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Elon Musk’s Neuralink wants to boost the brain to keep up with AI

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Re: Elon Musk’s Neuralink wants to boost the brain to keep up with AI

#131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh, it's worth understanding the scale and scope of the problem. I've been thinking about this a lot, recently. The human brain has on the order of 1e11 neurons. The galaxy has on the order of 1e11 stars. Now, would we confidently predict that we could "solve" the galaxy in less than 100 to 500 years, say? And yet we make very, very aggressive estimates of how quickly we might unravel the secrets of the brain. Biolog…

I don't really understand this perspective. Are you arguing that we shouldn't try? Of course it'll be extremely difficult and the work will take place over decades, not months or years, just like Spacex and Tesla. Nobody's expecting Iain Banks's neural lace tomorrow. But if someone doesn't start working on it tomorrow, we won't have it in a hundred years, either.

No, I agree we should try. It was just an "aha" moment for me. It highlighted to me the inconsistency in answer these two questions:

1) How soon do you think we'll be able to tap every neuron?

2) How soon do you think we'll understand the galaxy in terms of each and every individual constituent star (not aggregates).

Re: Elon Musk’s Neuralink wants to boost the brain to keep up with AI

#132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I may add some details.... The most popular implant is probably Blackrock Microsystems' "Utah Array", which has 96 electrodes arranged in a 10x10 grid (minus the corners). It looks like this: http://aerobe.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/utah-3.jpg For scale, the entire electrode grid is about 4mm on a side and the electrodes are between 0.5 and 1.5mm long (depending on the model). There are a few other models (and…

I'm interested in the subject and appreciated your post, thanks. A couple of questions: How does the brain adapt to having the electrodes in there, how long before the probes are accepted as being "part of" the brain? Do you envision we need lots more sensors than in your example above, or is said number enough for precision input (say, text/words, or navigation in a 3 dimensional position & rotation plus a temporal…

It depends!

For most electrodes, the brain doesn't really incorporate the implant. When a single electrode is inserted, you can start recording as soon as the contacts are inside the brain (in practice, you wait a few minutes since the brain is slightly elastic and stuff moves around). In humans, this is how deep brain stimulation is done--the surgeons use the neural activity to figure out when the electrode is in the right place. For larger implants like the Utah arrays, the insertion is a bit more traumatic. Allegedly, you get a pretty good signal right away, then inflammation makes it degrade for a while, and after ~12 hrs, the signal returns. However, the animal/patient is usually recovering during this time, so it's moot.

These electrodes are usually silicone and metal, usually tungsten, platinum/platinum iridium, or iridium oxide, so the brain doesn't really "accept" them. In fact, it tries to encapsulate and reject them, which limits the lifespan of the electrodes. In my experience, a two week old array might have nice, well-isolated neurons on more than half of the channels; after two years, you'd be lucky to get single units on more than a handful of the 96 channels.

However, there's a lot of interest in developing coatings that inhibit this immune response or actually encourage neurons to grow into the array. There's a lot of promising research on this, but nothing (as far as I know) that's commercially available.

As for the number of sensors...it also depends. You can do a lot with a 96 channel array implanted in the right spot, including spelling (https://elifesciences.org/content/6/e18554#bib27) and control of a robotic arm (http://www.jhuapl.edu/prosthetics/scientists/neural.asp) though neither of these is anywhere near "native" performance yet. More electrodes might help, but there's also probably some low-hanging fruit in figuring out the right control paradigms, decoding algorithms, and even where the electrodes are placed.

For research though, more and better arrays would be great. Many brain areas have a spatial structure. In visual areas, for example, cells representing neighboring spots in the visual world[0] are also near each other. Motor and sensory cortex also have a foot-to-face progression. Bigger arrays might let us sample from a more diverse population of neurons at the same time, which could be scientifically interesting and useful for BCI. Denser arrays might also allow for better recordings from single neurons. If you have a sufficiently dense array, you can record the activity of one neuron from multiple sites--this lets you isolate its responses better (this trick is commonly used with bundles of four wires, called tetrodes).

I would also love to get my hands on arrays made from multiple materials. Platinum is great for recording the activity of single units, but lousy for stimulation; its low charge injection capacity means that high stimulation currents damage the electrodes and/or nearby cells. Iridium oxide has a much higher charge injection capacity, but lower impedance and thus, fewer well-isolated cells. A "checkerboard" pattern of Pt and IrOx electrodes would be awesome, but is apparently difficult to make (no chance you run a fab, is there?)

The flips side of all of this is that amplifiers and ADCs are expensive (though much cheaper than they used to be), and adding channels rapidly increases the data files' size too. My experiments generate about 1 GB/minute, and we record 5-8 hours a day, 6-7 days a week.

What else? :-)

[0] The organization is really "retinotopic", meaning that cells receiving inputs from the adjacent parts of the retina are near each other in the brain.

