis and Harvard’s Leonid Perlovsky, are beginning to challenge the idea that the brain is computable. These scientists lead their fields in man-machine interfacing and computer science. The assumption of a computable brain allows artificial intelligence researchers to believe they will create artificial minds. However, despite assuming that the brain is a computational system—what philosopher Riccardo Manzotti calls “the computational stance”—neuroscience is still discovering that human consciousness is nothing like we think it is. For me this is where LSD enters the picture. It turns out that human consciousness is likely itself a form of hallucination. As I have said, it is a very useful hallucination, but a hallucination nonetheless. LSD and psychedelics may help reveal our normal everyday experience for the hallucination that it is. This insight has been argued about for centuries in philosophy in various forms. Immanuel Kant may have been first to articulate it in modern form when he called our perception of the world “synthetic.” The fundamental idea is that we do not have direct knowledge of the external world. This idea will be repeated often in this book, and you will have to get used to it. We only have knowledge of our brain’s creation of that world for us. In other words, what we see, hear, and subsequently think are like movies that our brain plays for us after the fact. These movies are based on perceptions that come into our senses from the external world, but they are still fictions of our brain’s creation. In fact, you might put the disclaimer “based on a true story” in front of each experience you have. I do not wish to imply that I believe in the homunculus argument—what philosopher Daniel Dennett describes as the “Cartesian Theater”—the hypothetical place in the mind where the self becomes aware of the world. I only wish to employ the metaphor to illustrate the idea that there is no direct relationship between the external world and your perception of it.

• Brain Computer Interface Race: Contestants will be equipped with brain–computer interfaces that will enable them to control an avatar in a racing game played on computers. • Functional Electrical Stimulation Bike Race: Contestants with complete spinal cord injuries will be equipped with Functional Electrical Stimulation devices, which will enable them to perform pedaling movements on a cycling device that drives them on a circular course. • Leg Prosthetics Race: It will involve an obstacle course featuring slopes, steps, uneven surfaces, and straight sprints. • Powered Exoskeleton Race: Contestants with complete thoracic or lumbar spinal cord injuries will be equipped with actuated exoskeletal devices, which will enable them to walk along a particular race course. • Powered Wheelchair Race: A similar obstacle course featuring a variety of surfaces and environments. • Arm Prosthetics Race: Pilots with forearm or upper arm amputations will be equipped with actuated exoprosthetic devices and will have to successfully complete two hand–arm task courses as quickly as possible.

In the less than two years since Crux was released, science has continued to advance. In 2013, a pair of researchers at the University of Washington demonstrated that one human being could control part of another human being’s body via a non-invasive brain-computer interface. The two researchers, Rajesh Rao and Andrea Stocco, played a video game together, in a very peculiar way. Rajesh Rao, in one building on campus, could see the video game display, but had no controls. Andrea Stocco, in another building across the campus, had the controller (a fire button), but couldn’t see the display. When Professor Rao wanted to shoot, he would think about shooting, and an EEG cap on his skull would pick up his intent and transmit it across campus. There, a magnetic stimulator on Andrea Stocco’s head would send a pulse through part of Professor Stocco’s motor cortex, causing his finger to twitch and hit the fire button.

Personal Thinking Blockchains More speculatively for the farther future, the notion of blockchain technology as the automated accounting ledger, the quantized-level tracking device, could be extensible to yet another category of record keeping and administration. There could be “personal thinking chains” as a life-logging storage and backup mechanism. The concept is “blockchain technology + in vivo personal connectome” to encode and make useful in a standardized compressed data format all of a person’s thinking. The data could be captured via intracortical recordings, consumer EEGs, brain/computer interfaces, cognitive nanorobots, and other methodologies. Thus, thinking could be instantiated in a blockchain — and really all of an individual’s subjective experience, possibly eventually consciousness, especially if it’s more precisely defined. After they’re on the blockchain, the various components could be administered and transacted — for example, in the case of a post-stroke memory restoration. Just as there has not been a good model with the appropriate privacy and reward systems that the blockchain offers for the public sharing of health data and quantified-self-tracking data, likewise there has not been a model or means of sharing mental performance data. In the case of mental performance data, there is even more stigma attached to sharing personal data, but these kinds of “life-streaming + blockchain technology” models could facilitate a number of ways to share data privately, safely, and remuneratively. As mentioned, in the vein of life logging, there could be personal thinking blockchains to capture and safely encode all of an individual’s mental performance, emotions, and subjective experiences onto the blockchain, at minimum for backup and to pass on to one’s heirs as a historical record. Personal mindfile blockchains could be like a next generation of Fitbit or Apple’s iHealth on the iPhone 6, which now automatically captures 200+ health metrics and sends them to the cloud for data aggregation and imputation into actionable recommendations. Similarly, personal thinking blockchains could be easily and securely recorded (assuming all of the usual privacy concerns with blockchain technology are addressed) and mental performance recommendations made to individuals through services such as Siri or Amazon’s Alexa voice assistant, perhaps piped seamlessly through personal brain/computer interfaces and delivered as both conscious and unconscious suggestions. Again perhaps speculatively verging on science fiction, ultimately the whole of a society’s history might include not just a public records and document repository, and an Internet archive of all digital activity, but also the mindfiles of individuals. Mindfiles could include the recording of every “transaction” in the sense of capturing every thought and emotion of every entity, human and machine, encoding and archiving this activity into life-logging blockchains.

