Speaker 1: Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Speaker 1: Forward Thinking. Hey there, and welcome to Horward Thinking, the
Speaker 1: podcast that looks at the future says, I blame myself
Speaker 1: and I blame the machines. I'm Jonathan Strickland and I'm
Speaker 1: Joe McCormick. In today, we're going to be revisiting a
Speaker 1: topic we've looked at on this show before, but coming
Speaker 1: coming at you with an update on the subject of
Speaker 1: brain computer interfaces. Okay, the concept here is that you
Speaker 1: train a computer to interpret your brain waves. Then you
Speaker 1: think really hard about doing something, I mean not just
Speaker 1: anything like like moving a cursor or or typing a
Speaker 1: word or something like that, and then it happens. It's
Speaker 1: like magic, but with more electrones. Exactly. So, brain computer
Speaker 1: interfaces could be anything from an ability to to be
Speaker 1: able to, like you say, move a cursor, type of
Speaker 1: war and communicate or manipulate a robotic limb. There are
Speaker 1: a lot of different like that, exactly. There are a
Speaker 1: lot of different potential applications. But honestly, it just it
Speaker 1: boils down to stripping away any sort of of interface
Speaker 1: that would require movement, and it relies purely on thought right,
Speaker 1: And of course that's the output half of it. There's
Speaker 1: also the input half of it, where you could say
Speaker 1: a brain you know, input oriented brain computer interface would
Speaker 1: be getting stimuli without the use of your senses, maybe
Speaker 1: like having an idea sent directly to your brain instead
Speaker 1: of through your eyes or something so something like like
Speaker 1: a a an interface where you are receiving information from
Speaker 1: the outside world in some manner. For example, Uh, let's
Speaker 1: one one thing we'll talk about towards the end of
Speaker 1: the episode is the idea of being able to access, say,
Speaker 1: the Internet, directly through your brain. Yeah. A common example
Speaker 1: would be, you know, could we put some micro electrodes
Speaker 1: in your visual corte x that would allow you to
Speaker 1: see without seeing. You could have your you know, your
Speaker 1: eyes closed but still perceive an image in your brain. Man,
Speaker 1: sleeping would be so weird. Okay, I'm just looking through
Speaker 1: the top of my head. No. Anyway, So we've got
Speaker 1: a lot to say about this, but you may think,
Speaker 1: if you're a long time listener, haven't you guys addressed
Speaker 1: this before, Joe, you alluded to that. We actually have
Speaker 1: quite a few times. A Yeah, and one of our
Speaker 1: very early episodes was about this technology that was called
Speaker 1: Computers on the Mind all from all the way back
Speaker 1: in April. Pretty sure I titled that one. I'm pretty
Speaker 1: sure that's accurate. That is not one of the greatest
Speaker 1: of our punny title No, no, they're not all home runs. Anyway,
Speaker 1: you're saying, I wish that we had a cricket sound board,
Speaker 1: and here's that anyway. Yes, yes, as when we recorded
Speaker 1: that first episode about it, there was some exploratory research
Speaker 1: into brain computer interfaces that was really amazing that there
Speaker 1: was this team out of out of mostly Brown University,
Speaker 1: also involving Stanford and a bunch of other researchers calling
Speaker 1: themselves brain Gate brain Gate, uh, that that had created
Speaker 1: this interface that allowed a woman with quadriplegia to feed
Speaker 1: herself using a robotic arm um. Uh. They also created
Speaker 1: the first wireless implantable electrode that was being used at
Speaker 1: the time in animal testing. But all of this was
Speaker 1: fairly foundational work. Uh. And we've also talked of course
Speaker 1: about brain computer interfaces more recently during discussions into computer
Speaker 1: interfaces in general, episodes like your Body as a Computer
Speaker 1: Interface from April of sixteen and did Minority Report shape
Speaker 1: user interfaces, which was from September. The answer was yeah,
Speaker 1: surprisingly like kind of upsettingly. Uh, that Minority Report is
Speaker 1: a fine film, um, but but precog thing though serious. No,
Speaker 1: I'm not going to get off on that. If I
Speaker 1: do that the episodes over, I'll just be granting and raving.
Speaker 1: Pray continue, thank you sir. Um. But yeah, so, so
Speaker 1: all of those episodes focused more on on physical computer controls,
Speaker 1: you know, like like a keyboards or or mice, or
Speaker 1: or even touch screens or some some voice and gesture controls,
Speaker 1: which are things that most of us use and are
Speaker 1: used to. Um, But wouldn't it be nice if we
Speaker 1: could just think at our computers and have them execute
Speaker 1: our commands. It would be pretty sexy for everybody, really,
Speaker 1: but but really especially useful for folks, uh, like that
Speaker 1: woman with quadriplegia, who for whatever reason have trouble with
Speaker 1: fine motor controls and or speech. So we thought that
Speaker 1: today we would look into this topic again and kind
Speaker 1: of see what the state of the brain computer interface
Speaker 1: union is. But first let's let's talk Let's talk about
Speaker 1: kind of like the basics, Like like, let's get that
Speaker 1: ground level placed poor as it is, how how do
Speaker 1: you make connection between a brain and a computer anyway.
