Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

If you are a person, you will die.

This fact may sound sad, but the movie wandering the Earth 2 offers another possibility from the beginning-mad scientists experiment with digital life, uploading mental consciousness to the computer by connecting electrodes to the brain, so that people can live forever.

The Indian scientist at the beginning of the film seems mentally unstable, but his idea of leaving people in the world digitally is really pragmatic.

For one thing, digitization removes the natural limitations of the physical body-cells age and organs fail. Digital immortality is undoubtedly a more reliable way of immortality.

Second, thought upload, also known as whole brain simulation (WBE,Whole Brain Emulation), maps a person's thoughts, personality, emotions and memories to other carriers, such as computers, robots and even clones. It is a recurring theme in science fiction, and it is a convincing concept.

Digital immortality, which sounds fantastic, is a trick that even telecom fraudsters disdain to use, but the technology may be closer than we think.

With regard to digital immortality, Liu Cixin, the original author, mentioned in a recent interview that digital immortality requires the joint progress of information technology and brain science, in which information technology advances rapidly while brain science progresses slowly. If the information in the brain cannot be taken out, it is impossible to achieve immortality.

From this point of view, the key evidence of whether digital immortality can be realized is the progress of brain science.

To further split the problem, there are two forms of digital immortality: one-way and two-way, and the processes are different.

Two-way immortality means that digital avatars can also interact and respond to people, just like in wandering Earth 2, where Tuya's thoughts are transferred to a digital life card, with the blessing of a powerful quantum computer. can interact with people and things that are happening in the outside world.

One-way immortality means that thoughts are uploaded to abiotic media, such as chips and computers, in the form of passive "read-only".

It is not difficult to see that two-way immortality needs to complete a whole brain simulation process, such as thinking replication, thinking upload, thinking preservation, thinking transfer, and so on. Any link that falls off the chain may interrupt the reading of the digital avatar and lead to the failure of immortality. Therefore, a two-way interactive digital life like Tu Yaya is indeed a long way from reality.

And if we look at one-way immortality, we will find that the latest trend of brain-computer interface technology is allowing thinking to upload into the real world and become a ladder to uncover the mysteries of immortality.

The first step to climbing the ladder of immortality: give the brain a "signal tower" readers who love science fiction or follow science news may have heard the name "brain-computer interface". Elon Musk's brain-computer interface company, Neuralink, is probably the hottest company in the field. At the end of 2022, Musk showed a monkey typing with a brain-computer interface.

Neuroscience studies have also shown that electrodes and nanosensors can record neurons and create a complete map of the brain.

All in all, getting brain signals through BCI chips is the first step in mind upload, which is theoretically feasible.

The BCI brain-computer interface chip is equivalent to putting a "signal tower" in the brain, just like a cell phone base station, except that the signals received are electrical signals sent by brain neurons.

It can also be done through non-invasive methods, such as placing sensors and electrodes directly on the head, which can be easily placed and removed. But just like the cell phone signal, the closer the base station is to the phone, the stronger the signal, the non-invasive BCI will be blocked by the skull, and the electrical signal obtained is vague and imprecise. The signals sent by the brain can not be captured by the cursor, robotic arm, etc., so they cannot be controlled freely.

Of course, Musk Neuralink's idea of "symbiosis between the human brain and artificial intelligence" is too advanced. The next step in the brain-computer interface may be to let some people become "brain-controlled" first.

The second step in climbing the ladder of immortality: let some people learn "brain control" first. in fact, the earliest research angle of brain-computer interface is military. The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) began working on BCI in 1970, funded by the National Science Foundation and later awarded a contract with the Defense Advanced Research projects Agency (DARPA). Rely on brain control to remote control helicopters, parsing passwords and other operations, belong to the high end of the atmosphere, far away from the lives of ordinary people, these "science and technology military ghost stories", we do not carry out too much.

At present, there are two main categories that ordinary people can quickly benefit from brain-computer interfaces:

The first kind of people-patients.

