We have a high bandwidth input already known as eyes and ears
This is the correct answer!
Can you only imagine what advances we'd make in "information upload" if we invested as much in Teaching Pedagogy as we invest in Neuroscience?
Ask HN: Is anyone working on “downloading” knowledge to the brain?
11–20 of 82 posts
Re: Ask HN: Is anyone working on “downloading” knowledge to the brain?
#12It seems that no one properly understands how information is stored in the brain. I think that needs to be solved first.
This is definitely a huge problem, but we also need a viable interface to write information.
Re: Ask HN: Is anyone working on “downloading” knowledge to the brain?
#13We have a high bandwidth input already known as eyes and ears
They deal with pretty noisy mediums though. How much of the input is actually transformed into what we perceive as relevant knowledge and stored long-term?
Re: Ask HN: Is anyone working on “downloading” knowledge to the brain?
#14No, we are very far from anything like that. I would watch Neuralink's recruiting events for a sense of where things are. They are trying to make a robot that will insert dozens of threads with several hundred tiny electrodes on these threads. This will allow reading a high-resolution picture of that part of the brain's activity. You can then hook this up to a computer and train yourself to map your brain's signals to some desired output (typing, moving a wheelchair, robot arm, etc). They talk about "writing", but that is just providing feedback, ie they send in signals and you train to interpret them as something.
If they are successful, you can expect to have an accessible (ie, couple thousand dollars) brain-computer interface covering a tiny portion of your brain sometime in the 2030s. New knowledge would necessarily need new connections between between neurons, ie you have to grow and connect neurons in a very particular and intricate pattern. I think we're still at the "just barely trying to understand wtf is going on" stage.
If you'd like a more in-depth intro to the state of the art, Jeff Lichtman's work on connectomics is a great place to start. Here's a 3-part lecture: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MtTOg0mzRJc
You can skip ahead to part 3, where he describes the absolute state of the art machine they are building which will be able to map the structure of a tiny slice of brain <1mm^3 part of a brain using advanced optics, robotics and machine learning. It's quite humbling.
Re: Ask HN: Is anyone working on “downloading” knowledge to the brain?
#15I know it's not exactly what you asked for, but in my experience, spaced repetition is borderline science fiction -- if implemented properly. It's not as instantaneous or cool as The Matrix , but it does feel like magic when you can remember obscure words or concepts years after entering them into a SRS program.
This!
Re: Ask HN: Is anyone working on “downloading” knowledge to the brain?
#16> provide "instant knowledge", like learning kung fu
How quickly we forget, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bg21M2zwG9Q
Re: Ask HN: Is anyone working on “downloading” knowledge to the brain?
#17Yeah they're called teachers. Some are good, some are bad.
Re: Ask HN: Is anyone working on “downloading” knowledge to the brain?
#18Wouldn't it be easier to understand how the brain works and transfer intelligence and consciousness into silicon (by emulation?) rather than try the reverse?
We know our bodies age and die whereas sustaining a computer for 100s of years via a part replacements is quite doable.
Re: Ask HN: Is anyone working on “downloading” knowledge to the brain?
#19It seems that no one properly understands how information is stored in the brain. I think that needs to be solved first.
This is definitely a huge problem, but we also need a viable interface to write information.
How do you write if you don't even know how to read the storage media?
Re: Ask HN: Is anyone working on “downloading” knowledge to the brain?
#20No one has any clue how to do this nor will they (likely) ever.