Neuralink and the Brain’s Magical Future by Tim Urban
Elon Musk’s new company, Neuralink, is aiming to redefine what future humans will be. In order to fully understand the company’s mission, one must zoom both way, way in and way, way out on the technical and existential challenges facing us, as well as our current world and far future.
This is a complex and bold undertaking, and requires one to “wipe their brain clean” in order to properly understand it.
The layers of the brain
The brain is surrounded by three layers of membrane: the dura mater (“hard mother”), the arachnoid mater (“spider mother”) and the pia mater (“soft mother”).
The dura provides pain sensitivity, the arachnoid layer stabilizes the brain in position and acts as a shock absorber, and the pia is fused with the brain’s surface and is embedded with blood vessels.
The state of our planet
An alien explorer visits three planets orbiting a star, one each from 10 million BC, 50,000 BC, and 2017 AD. The third planet shows signs of intelligent life, but in fact the first and second planets have equally intelligent life.
This is because humanity has evolved into a superintelligent Colossus, which has built civilization and is now pushing the boundaries of technology and space exploration.
This century may be the one where Earth life makes the leap from the Single-Planetary Era to the Multi-Planetary Era, and humanity is on the verge of multiple tipping points which will lead to unimaginable change.
Increase your knowledge
Experiments with rats show that it is possible to boost the speed of learning by priming neurons for long-term connections. Ramez and the author discuss four layers of capabilities for accessing information in the cloud, from simply appearing in the mind’s eye, to recalling and downloading info seamlessly as if it were always there.
Eventually, the fourth layer could lead to deeply understanding complex topics like Moby Dick, but it may take a long time to achieve.
Parts of the brain
The brain can be divided into three parts: the Reptilian Brain (brainstem and cerebellum), the Paleo-Mammalian Brain (limbic system), and the Neo-Mammalian Brain (cerebral cortex).
The Reptilian Brain is responsible for involuntary functions such as heart rate, breathing and blood pressure, as well as vomiting when it thinks you have been poisoned. The Limbic System is responsible for emotions and instinctive behaviors such as eating, drinking, and sex.
The Cortex is responsible for language, movement, thinking, and sensory processing.
The cerebral cortex is a highly developed part of the brain found in mammals. It is divided into four lobes: frontal, parietal, temporal, and occipital. The frontal lobe is responsible for personality, executive function, and movement control, while the parietal lobe controls sense of touch. The temporal lobe is responsible for memory and auditory processing, and the occipital lobe is in charge of vision.
The cortex is only two millimeters thick and is composed of wiring, with a homunculus diagram illustrating the amount of cortex dedicated to each body part.
Brain Machine Interface
Brain-machine interfaces are a subset of neural engineering and biotechnology, and their purpose is to allow humans to communicate with machines in a more efficient way. Right now, the tech world is daunted by the task of accessing the brain, which is why ailments related to the brain are still largely unresolved.
The two main questions researchers are trying to answer are how to get the right information out of the brain, and how to send the right information into it. This can be done by stimulating neurons and capturing the brain’s output, which are things that already happen naturally. If successful, this endeavor could lead to a greater understanding of the brain and improved quality of life.
The Premise
600 million years ago, the jellyfish was the first animal to develop a nervous system which allowed it to collect important information from its environment.
Later, the flatworm developed the world’s first central nervous system, with a brain in its head as the ‘boss.’ As time passed, mammals developed a limbic system to deal with complex feelings. Then the neocortex developed, giving humans the ability to think complex thoughts, reason through decisions and make long-term plans. This eventually led to the invention of language and the ability to share information and knowledge between humans.
Language enabled humans to share hard-earned lessons through trial and error, allowing collective intelligence to build up over generations.
This led to advances in technology such as the bow and arrow, animal domestication, and farming, which allowed humans to settle into permanent locations and form cities. Writing was developed to store collective knowledge, and the printing press allowed for faster and cheaper creation of books, making knowledge more widely available.
Communicating knowledge
Humans are able to share knowledge and learn more when they communicate, resulting in a higher percentage of learnings being passed down from generation to generation.