We know that some diseases can cause some nerves to be destroyed and completely disabled, thus hindering many normal life functions, such as paralysis caused by nerve damage, unable to move the patient's arms or legs, Alzheimer's disease, epilepsy and other diseases. the nerve endings of the hands are uncontrollable, tremble violently and life is unable to take care of themselves. These situations have brought endless pain and suffering to patients and their families. Brain-computer interface, as an advanced form of neural communication, can help patients recover some functions, such as brain-controlled wheelchair, brain-controlled robotic arm, brain-controlled keyboard and so on.

In recent years, some new changes have begun to take place in the medical application of brain-computer interface: from inefficiency to high efficiency.

In the past, we thought that patients using BCI to control complex machinery is very physically exhausting, and the efficiency is very slow, but the accuracy, accuracy and computing speed of the technology are all improving, and brain control is no longer a piece of novelty news.

In 2017, Peter Scott was diagnosed with ALS and had to undergo a total laryngectomy, unable to make his own voice. So before the operation, he specially recorded 15 hours of audio corpus and trained with AI. After the operation, he collected brain waves through the brain-computer interface, AI learned his expression habits, predicted what the next word would enter through context awareness, and then spoke it with synthetic speech, which greatly improved the output efficiency and reduced the physical burden of patients.

From intrusive to non-invasive. The application of brain control in professional medical treatment has been realized by invasive BCI for a long time. However, in recent years, non-invasive BCI has also begun to show some effect in medical scenarios, which will be of great help to improve the lives of more patients, after all, invasive surgery is more risky and expensive.

Several tetraplegic patients successfully operated a brain-controlled wheelchair and passed through a room full of disorders, according to a new study published in the journal iScience in 2022. This is the first time that a brain-controlled wheelchair has been implemented through a non-invasive BCI.

Another kind of people-- geeks.

The acquisition signal of non-invasive brain-computer interface is relatively rough and can not be operated accurately. As a wearable device, simple interaction and entertainment can be done. Futurists or geeks play the role of being the first to eat crabs in new things such as brain-controlled games and brain-controlled meta-universe.

South Korea's Looxid Labs sneaks brainwave sensors into VR glasses to collect users' emotional data to determine their emotional state when watching ads, thus supporting a better advertising strategy.

Neurable has developed the world's first brain-controlled VR game, which allows players to drive cars remotely while sitting in front of a computer wearing EEG headphones. In 2021, the company introduced Enten headphones, which use smart technology to detect attention and help users develop the habit of concentration. It sounds like a good fit for student education scenarios.

NextMind launched NextMind Dev Kit, a wearable device that records brain electrical activity on CES 2020, an updated version of non-invasive eye movement tracking software, which was also acquired by Snap in 2022.

China also has a group of forerunners, such as Dharma Institute, Runway Research Institute, iFLYTEK, Hanwang Science and Technology, to carry out research in the fields of brain-computer interface and artificial intelligence.

As Hawking said before his death, the future of communication is the brain-computer interface, which can use a variety of tools of the new technological revolution to improve human life.

The potential of the brain-computer interface may not be the distant immortality, but act as a bridge between the human brain and external devices such as smartphones, headphones and VR, so that some people can hear the wind again, post a Weibo message and pour themselves a glass of water.

This may be a metaphor. Only by paying attention to people's happiness and comfort at this moment can we finally open the door to eternal life. As Liu Cixin once said: give time to civilization, not to civilization.

The third step in climbing the ladder of immortality: making brain-computer interfaces a little easier to use, so what can the technology industry do to make brain-computer interfaces better serve people today?

At present, there are three directions to look forward to:

1. Material evolution.

In the past, intrusive brain-computer interfaces used rigid devices, such as metal probes and large BCI chips, which could cause damage to sophisticated brain tissue, and most people stayed away.

In 2015, the MIT team used an electrode to measure brain dopamine levels for only one day, and the brain produced scar tissue because it was too large.

However, now invasive BCI begins to use new technologies such as flexible materials and thin film devices, with continuous progress in manufacturing methods, great improvement in biocompatibility, reduction in size, durability and stretchability. Let invasive BCI reduce trauma, make it more stable in vivo, and even achieve non-invasive neuroregulation.

A team at the University of California, Berkeley, for example, created a sand-sized implantable sensor called neurodust, a technology that was also absorbed by Musk's Neuralink.