Speaker 1: It's not necessarily easy, but it's also not necessarily as
Speaker 1: hard as you might imagine, because we already do share
Speaker 1: a semi common language between brains and electronic machines, electrical machines,
Speaker 1: which is electricity. Sure. Yeah, so so the brain, you
Speaker 1: would say, communicates between cells via electrochemical potential, and by
Speaker 1: using electrical charge, you can make the brain do what
Speaker 1: it would normally be doing when when part of it
Speaker 1: was activating. That's very imprecise language activating. But well it's
Speaker 1: a pretty imprecise uh practice as well. I mean I
Speaker 1: think I think we've gotten pretty good and making the
Speaker 1: brain like totally overwhelmed. It's it's hard, Yeah, it's harder
Speaker 1: to get very specific outcomes, right, like like to to
Speaker 1: cause someone to have a specific sensation shin or trigger
Speaker 1: a memory or anything like that. I mean, overwhelming the
Speaker 1: brain not a problem if you want to just are
Speaker 1: you just talking about electric shock there? Essentially. What's a
Speaker 1: little easier, though, is training a computer training software. What
Speaker 1: different brain signals in our our meaning? Like like like
Speaker 1: if a person's brain lights up in a certain way, Ah,
Speaker 1: what does that mean? Right? Right? So are they thinking
Speaker 1: about what are they trying to do? So there's a
Speaker 1: training process in any brain computer interface that has two components.
Speaker 1: You're training the person to use the interface and your
Speaker 1: train the computer on what the person's brain waves actually
Speaker 1: are are linked towards. So you have a long, uh
Speaker 1: training process. I hate to keep using that phrase, but
Speaker 1: it's the most accurate. You have a very long training
Speaker 1: process to get to a point where you can actually
Speaker 1: do something useful. So a very very simple exam bowl
Speaker 1: would be all right, let's let's talk about your your
Speaker 1: basic brain computer interface, which tends to involve invasive surgery. Right,
Speaker 1: you have to because e e g. S don't really
Speaker 1: cut it, is the thing. Yeah, they're not electrodes. Um
Speaker 1: your your brain, your your skull is not the very
Speaker 1: best fair day cage, but it's pretty effective, actually exactly right.
Speaker 1: So you need to get access to those sweet sweet
Speaker 1: electrical uh ilse impulses on the brain surface. So typically
Speaker 1: it involves uh brain surgery. You're actually opening up the
Speaker 1: skull cap and you're putting overlaying maybe an array of
Speaker 1: of sensors of electrodes on the surface of the brain.
Speaker 1: Typically you don't go into the brain for this, it
Speaker 1: does tend to be along the surface of the brain,
Speaker 1: and then you have usually some sort of transcranial connector,
Speaker 1: so it actually is going through the skull when you
Speaker 1: reattach the skull to then wire typically to a computer system.
Speaker 1: There are wireless ones as well, though those are earlier
Speaker 1: in development and they still require transcranial ports. Right right,
Speaker 1: You're still you're still putting something in the brain and
Speaker 1: then like plugging a wireless device into the outside of
Speaker 1: your skull. Yeah, yeah, it's there's not there's not a
Speaker 1: way right now where we have truly wireless where it's
Speaker 1: all within the skull itself and it's contained and therefore
Speaker 1: you don't have any sign of a connector there. And
Speaker 1: because again um that the bone is really surprisingly effective
Speaker 1: at keeping electrical signals inside and outside based on where
Speaker 1: they are. Yeah, it turns out, it turns out that's
Speaker 1: a good thing for most of us most of the time. Yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: but it's it does make it very difficult to interface
Speaker 1: with a machine this way. So you then once you
Speaker 1: have the connection, the physical connection or the wireless connection
Speaker 1: from the person to the computer, you establish some form
Speaker 1: of test that will start to train both the person
Speaker 1: with the interface and the machine itself on working together.
Speaker 1: And a typical one might be that the person is
Speaker 1: looking at a picture of a ball, and there's a
Speaker 1: second picture of a ball, and their job is to
Speaker 1: imagine trying to force the one ball so that overlays
Speaker 1: on top of the other one. So let's say one's
Speaker 1: green and one's yellow, and so your your job is
Speaker 1: to to imagine moving the green ball over top the
Speaker 1: yellow ball, and you do this over and over and
Speaker 1: over again. And there's actually a scoring system typically, and
Speaker 1: it's one to help motivate the person who's who's training.
Speaker 1: It's also meant to give feedback on all right, well,
Speaker 1: because this was inconsistent between trials three and four, we
Speaker 1: have to keep working on this in order for the
Speaker 1: machine to understand what it is you are trying to do.
Speaker 1: Otherwise it will misinterpret your thought and you could get
Speaker 1: an erroneous salt. So if you're getting into something where
Speaker 1: you're trying to say, type out a word and you're thinking,
Speaker 1: I want the cursor to move to the letter T,
Speaker 1: but the machine has misinterpreted that, you could end up
Speaker 1: with typos and mistakes. So you go through this laborious
Speaker 1: process where both the machine and the person learn and
Speaker 1: then ultimately you reach a point where the machine has
Speaker 1: a pretty good feel for what it means when you
Speaker 1: think in a certain way in order to manipulate stuff,
Speaker 1: and and that's when you get the results you wanted.
Speaker 1: It is. I'm not gonna say it's inelegant. I think
Speaker 1: it's an elegant solution, but it's an elegant solution that
Speaker 1: takes a good deal of work and effort and time. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean, one thing about that that occurs to me
Speaker 1: immediately is that it seems quite personalized to the individual user,
Speaker 1: not necessarily like if you design, say you're working on
Speaker 1: a speech to text program or something, hopefully what you're
Speaker 1: doing is you're you're training it for universal speech to text.