Re: Elon Musk’s Neuralink wants to boost the brain to keep up with AI

#133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't really understand this perspective. Are you arguing that we shouldn't try? Of course it'll be extremely difficult and the work will take place over decades, not months or years, just like Spacex and Tesla. Nobody's expecting Iain Banks's neural lace tomorrow. But if someone doesn't start working on it tomorrow, we won't have it in a hundred years, either.

No, I agree we should try. It was just an "aha" moment for me. It highlighted to me the inconsistency in answer these two questions: 1) How soon do you think we'll be able to tap every neuron? 2) How soon do you think we'll understand the galaxy in terms of each and every individual constituent star (not aggregates).

EDIT>

We can hand-wave estimates for the number of constituents in each of these systems. But it's interesting that we don't really know how many neurons there are in your individual brain, or in mine, etc. We can't yet look across the scales required to e.g. count and localize every single cell in your brain. Also, at what time? It changes. Just interesting questions when you get to a fine scale...

Re: Elon Musk’s Neuralink wants to boost the brain to keep up with AI

#134
post #98
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

he needs the money, but he doesn't want it. he's not playing the business game for the game's sake, he wants to advance civilization and the best way to do it is via billion dollar disruptive businesses, so that's what he's doing. i applaud him for keeping true to this after however many years of having access to that much assets.

We should be so lucky he's not purely profit-driven. Even on /r/futurology, supposedly a place of boundless imagination and hope for the future, I get attacked for suggesting that maybe it's not a bad idea to at least investigate the potential behind solar roads. Nope, those are stupid and a waste of money, fuck me for being an idealist. My point is most of society is self-limiting for whatever reason (obsessed with…

The problem with solar panels is not that we lack a place to put them. Solar roads don't offer anything other than a bad place to put solar panels (under the tires of our cars).

Re: Elon Musk’s Neuralink wants to boost the brain to keep up with AI

#135

Am I the only one surprised (and concerned) by how many ventures Musk start at the same time?

I am too. He's been successful so far, but it seems to me that at some point, he will be overextending himself, and will start to run into more failures. As a Tesla shareholder, I wish he would focus on making sure that company is successful. Just Tesla, with its car, power, and battery divisions, is a huge project for one person to manage.

"...he will be overextending himself..." Perhaps - Robert Browning:

"Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp, Or what's a heaven for?" [1]

[1] https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poems/detai...

Re: Elon Musk’s Neuralink wants to boost the brain to keep up with AI

#136

Everyone is so scared of all of this, but where do you all realistically see humanity in 200 years? Living like we do now? I mean do you realize how different things were in 1817 compared to now? Unfathomable to them [1]. I know HN hates techno groups, but this kind of thing is not new at all to folks who consider themselves "Transhumanists." How is this not an obvious eventuality for everyone here? It seems pretty c…

More realistically I think will be genetically selecting super smart babies. Most likely this is already being done today. As it proves to be effective people will get better and better at it until we start genetically selecting and even engineering superminds.

Re: Elon Musk’s Neuralink wants to boost the brain to keep up with AI

#138
That guy needs to finish his itasks for 2017 first.

- Tesla Model 3 production line (First deliveries late 2017. He said he was going to live at the factory to get the cars out the door.)

- Brownsville TX launch facility (first launch scheduled for 2018, not much construction started yet)

- Manned Dragon spacecraft (as of 2015, first crewed launch scheduled for late 2017)

- Falcon Heavy (as of Q3 2016, supposed to launch Q1 2017. Now Q3 2017. Maybe.)

Re: Elon Musk’s Neuralink wants to boost the brain to keep up with AI

#139

Everyone is so scared of all of this, but where do you all realistically see humanity in 200 years? Living like we do now? I mean do you realize how different things were in 1817 compared to now? Unfathomable to them [1]. I know HN hates techno groups, but this kind of thing is not new at all to folks who consider themselves "Transhumanists." How is this not an obvious eventuality for everyone here? It seems pretty c…

1917 was a lot like today in the most developed areas. The New York City subway system was running. Electric lights, telephones, and telegraphs were available. Running water. Indoor plumbing. Movies, even. Cars were being driven around, and airplanes were flying. Railroads were everywhere. NYC had skyscrapers with elevators. IBM was already in business.

Compare 1817. No useful railroads. A few steam engines here and there. No electricity. Running water and indoor plumbing were rare. Steel was as rare as titanium is now. Nothing moved faster than a horse.

Re: Elon Musk’s Neuralink wants to boost the brain to keep up with AI

#140

Everyone is so scared of all of this, but where do you all realistically see humanity in 200 years? Living like we do now? I mean do you realize how different things were in 1817 compared to now? Unfathomable to them [1]. I know HN hates techno groups, but this kind of thing is not new at all to folks who consider themselves "Transhumanists." How is this not an obvious eventuality for everyone here? It seems pretty c…

Everyone is so scared of all of this, but ... This will be used for control. 50 pieces of senators want to sell you online thoughts already (internet history). And yet, you are willing to live in an alternate reality where this doesn't happen and it's all for good.

Everything is/was going to be used for control since the start of times, what's the alternative?
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