Brain Chips

I cannot close this chapter on human interaction with machines without touching on a subject that is at the pinnacle of computer hype. Some time ago, when I had just given a talk on the Information Revolution, a young man approached me and said, "What I really want is a brain implant so that I can move massive amounts of information rapidly and painlessly into and out of my head."

"You mean so that you can download and upload information without going through the slow eyeball, mouth, and ear interfaces?" I asked.

"Yes. Isn't that a great idea?" he replied.

"No. It's a lousy idea," I said, "unless you are talking about sensor or effector chips," and went on to explain.

If you cannot hear or see, sensory implants are a godsend. Thousands of people who have inner-ear damage but a good auditory nerve have cochlear implants that restore hearing by converting sounds to electrical signals that excite the auditory nerve. Retinal implants, still in the early research stage, work in a similar fashion and may restore some sight to people who have a deficient retina but a healthy optical nerve. Experiments are also under way with people who have lost motor function; a chip, embedded in a muscle, detects the electrical signals from the brain telling it to flex. The chip transmits this information to a machine that will steer the person's wheelchair, giving her control where she had none before.

If sensor and effector implants are so great, why not place chips into the brain and perform even more spectacular feats? Every night, while asleep, you could download into your human memory entire sections of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. Or you could connect your brain chip to mine so that we could intercommunicate our thoughts directly and rapidly. Why even discuss spoken and visual communication with machines? Wow! Wow! Wow!

One basic objection is our ignorance. While we can channel simple electrical signals into and out of our body for sensor and effector functions, we don't know how to do so for more complex cognitive tasks. Where and how, within your brain, would a surgeon connect a chip's tentacles to communicate a simple command like "turn on the light," much less a concept like "freedom"? Scientists have been studying the brain for a long time, and they are still far from knowing how concepts are represented, let alone how to tap into them.

But let's be optimistic. Suppose after a while we crack the mystery of the mind and manage to connect chips to our brains so as to communicate our deepest thoughts. Wouldn't that make brain implants a great idea? Not quite.

Imagine that you and I and a couple of other people are successfully interconnected via brain chips. We might look cool with sockets in our heads. But we wouldn't be able to think; everybody's thoughts would be screaming for attention within our heads. We might then realize that some isolation among organisms is essential if they are to form a viable society. In humans, a balance between isolation and intercommunication is maintained by our seeing, hearing, speaking and gesturing, whose slow speeds, compared to thinking, most likely represent the best that nature or God could do to preserve simultaneously the individual as well as society.

Not yet convinced? Then consider the threshold people must be willing to cross to violate the sanctity of their body. People with heart disease will consider a pacemaker implant or heart transplant only if there is overwhelming evidence that their life is in imminent danger. Few people would implant a chip into their brain for lesss than life-and-death reasons. We have wisely set a high threshold for tampering with the core of our being, not just because of fear, but because of natural, moral, and spiritual beliefs.

When I recently wrote about this in a magazine column I got mail from some people who were upset by what they perceived as my opposition to "technical progress." But as with "intelligent agents," this is an occasion where people are confusing a wish with reality. As director of one of the world's most forward-thinking research centers, I invite, even lobby for, research in areas we don't understand, including how the human brain works and how we may construct artificial brains. But I will not casually blur that which is imagined with that which is possible just to thrill the public with the shock of exhibitionist thinking or the promise of a utopia.

Let's get real. Let's find ways that help computers understand us through natural interaction, but also have a chance of working in the coming years, based on what we can see on the horizon. That's what human-centric computing is about.


Excerpt from “The Unfinished Revolution” by Michael L. Dertouzos.