Speaker 1: You know, if you're speaking, as long as you're speaking
Speaker 1: in a way that people would normally be able to
Speaker 1: understand the words you're saying without some kind of incredibly
Speaker 1: thick accent or something, it's going to be able to
Speaker 1: turn that into text. Would the same thing necessarily be true?
Speaker 1: Would you know? So you would hook up one person's
Speaker 1: brain and learn how to how to allow them to
Speaker 1: control a computer cursor without touching the mouse or the keys,
Speaker 1: just their brain. Could you then come and bring somebody
Speaker 1: else in and hook their brain up and have them
Speaker 1: do the same thing, certainly not yet. Yeah, it's I
Speaker 1: mean you'd have to retrain them. Basically, you have to
Speaker 1: retrain both the person and computer. Yeah, exactly, Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: it's it's not a one size fits all kind of solution,
Speaker 1: which is also why I get very skeptical whenever I
Speaker 1: see any of those distractions, the games that have the
Speaker 1: little e g. Style headset and you're supposed to focus
Speaker 1: in order to make the game work, I get a
Speaker 1: little I mean, if it's just trying to pick up
Speaker 1: an increase in brainwave activity and that's all it's doing,
Speaker 1: then it's kind of like just a dimmer switch, right,
Speaker 1: Like there's nothing super sophisticated about it. But when it
Speaker 1: gets to like more uh complicated claims that hey, if
Speaker 1: you if you concentrate on the ball to go up,
Speaker 1: the ball goes up, and if you concentrate on the
Speaker 1: ball to go down, the ball goes down, and it's
Speaker 1: a one size fits all kind of thing, I often
Speaker 1: think that's more or less bologny. I mean, not that
Speaker 1: it doesn't work at all, But it doesn't I doubt
Speaker 1: it works in the way they're saying it works, and
Speaker 1: it probably I mean, if it does work even vaguely
Speaker 1: in the way that they say that it works, it
Speaker 1: probably doesn't work very well. Yeah, because again, unfortunately, right now,
Speaker 1: that surgery is an integral part of getting getting to
Speaker 1: those juicy, juicy brainwaves. Yeah. So it was just last
Speaker 1: year that we actually got to the point where a
Speaker 1: wireless solution was even a thing. In that case, it's
Speaker 1: not for humans, well yeah, yeah, well, and and the
Speaker 1: wireless solution is is so exciting because because previously the
Speaker 1: thing that you plug into your skull to to access
Speaker 1: those electrodes is a tether. That's that's meaning the ear,
Speaker 1: the ear tied to a laboratory in which that that
Speaker 1: tether exists or or I mean, even if even if
Speaker 1: it was available for like home use, you wouldn't be
Speaker 1: able to be mobile while you were using this kind
Speaker 1: of device. So so getting that that mobility and a
Speaker 1: little bit more comfort for subjects who are who are
Speaker 1: testing out this kind of stuff is is really critical
Speaker 1: in moving towards a place where where it could be
Speaker 1: actually useful for actual people in their actual lives, right,
Speaker 1: And we've also seen progress that's akin to Moore's law,
Speaker 1: the idea that over time, you can increase the abilities
Speaker 1: of say a microprocessor by reducing the size of the
Speaker 1: individual components. The same thing has been true for the
Speaker 1: electrodes that have been used in this kind of thing,
Speaker 1: all right, which is so cool because because anytime that
Speaker 1: you put an implant in the brain, it's it's going
Speaker 1: to cause a little bit of scarring in the brain tissue.
Speaker 1: And that's scarring uh gets larger over time. Um. The
Speaker 1: eventually the scar tissue begins to uh to degrade the
Speaker 1: quality of the signal that the electrodes can send out
Speaker 1: because it's it's it's a thicker it's a thicker material
Speaker 1: than your normal brain stuff. It's almost like a callous
Speaker 1: exactly exactly so um so so smaller implants equal less scarring,
Speaker 1: equal better technology over time equal yea yeah. And obviously,
Speaker 1: if you were to undergo a procedure where you are
Speaker 1: going to have some sort of electrode array implanted in
Speaker 1: your brain, you want it to last for as long
Speaker 1: as it possibly can so that you don't have to
Speaker 1: undergo a future procedure in order to correct any issues
Speaker 1: from scarring exactly. So this is a this is a
Speaker 1: huge advance, even though it's very talian. Uh. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: hope hopefully, I like Jonathan said, it's currently that the
Speaker 1: wireless stuff is only available for animal testing. Um, hopefully
Speaker 1: a wireless device will be cleared for human testing soon.
Speaker 1: That the last I heard about it in I believe
Speaker 1: December of there was one company that was that was
Speaker 1: working with the brain Gate project that was was submitting
Speaker 1: a proposal to the FDA. So no word on that
Speaker 1: as of Google today, right, but but you know, fingers cressed. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and so let's kind of segue into some of the
Speaker 1: work that's been done recently to help improve the approach
Speaker 1: of brain computer interfaces. We we have to say, Ralph
Speaker 1: the Bat, there's nothing that's like the the holy Grail
Speaker 1: of brain computer interfaces that magically makes them work perfectly.
Speaker 1: But we've seen some pretty cool advances. Yeah. There was
Speaker 1: one story in particular that kind of spurred this this
Speaker 1: episode two into creation that involved alves, monkeys, and hamlet. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I I really I campaigned hard to cover this
Speaker 1: for a show that we do called Hell Stuff Works.
Speaker 1: Now because I'm a technology freak and a Shakespeare freak,
Speaker 1: So the dual punch hit me right in the stern um. Uh.