This allowed for the invention of complex technologies, such as farming and animal domestication, which led to tribes forming permanent settlements, the creation of cities and an overall higher quality of life.
The neocortex
The human neocortex had developed a way to share its complex thoughts with other humans through a symbolic language. This allowed humans to pass on lessons they had learned and knowledge they had gained, creating a shared tribal knowledge that could grow from generation to generation.
This allowed the tribe to benefit from the epiphanies of the smartest people in their past and present, leading to more efficient hunting and the accumulation of a tower of collective knowledge.
Beginning of a revolution
The brain-machine interface industry is the beginning of a revolution that will change everything. It is the next step in a trend that has been going on for a long time, starting with language and moving to printing, electricity, telephone, radio, television, and computers.
Now, people are in the early stages of a virtual and augmented reality revolution that will take the magic into their brains by way of a whole-brain interface, or a “wizard hat”.
Elon Musk calls it a “digital tertiary layer” and explains that people already have a digital tertiary layer through their phones, computers, and applications. He believes that the wizard hat will upgrade the interface between people and the digital world and make them digitally superhuman.
Elon Musk believes that humans are already digital superhuman and that the interface that connects us to the digital world needs to be upgraded. A whole brain interface would upgrade us from primitive, low-bandwidth to modern, high-bandwidth cyborgs, and would revolutionize how we communicate with each other and with computers.
Moran Cerf’s data shows that the communication methods humans currently use have a much lower bandwidth than our thinking, and that a brain-as-device would vastly improve this.
Thought communication
Thought communication is a concept where people can communicate ideas and thoughts without the use of words. Elon Musk believes this would be an effective way to collaborate and brainstorm, with the ability to do so even with computers.
There is a concern that this could lead to a hive mind, but experts believe it will actually enhance individual expression and customization.
Types of Brain Measurement Tools
Bandwidth is a major hurdle in the development of Brain-Machine Interfaces (BMIs). Currently, the maximum number of neurons that can be recorded at once is a couple hundred, but a million is needed to create a wide range of useful BMIs.
Moore’s Law suggests that this could be achieved by the end of this century, but implantation is another major hurdle. Invasive brain surgery is expensive and limited, so a non-invasive solution is needed. In addition, the device must be biocompatible, wireless, and powerful enough to send and receive data.
Finally, a breakthrough in machine learning is needed to decode the code of millions of simultaneously chattering neurons.
Neurons
Neurons in the brain are similar to transistors in that they both transmit information in 1’s and 0’s. However, they are constantly changing, allowing neuroplasticity to occur in order to adapt to the external environment.
This is especially true for babies, whose brains are the most neuroplastic of all. Neuroplasticity allows humans to form new habits and break old ones. The brain is composed of around 100 billion neurons, with 15-20 billion of those in the cortex and the rest in the animal parts of the brain.
Emotional communication
Emotions are the quintessential example of a concept that words are poorly-equipped to accurately describe. If ten people say, “I’m sad,” it actually means ten different things. In the Wizard Era, we’ll probably learn pretty quickly that the specific emotions people feel are as unique to people as their appearance or sense of humor.
This could work as communication—when one person communicates just what they’re feeling, the other person would be able to access the feeling in their own emotional centers.
Obvious implications for a future of heightened empathy. But emotional communication could also be used for things like entertainment, where a movie, say, could also project out to the audience—directly into their limbic systems—certain feelings it wants the audience to feel as they watch.
This is already what the film score does—another hack—and now it could be done directly.
Sensory Communication
In the future, sensory communication will be much more advanced than it is now. With a “wizard hat” we will be able to access sensory input and output wirelessly. This will enable us to do many things like share experiences with others, record memories, or even play virtual reality games.
The possibilities are endless and the technology could even be used in the NFL to help prevent injuries.
The invention of the press
Gutenberg’s press marked a major advancement in humanity’s ability to spread information. Over the centuries, printing technology improved, allowing books to become more affordable and literacy rates to rise.
Mass communication enabled knowledge to spread across the globe and bring humanity together as one collective organism, the Human Colossus.
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