This is the cultural richness that brain–computer interfaces will enable for us. It will be a process of co-creation—evolving our minds to unlock deeper insight, and using those powers to produce transcendent new ideas for our future minds to explore. At last we will have access to our own source code, using AI capable of redesigning itself. Since this technology will let us merge with the superintelligence we are creating, we will be essentially remaking ourselves. Freed from the enclosure of our skulls, and processing on a substrate millions of times faster than biological tissue, our minds will be empowered to grow exponentially, ultimately expanding our intelligence millions-fold. This is the core of my definition of the Singularity.

learning is currently re-creating the powers of the neocortex, we can assess what AI still needs to achieve to reach human levels, and how we will know when it has. Finally, we’ll turn to how, aided by superhuman AI, we will engineer brain–computer interfaces that vastly expand our neocortices with layers of virtual neurons. This will unlock entirely new modes of thought and ultimately expand our intelligence millions-fold: this is the Singularity.

Artificial Intelligence could be the greatest boon in accessibility, yet AI enthusiasm is exhausted in grotesque plagiarism and pomposity.

To use the metaphor of our Information Age, consciousness to humans is as Cloud to computers. Just like your smartphone, your brain is a 'bio'-logical computing device of your mind, an interface for physical reality. Our minds are embedded into the greater mind-network, as computers in the Cloud. Viewed in this way, consciousness is 'non-local' Cloud, our brain-mind systems are receivers, processors and transmitters of information within that Cloud.

Instead of drilling a hole in the skull or strapping a device onto the body, Synchron uses the “stentrode”—a device that looks like a small tube of wire mesh, and remarkably can be implanted via a catheter, much like the stents that physicians use to treat heart patients. The stentrode is fed into the jugular vein in the neck and threaded through a blood vessel that enters the brain. The device is tuned to detect the electrical signals that travel from the brain to give instructions to the limbs and fingers to move. Those signals, relayed through Bluetooth to a device outside the body, are translated by algorithms into computer commands. CEO Thomas Oxley describes it as “bringing electronics into the brain without the need for open-brain surgery.” Four Australian patients with neurodegenerative disorders have been implanted with the stentrode and are able to email, text, and even shop for groceries using only their minds.34 Synchron has also started clinical trials in the United States. Once widescale safety and efficacy have been established, it’s not hard to imagine that even a healthy individual might want a stentrode to more seamlessly interface with technology or reach just a little closer to digital immortality.

The celibacy of the machine entails the celibacy of Telecomputer Man. Thanks to his computer or word processor, Telecomputer Man offers himself the spectacle of his own brain, his own intelligence, at work. Similarly, through his chat line or his Minitel, he can offer himself the spectacle of his own phantasies, of a strictly virtual pleasure. He exorcizes both intelligence and pleasure at the interface with the machine. The Other, the interlocutor, is never really involved: the screen works much like a mirror, for the screen itself as locus of the interface is the prime concern. An interactive screen transforms the process of relating into a process of commutation between One and the Same. The secret of the interface is that the Other here is virtually the Same: otherness is surreptitiously conjured away by the machine. The most probable scenario of communication here is that Minitel users gravitate from the screen to telephone conversations, thence to face-to-face meetings, and ... then what? Well, it's 'let's phone each other', and, finally, back to the Minitel - which is, after all, more erotic because it is at once both esoteric and transparent. This is communication in its purest form, for there is no intimacy here except with the screen, and with an electronic text that is no more than a design filigreed onto life. A new Plato's retreat whence to observe shadow-forms of bodily pleasure filing past. Why speak to one another, when it is so simple to communicate?

The much-ballyhooed Internet of Things (what is a smart bin? In my day that was a dog) will see a surge in demand for rare metals, forcing up their price. Combine that with the invention of the brain-computer interface and there will be times when the spare capacity of human consciousness will be a cheaper option for processing and storage. For a nutritious bowl of soup we’ll be plugged in, with a thousand others, running algorithms to more precisely push a new wonder mop to lonely housewives idly googling through a Valium comedown.

The most important and unpredictable side of technology will always be ... human.

Transmogrification—that’s the right word. It’s been on the tip of my tongue, but I couldn’t quite catch it. It’s a cumbersome word. It rolls through your mouth and then staccatos onto the floor in chunks of unnecessary syllables, like echoes of a thought already gone. It is a transformation, a metamorphosis that occurred not because I’d changed but because the rest of the world had.