Speaker 1: So we're talking about a project that came out of
Speaker 1: Stanford bio x. There was a group of scientists at
Speaker 1: Stanford who were looking specifically at ways to improve brain
Speaker 1: computer interfaces for people who have mobility issues. They said
Speaker 1: that one of the biggest challenges they were facing was
Speaker 1: that the interfaces that existed up to that point were
Speaker 1: relatively slow, and frequently people were finding, uh it difficult
Speaker 1: to use that they were there were it was inserting errors.
Speaker 1: They were getting misspellings or typos or whatever. And that
Speaker 1: causes frustration obviously. And I don't I know you guys, like,
Speaker 1: if you've ever been working on a task that's particularly
Speaker 1: hard and then you get frustrated, it suddenly seems like
Speaker 1: the difficulty of that task is skyrocketed. It's like if
Speaker 1: you're already trying to do something difficult on your computer
Speaker 1: and then your computer starts getting slow. Yeah, isn't that
Speaker 1: the best feeling? It's so frustrating. And have you ever
Speaker 1: been playing a video game where there was a glitch
Speaker 1: in it and and you were like like the controls
Speaker 1: maybe like especially in older games, where like the controls
Speaker 1: were already a little bit like like rough, like tank like,
Speaker 1: and then all of a sudden, you just get to
Speaker 1: a glitch where you're like, well, it's it's physically impossible
Speaker 1: for me to beat this. Yeah, they're there's great. There
Speaker 1: are times where you just you know, you feel that
Speaker 1: level of frustration, and it it makes something that is
Speaker 1: already challenging even more difficult, right like even if that
Speaker 1: barrier were not there anymore, because of your frustration, your
Speaker 1: ability to focus has has decreased, and so there was
Speaker 1: a real need to try and improve this tech. Uh.
Speaker 1: And in fact, there's a quote specifically from a piece
Speaker 1: in Stanford News that said earlier versions of this technology
Speaker 1: have already been tested successfully in people with paralysis, but
Speaker 1: the typing was slow and imprecise. This latest work tests
Speaker 1: improvements to the speed and accuracy of the technology that
Speaker 1: interprets brain signals and drives the cursor. So in this case,
Speaker 1: they're talking about an interface where you have like a
Speaker 1: screen with a bunch of letters on it, and there's
Speaker 1: a cursor as well, and you can concentrate and move
Speaker 1: the cursor to the appropriate letter and then concentrate again
Speaker 1: as if you were clicking on that letter and its selects. It.
Speaker 1: It acts as a type, you know, like a typewriter,
Speaker 1: but you're doing it very much a point like a
Speaker 1: search and pack kind of approach, where instead of a finger,
Speaker 1: you're using your brain. Now, the way they tested the
Speaker 1: improvements to this technology, it was a bit unusual. They
Speaker 1: used monkeys as test subjects. Not unusual, right, not unusual
Speaker 1: for this. But they trained them to concentrate on symbols,
Speaker 1: and then they had them transcribe passages from a couple
Speaker 1: of different sources, the New York Times, some articles from
Speaker 1: the New York Times. They used that as a test
Speaker 1: um text to transcribe, and in one case Hamlet. So
Speaker 1: that of course prompted people to make reference to that
Speaker 1: old idea that if you stuck an infinite number of
Speaker 1: monkeys in a room with an infinite number of typewriters,
Speaker 1: sooner or later one of them would produce the complete
Speaker 1: works of Shakespeare just by chance. Because the definition of
Speaker 1: infinite is in an infinite number of monkeys. I always
Speaker 1: thought it was this finite number of monkeys given infinite time.
Speaker 1: Either way, it's same thing right. I feel like the
Speaker 1: Douglas Adams version was infinite monkeys, infinite typewriters, and infinite
Speaker 1: If it were infinite monkeys and just one typewriter, boy,
Speaker 1: who I'd imagine. But the infinite monkeys get the Shakespeare
Speaker 1: done a lot faster than finite monkeys, you would imagine, Yeah,
Speaker 1: infinite monkey. I don't know, do they. I mean, at
Speaker 1: a certain point, is adding more monkeys help or hurt
Speaker 1: the situation? It always helps. Adding more monkeys always happens.
Speaker 1: Why you're the optimist. Three things. If you take nothing
Speaker 1: else from this show, Ladies and gentlemen, take the words
Speaker 1: of wisdom from Joe. Adding monkeys always helps. Um So
Speaker 1: in this case, obviously the monkeys weren't typing up Hamlet
Speaker 1: purely by chance, they were transcribing it, and in fact
Speaker 1: only one was doing it. But yeah, and so, so
Speaker 1: what what the researchers did here is they they implanted
Speaker 1: electrodes into the monkey's motor cortexes and and the monkeys
Speaker 1: were trained to move cursors around the screen first with
Speaker 1: actual gestures, and the camera watched their movements while the
Speaker 1: software was watching their brain waves. Thus the computer learned
Speaker 1: what the monkeys intent to move looked like right, And
Speaker 1: keep in mind, they had no comprehension of the text
Speaker 1: as far as we are aware, they weren't suddenly all.
Speaker 1: But they didn't all become subscribers to The New York
Speaker 1: Times or aficionados of The Bard As far as we know,
Speaker 1: none of them, as far as I'm aware, contacted Kenneth Bruna,
Speaker 1: but several of them did become oxford Ians. There were
Speaker 1: a couple of bacon Vans in the group. I'm not
Speaker 1: gonna lie. Uh. They were literally just just replicating those
Speaker 1: words by doing that that kind of cursor click approach
Speaker 1: we were talking about, by concentrating. But despite those limitations,
Speaker 1: despite those qualifiers, they were able to reach a speed
Speaker 1: of around twelve words per minute, which was pretty impressive
Speaker 1: for a monkey, Really pretty impressive considering the technology at all.
