Re: Fully Automated Combat Robots Pt. 2
Posted: Mon 03 Jul 2017, 13:15:57
DARPA's Ex-Leader's Speculative Dream of Mind-Melding Empathy
Duke Neuroscientist: Brain Augmentation Will Allow Us to Make a New Kind of Human
In a presentation at the Aspen Ideas Festival, which is co-hosted by the Aspen Institute and The Atlantic, DARPA's Arati Prabhakar had just shown a video from University of Utah research in which a soldier who’d lost his arms “felt” a virtual door through neural stimulation.
She cautioned that the research was very new and “not yet a robust capability, but even at this stage, we can start to see that there will be some mind-bending questions about how we use these technologies in the future.” Prabhakar noted that from a technological point of view:
... “there’s not much distance from restoration to enhancement.”
She asked the audience:“Do you think the future we’re going to live in a society where neuro-enhancements will be a privilege? Will they be a right? Might they be a mandate? Or maybe the whole idea is gonna creep us out so much that we won’t want anything to do with it.”
“But imagine if you could learn a new language as fast as a 6-year-old,” she continued. “Or imagine if you could experience a whole new palette of colors or a fourth physical dimension in space.”
“Imagine if we could connect among ourselves in new and deeper ways ... She did not expound on the image, but one imagines she’s thinking about a kind of direct brain-to-brain interface.
DARPA has, after all, invested a lot in direct electronic brain interfaces. In one research program, they’re working on “intuitive” neural interfaces for controlling prosthetic limbs. In another, they’re creating “an implantable neural interface able to provide advanced signal resolution and data-transfer bandwidth between the brain and electronics.” The goal there is to create a translator between “the electrochemical language used by neurons in the brain and the ones and zeroes that constitute the language of information technology.”
And once you’ve got intuitive neural controls and a translator that lets you send brain signals into computers and back again, it does not seem an incredible leap to hook two (or … a million?) humans up together.
Let the Experimentation begin ...
Duke Neuroscientist: Brain Augmentation Will Allow Us to Make a New Kind of Human
Duke University neuroscientist Mikhail Lebedev, works on brain-machine interfaces (BMIs) and has recently won a $100,000 prize for his work in brain augmentation.
...Will brain augmentation enable us to interface with artificial intelligence (AI)? Lebedev thinks that’s realistic, but that interfacing with AI using augmented reality (AR) and our senses — which are already well-understood, unlike the “code” of the brain — is going to come first. This way we can enhance our own limited capabilities with AI as we learn more about the inner workings of the human brain.
When it comes to augmenting brain function, almost anything is potentially possible. Sensors can be added to the brain, interacting with sensory functions. Lebedev cites adding a sensor of electromagnetic fields or visual sensors around the head’s perimeter for panoramic vision as examples.“When you look at 1G being for voice, for your ears. And 3G through 5G are data for your eyes, for a vision service. perhaps 6G will go beyond the head mounted displays to introduce direct neural interface”