The newly developed 10-micron probe sensor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology tested the reliability of each animal's brain for 393 days without interrupting work or finding scar tissue in the brain.

These breakthroughs mean that intrusive BCI is becoming more and more secure.

2.AI enhancement.

For a long time, BCI research has been in the twists and turns of "progress today, backlash tomorrow." AI, which focuses on deep learning, has become popular in 2016, and it has been infiltrated into the field of brain-computer interface. Artificial intelligence algorithms and computing power can help BCI system improve performance. The next generation of brain-computer interface based on AI enhancement has attracted more and more attention.

For example, the depth neural network (DNN) is used to extract features from brain signals and decode the brain state, so as to accurately evaluate people's psychology and cognition. Human consciousness activity signal is high-dimensional and complex. An emotion recognition transfer model based on electroencephalogram (EEG) is constructed through neural network to gain insight into psychological activities.

In addition, people's psychological activities will be reflected in a variety of dimensional data, such as skin response, facial expression, eye movement, body temperature changes and so on. These huge data of different dimensions need to be classified, processed and analyzed comprehensively, which is a very huge work. With the addition of AI, dealing with multimodal data will become more efficient, which is also an important research direction in the field of BCI.

The shift of scientific research paradigm driven by AI will also bring about a subversive change to the highly sophisticated technology of brain-computer interface.

3. Commercial products accelerate innovation.

In the past, it was generally believed that the return on investment of invasive BCI was not high, and the subjects took the risk of brain implantation, but scientists' understanding of the complex operation mechanism of tens of billions of neurons in the brain was very limited, and the brain-computer interface could not greatly improve the quality of life of the subjects, mostly in laboratory or clinical trials.

However, with the gradual development of technology, brain-computer interface has shown strong technical practicability, and people's understanding of the concept of "brain-computer interface" has become more mature and rational. For example, cochlear implant is a brain-computer interface that helps deaf people find their hearing. At present, it has been deeply rooted in the hearts of the people and widely used.

McKinsey The BioRevolution Report estimates that the global brain-computer interface industry will generate $70 billion to $200 billion in economic value over the next 10 to 20 years. It can be expected that whether it is medical applications or daily wearable devices, more and more organizations will join the BCI field to accelerate the iteration of product innovation and optimization, and brain-computer interface products will become more and more user-friendly and inclusive.

Perhaps in the near future, patients will use brain signals to control robotic arms, eat and dress themselves, and communicate freely with the outside world, which will be as popular as cochlear implants and will no longer be the privilege of a few people.

Ray Kurzweil, founder of Singularity University, once gave a way to digital immortality that most people can do in Dream Journey: living long enough to live forever-you need to live well and limit the effects of aging and disease as much as possible.

As long as we live long enough, maybe we can wait until the day when digital immortality becomes a reality.

The uncharted territory above the immortal ladder has said so many real things that the future of the brain-computer interface seems to be very bright and smooth.

However, the technology industry has never been just technology itself. With regard to the ethical and moral challenges of brain-computer interface, supporting the universal commercial industrial chain system, mature business model and so on, it still needs a long period of repetition, exploration and game.

I have to say that the idea of digital immortality raises a lot of issues worthy of serious consideration. To what extent can people retain themselves after implanting certain devices?

Does technology delay aging or even death, exacerbate social, economic and class differences?

How will a society operate if it has both living human beings and immortal digital life?

Liu Cixin once imagined such a scene in "time Migration." 1000 years later, human society has entered an "invisible era". Real people with bodies live in the physical world, but a large number of people choose digital immortality, not even the bodies of machines. They live in quantum chips and become quantum pulses.

In the digital world, people can really do whatever they want and create everything they want, which is more powerful than God. In wandering the Earth 2, Tu Yaya and Tu Hengyu won eternal life and lived happily together forever, and this ending comforted many viewers.

In short, compared with the troubled real world, the invisible world is as seductive as a drug. Is this the paradise or the end of all mankind? This is the realm of philosophers.

Of course, if we can never solve a series of technical challenges of brain-computer interface and even digital immortality, all the problems will be meaningless. In the field of technology at least, the curtain of immortality has been lifted.

This article comes from the official account of Wechat: brain polar body (ID:unity007), author: Tibetan fox

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