Speaker 1: Absolutely so for fun, because I was curious. I thought
Speaker 1: it might be interested to see how long it would
Speaker 1: take a monkey to type out Hamlet in this way,
Speaker 1: keeping in mind the monkey is again transcribing Hamlet, not
Speaker 1: actually just spontaneously typing up the play. Right, Sure, but
Speaker 1: I guess this means you have to pick a certain
Speaker 1: version of Hamlet that's true. I I picked I picked
Speaker 1: a pretty standard version, and I was I actually did
Speaker 1: go to a site that gave like a number of
Speaker 1: words for every work. Hamlet, by the way, in case
Speaker 1: you're curious, is the longest of Shakespeare's plays by number
Speaker 1: of words and by running time. If they're doing the
Speaker 1: whole darn thing, it has thirty seven words. So at
Speaker 1: twelve words per minute, it would take a monkey about
Speaker 1: forty two point four hours to type out the whole thing.
Speaker 1: But to replicate all of Shakespeare's plays and not as sonnets,
Speaker 1: I didn't include the sonnets. But if you were to
Speaker 1: replicate all of Shakespeare's plays, it would take about forty
Speaker 1: days of typing at twelve words per minute. Uh so
Speaker 1: now we know, right, Um, if you remove the chance part,
Speaker 1: we got chance in there. We still that's still a mystery,
Speaker 1: but it's it's still it's still like like certainly not
Speaker 1: an infinite amount of time. No, that's a pretty I mean, yeah,
Speaker 1: a month and a half right now, we do still
Speaker 1: need to add more monkeys to Joe's point in order
Speaker 1: to answer the other question. Now. They also pointed out
Speaker 1: that they were not using any completion algorithms. The kind
Speaker 1: of stuff that you might find in smartphones or some
Speaker 1: computer programs, where you start type being a word and
Speaker 1: it tries to guess what word you intend based upon
Speaker 1: context and your frequency of using certain words, and it's
Speaker 1: always wrong. It's frequently wrong, not necessarily. I actually had
Speaker 1: autocomplete back before I started using swipe text, which is
Speaker 1: just another exercise of futility that I apparently am determined
Speaker 1: to continue to pursue. Um. When I was typing in
Speaker 1: letter by letter, I noticed that autocomplete was more right
Speaker 1: than wrong. But when it was wrong, it was hilariously wrong. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and often in a way that makes you feel bad
Speaker 1: about yourself or or it makes you feel weird about
Speaker 1: who ever programmed that algorithm, because you're like, why would
Speaker 1: they ever think I would use that word? Um? Oh,
Speaker 1: I assume it's being like tailored to you. Right, it
Speaker 1: is paying attention to your typing patterns well, and is
Speaker 1: it not? It depends, right. Sometimes it's simply an algorithm
Speaker 1: that just looks at the letters that you have typed
Speaker 1: in so far, looks for words that have that sequence
Speaker 1: of letters, and sometimes even can context within the sentence. Right,
Speaker 1: So if if the letter the words leading up to
Speaker 1: the word you are typing. If it would make sense
Speaker 1: for you to say, like a, did I what's a
Speaker 1: good one? Um? Did I leave the refrigerator door open?
Speaker 1: And you're like r e u F. It might say, well,
Speaker 1: it's probably refrigerator. Did I leave the It's either refrigerator
Speaker 1: or it's referee. They've either left something in the fridge
Speaker 1: or they've left a baseball game. I'm gonna take a
Speaker 1: guess that this guy, who has never cared about sports ball,
Speaker 1: I's talking about a fridge. Um. So it depends there's
Speaker 1: some there's some typing in Uh, I don't know what
Speaker 1: Oxford I in and it says, did you mean Tim Tebow?
Speaker 1: It mind? Does that to me? Okay, well, that that
Speaker 1: specific example. I was about to say, that's a very
Speaker 1: expecific example on very odd but at any rate, they
Speaker 1: did not use any completion algorithms this. However, they said
Speaker 1: that that could potentially be something that to be included
Speaker 1: in future implementations that could help speed up communication, as
Speaker 1: long as it could be implemented in a way that
Speaker 1: again did not increase frustration. If it's one of those
Speaker 1: things where you know you you start searching the internet,
Speaker 1: for all the the unintentionally hilarious auto complete or autocorrect
Speaker 1: mistakes like, yeah, it's funny and a meme. But if
Speaker 1: you're if you're someone for whom this is the only
Speaker 1: way you can really communicate with others, it would be
Speaker 1: incredibly awful. It would just be so frustrating. So, um
Speaker 1: it's it's something that may and be incorporated into future implementations,
Speaker 1: but as of right now, it is not part of
Speaker 1: their their approach. Um Now, a lot of different uh,
Speaker 1: research facilities have been looking into this, not just Stanford, right, Uh,
Speaker 1: I mean there's there have been several research facilities around
Speaker 1: the world, and there's some pretty um what's a good
Speaker 1: word to put it, enthusiastic, but shadowy organizations that have
Speaker 1: interests in this. So okay, here's the part where we
Speaker 1: talk about a creepy thing that dark has been doing.
Speaker 1: Um So, another barrier to this technology going mainstream is
Speaker 1: the inherent danger in drilling a hole in someone's skull
Speaker 1: and and implanting stuff in your brain. That's that's not
Speaker 1: a good Tuesday for anybody, right, um so so So,
Speaker 1: DARPA has been funding the development of a new medical
Speaker 1: technology that they're calling a stent trode. Stent trode, Yes,
Speaker 1: stent trode like a stint an electrode. Yeah, yeah yeah.
Speaker 1: And with this no skull holes are required or no
Speaker 1: new ones anyway, keep the ones that you already have. Um.
Speaker 1: But but the the electrode. You take a stent and
Speaker 1: you and you go in through a blood vessel in
Speaker 1: the next to read the electrode up into the brain
Speaker 1: and then you can monitor electrical signals happening in neurons nearby.
Speaker 1: And I had the exact same reaction that Joe just
Speaker 1: had when I was reading about this. That's creepy. There's
Speaker 1: someone else who has a very similar idea that we'll
Speaker 1: talk about in just a minute. But I think it's
Speaker 1: probably the same general technological approach that you're talking about.
Speaker 1: It's just that's not the way I read it when
Speaker 1: I was looking into it. But it makes way more
Speaker 1: sense the way you're describing it. I mean, one thing
Speaker 1: we should emphasize again is that there are also people
Speaker 1: talking about non invasive methods and and using noninvasive methods
Speaker 1: of reading the brain. They just lack precision and power,
Speaker 1: or in some cases they're they're plenty precise, and there
Speaker 1: are plenty powerful, but they require you to be inside
Speaker 1: an m R I machine. Right, Yeah, yeah, we haven't
Speaker 1: mentioned that part yet. Uh. Yes, some of you might
Speaker 1: have been thinking earlier in this episode when we were
Speaker 1: talking about how surgery is necessary because of the preciseness
Speaker 1: imprecisity of of other methods of reading brain signals. You're thinking, oh,
Speaker 1: m R I. M r s are really great at
Speaker 1: reading brain signals, but they also require you to lay
Speaker 1: perfectly still in a very giant, very expensive, very noisy machine,
Speaker 1: um for the entirety of the time that you were
Speaker 1: using them. Therefore, if you're trying to do it to
Speaker 1: like talk to somebody or you know, eat food, that's
Speaker 1: not as practical. That's a pretty good premise for a
Speaker 1: future sci fi scenario where people are walking around with
Speaker 1: m R I hats like they've got a they've got
Speaker 1: a giant machine propped on their shoulders. They've got really
Speaker 1: powerful bodies from walking around with these things. I guess
Speaker 1: the supervillain in this in this world would be Phero
Speaker 1: magnetic Man, because you don't want to have any of
Speaker 1: that near you. Um so so other other than Pharaoh
Speaker 1: magnetic Man. And uh and this lovely Mr I future.
Speaker 1: What else could the future possibly hold for brain computer
Speaker 1: interface type devices, y'all? So obviously, just getting a deeper
Speaker 1: understanding of the brain in general is going to be
Speaker 1: a huge help for multiple disciplines, not just creating better
Speaker 1: brain computer interfaces, but all sorts of things. Uh. And
Speaker 1: we have have stressed on this show multiple times how
Speaker 1: we are at just the very dawn of our understanding
Speaker 1: of the human brain. It is an incredibly complex oregon,
Speaker 1: and we only have an inkling of what is going
Speaker 1: on up there. We've got a pretty good grasp of
Speaker 1: some basics, but when it gets down to the particulars,
Speaker 1: it gets really complicated. Uh. Well, we're also going to
Speaker 1: see improvements in the machine learning side, as computers get
Speaker 1: better and better at interpreting what our signals mean. Similar
Speaker 1: to what we saw with the Stanford experiment, I would
Speaker 1: imagine that we would see that words per minute start
Speaker 1: to climb a little more each time we get a
Speaker 1: little bit better at this. Ah, the surgical procedure thing,
Speaker 1: that's obviously a huge barrier. Obviously, I mean people who
Speaker 1: are are going this, uh, they often are are people
Speaker 1: who feel like they have really no other alternative. And
Speaker 1: that is something that they want for themselves. And uh yeah,
Speaker 1: like like having a whole drilled in your skull will
Speaker 1: lead to a better quality of life kind of situations,
Speaker 1: which which of course I'm not making light of it,
Speaker 1: like like that's that's a very real reality for for
Speaker 1: for a good number of people. And this kind of
Speaker 1: this kind of volunteer research has has been tremendous. Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: there's some really inspiring videos about people who have undergone
Speaker 1: procedures like this and when you see the change in
Speaker 1: their behaviors after the procedure is done. I mean, if
Speaker 1: you're any sort of empathetic person like me, you will
Speaker 1: find yourself holding back tears at your desk. Yeah, there's
Speaker 1: a video I think from of of a woman using
Speaker 1: the brain Gate robotic arm technology to to serve herself
Speaker 1: coffee for the first time in years. And it's and
Speaker 1: it's and it sounds like very simple things. The one
Speaker 1: I saw, I'm gonna get a all Tier two Joe's like,
Speaker 1: good Greek guys, come on, I want to get out
Speaker 1: of here. The one I saw it was a guy
Speaker 1: who um had suffered an accident, was paralyzed from the
Speaker 1: neck down and under he underwent uh surgical procedure, and
Speaker 1: in that case it was also to control a robotic arm.
Speaker 1: He did the whole training procedure I talked about. In fact,
Speaker 1: the video showed the example I gave about moving a
Speaker 1: ball over another ball with you know, doing that over
Speaker 1: and over again. And that was just to train the
Speaker 1: brain so that when the the they hooked him up
Speaker 1: to the robotic arm, which was you know, just completely
Speaker 1: separate from him, that um that it would the robotic
Speaker 1: arm would would follow general instructions based upon that training sequence.
Speaker 1: He uh then the first time they hooked him up,
Speaker 1: was able to uh reach out and take his girlfriend's hand,
Speaker 1: and that killed me. He's like, I was able to
Speaker 1: hold my girlfriend's hand for the first time in years
Speaker 1: because of this. And I was like, I'm like, I'm done.
Speaker 1: I'm done. I need a quiet room. Gonna go book
Speaker 1: the quiet room. Like when you hear the muffled snuffling,
Speaker 1: that's me. So but this, this is this is obviously
Speaker 1: a very dramatic procedure, something that people cannot take lightly.
Speaker 1: The there's so many possible complications, including the complication of infection.
Speaker 1: Anytime you have any sort of transcranial implant. You know,
Speaker 1: in general, having anything that protrudes from the body outward,
Speaker 1: you know that that that breaks that skin barrier, that
Speaker 1: is that is obviously a huge risk factor. So you've
Speaker 1: got to be super super careful. Um, non invasive approaches
Speaker 1: are problematic, like we said, but perhaps we will see
Speaker 1: advances in that technology to make them more accurate, more precise,
Speaker 1: so that if youwer, invasive surgeries have to be performed.
Speaker 1: But that's a tall order. I mean, how do you
Speaker 1: do that. We don't have the answer to that question yet.
Speaker 1: Doesn't mean that we won't in the future, but right now,
Speaker 1: it's just not a practical approach. Um, there's the possibility
Speaker 1: of using this technology. We could do things beyond just
Speaker 1: controlling robotic arms and cursors. And I don't mean to
Speaker 1: diminish those accomplishments either, they are amazing. But we might
Speaker 1: see an approach where exoskeleton suits could be uh come
Speaker 1: into the pictures, where where people are actually able to
Speaker 1: use their brains to control things like robotic legs and
Speaker 1: regain movement, you know, actual mobility. Um, beyond you know,
Speaker 1: laying in a bed and controlling something. They might actually
Speaker 1: be able to move around with the assistance of technology,
Speaker 1: which is again phenomenal that this is giving independence to
Speaker 1: people who previously you would have said they're going to
Speaker 1: be dependent upon caregivers for as long as they are alive.
Speaker 1: Um and it's again a phenomenal kind of thing to
Speaker 1: think about. It's further off in the future. We're not
Speaker 1: anywhere close to where someone could actually um have control
Speaker 1: of an exo skeleton suit in that manner, but it's
Speaker 1: a goal to reach for. And then there's Elon Musk's idea,
Speaker 1: which this is the one I was saying, probably similar
Speaker 1: to what you were talking about with the stint uh
Speaker 1: electrode the stint trode um. He also I wrote it's
Speaker 1: Elon Musk and the Neural Lace, which sounds a lot
Speaker 1: like a J. K. Rowling novel Harry Potter and the
Speaker 1: Sorcerer's Stone. Elon Musk and the Neural Lace um. So.
Speaker 1: Musk is of course famous for being a co founder
Speaker 1: for Tesla and for SpaceX UM and he proposed an
Speaker 1: implanable computer technology that would enhance human intelligence. So this
Speaker 1: is more about what we were talking about at the
Speaker 1: top of the show, the idea of instead of using
Speaker 1: your brain necessarily to control some other outward computer. This
Speaker 1: would be like a two way communication device where you're
Speaker 1: not just sending signals out, You're you're accepting signals as
Speaker 1: they come in. And the term neural lace comes from
Speaker 1: a novelist named Ian M. Banks Favorites on stuff to
Speaker 1: blow your mind. Interesting. I have not read any of
Speaker 1: Banks's work, so I am. I was unfamiliar with his
Speaker 1: work until I read this that, and he writes a
Speaker 1: lot of science fiction that's uh full of ideas that
Speaker 1: are worth talking about. Interesting. I'll have to I'll definitely
Speaker 1: have to look into it. Then. Um, so this would
Speaker 1: come in the form these these electrodes would come in
Speaker 1: the form of flexible circuits that would be injected into
Speaker 1: the bloodstream very similar to what Lauren was talking about,
Speaker 1: through the neck and make their way up to the brain.
Speaker 1: And then you bypass the need for invasive surgery. Um.
Speaker 1: Assuming that you would be able to send a signal
Speaker 1: out from the brain through the skull, that could be
Speaker 1: you know, interact with whatever infrastructure you have around you. Right,
Speaker 1: It's not like you could just magically control things with
Speaker 1: your brain. You still have to have that infrastructure that's
Speaker 1: designed to work with that her face. But his thought
Speaker 1: is this is a way for human beings to get
Speaker 1: ahead of that problem of h yeah, head and shoulders
Speaker 1: above the problem of super intelligent artificial intelligence. Like his
Speaker 1: his fear and muss I hope I'm not projecting too
Speaker 1: much based upon my interpretation, But to me, it seems
Speaker 1: that Musk's fear is that if we continue down the
Speaker 1: road of developing artificial intelligence, sooner or later we will
Speaker 1: receive we get to a point where we have super
Speaker 1: human artificial intelligence, and then we will become nothing more
Speaker 1: than pets to the AI. And that if we were
Speaker 1: instead to incorporate technology so that AI becomes an inherent
Speaker 1: component of humanity, that our intelligence is boosted by artificial
Speaker 1: intelligence that's incorporated directly onto our brains, everything's fine, do
Speaker 1: super math, Yes, we will the super intelligent to us,
Speaker 1: the super intelligent AI will be us. Although I mean
Speaker 1: I would I would argue, well, what stops the super
Speaker 1: intelligent AI from tweaking the technology so that we all
Speaker 1: just become its meat puppets? But who's who am I
Speaker 1: to ask these questions? Yeah? That's interesting, But also I'm thinking, okay,
Speaker 1: so it's better to first achieve super intelligence in uh
Speaker 1: in on a substrate that is full of greed and
Speaker 1: lust and revenge. Yeah, I also I also started thinking.
Speaker 1: I also started thinking like, wouldn't computers maybe be a
Speaker 1: better place to try it? I also think I also
Speaker 1: started thinking about how the implications of this and immediately
Speaker 1: started to feel kind of sick to my stomach because
Speaker 1: he's talking about an interface where you would be able
Speaker 1: to do things like excess Google without needing to touch
Speaker 1: a computer. Right that you just think it, and you
Speaker 1: can access it, and you can get the information, and
Speaker 1: you've got it. It does not take a great leap
Speaker 1: from that idea to go to the idea of essentially
Speaker 1: the idea of telepathic communication. What what amounts to uh
Speaker 1: technological telepathy where objecting ads into your brain? No, no, no,
Speaker 1: I'm not thinking about ads. I'm thinking YouTube comments. I'm
Speaker 1: thinking harassment, not being able to turn that off? Right?
Speaker 1: Just imagine or so let's say, guys, I know that
Speaker 1: you're familiar. The people in this room are familiar with
Speaker 1: the idea of how sometimes certain sections of the Internet
Speaker 1: can get upset about something and their response is to
Speaker 1: attack whatever the target is relentlessly. Imagine that's happening, but
Speaker 1: with essentially the technological equivalent to telepathy, that a person
Speaker 1: has appeared to have done a wrong in some form,
Speaker 1: whether they have or not is immaterial, because that's not
Speaker 1: how the Internet works. The Internet doesn't really care if
Speaker 1: the person is truly guilty. You were in a movie
Speaker 1: I didn't like, so yeah, exactly really drive you crazy? Yeah? That,
Speaker 1: And I mean I know that I'm going like super
Speaker 1: twilight Zone with this idea, but but I mean I
Speaker 1: see some potential drawbacks to solution. That's what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: I would want these things to have, yes, like off switch,
Speaker 1: like a mute switch. Yeah, like where you're like you're blocked,
Speaker 1: You're blocked, you're blocked, You're blocked, everyone is blocked. I'm
Speaker 1: just alone with my thoughts. Going to get some pancakes, yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: except you can't order because you've turned off the signal
Speaker 1: and they're like, I don't know what you want. I'm like,
Speaker 1: I'm I am pointing to the picture. I am saying
Speaker 1: the word pancakes isn't yeah, but are if you want
Speaker 1: to order, you've gotta think pancakes. That's just the way.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, it's chip and pin and telepathy. Those are
Speaker 1: the technologies that way depend on. I don't know. I mean,
Speaker 1: I think as long as restaurants accept cash, they'll accept words.
Speaker 1: Cash is meaningless in the in the the technological telepathic future,
Speaker 1: it's just not gonna happen. I was assuming that if
Speaker 1: you're that done with humanity, you're making your own pancakes.
Speaker 1: You've not left your home, You're in your pajamas, your
Speaker 1: cat is judging you, and you're making your own pancakes.
Speaker 1: That's that's pretty much now. I mean, I don't have
Speaker 1: a cat, but if I did have a cat, I
Speaker 1: know it would be judging me. Yes, the incredible future
Speaker 1: kind of like now, so interesting ideas, I don't I mean, obviously,
Speaker 1: these are all things that would be pretty far away.
Speaker 1: Even developing the technology where you would be able to
Speaker 1: physically overlay those stent troads without invasive surgery, you still
Speaker 1: have enormous barriers. Like it's one thing to put the
Speaker 1: to physically put the electrodes on the surface of the brain.
Speaker 1: It's a totally different thing to allow the brain to
Speaker 1: actually access and receive information from an outside source wirelessly
Speaker 1: just beamed in. It's not like we have a way
Speaker 1: of doing that, right, Sure, and I should also put
Speaker 1: in if I if I didn't mention explicitly that that
Speaker 1: that DARPA research project was was being done in cheap
Speaker 1: We're we're not quite human level at that one yet. Yeah,
Speaker 1: telepathic sheep, that's actually scarier. So many different science fiction
Speaker 1: novels are just coming to my mind as we go
Speaker 1: through this, But that kind of wraps up where we
Speaker 1: are today the update we wanted to give. Specifically, I
Speaker 1: am very eager to see how this technology progresses because
Speaker 1: its capacity to help people who are otherwise in in
Speaker 1: very uh difficult situations, I think is phenomenal. Yeah, even
Speaker 1: in the three years since we did that first uh
Speaker 1: podcast episode about these types of projects, it's it's technology
Speaker 1: has advanced so much. It's been amazing. It's it's pretty
Speaker 1: it's pretty inspiring, honestly when you when you start looking
Speaker 1: into these stories. And guys, if you have any suggestions
Speaker 1: for future episodes, or you've got any questions, please send
Speaker 1: them our away our email addresses FW thinking at how
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com, or you can drop us a
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Speaker 1: can leave us a message. We are f w Thinking
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Speaker 1: we will talk to you again Willison. For more on
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