Monkey See, Computer Do

This was the title of a front page article in today's L.A. Times. They have devised a chip which, inserted into the brain of a monkey, allows the monkey to think and thus move the cursor on a computer to play a video game. It literally captures the monkey's thought and moves the cursor accordingly. Unbelievable. They're hopeful that this technology will eventually allow people physically not able to use a mouse or a keyboard to "think" their way around a computer screen, to send emails, etc.


My wife suggested they could insert such a chip into the brain of an accused criminal to discern his thoughts and find out whether he's innocent or guilty. And we can imagine lots of other uses for this technology.


Amazing? Yes. Scary? Yes, too.

I would guess the chip was inserted into the monkey's motor cortex to detect its intention to make certain voluntary muscle movements. I doubt we are close to being able to discern with specificity a person's abstract thoughts through the electrical activity of his brain.


Perhaps the first practical application of this technology will be to allow fighter pilots to fly jets with their thoughts, reducing their reaction time.

Those Star Trek baddies, the Borg, undoubtedly started this way. Those guys are scary.


They're hopeful that this technology will eventually allow people physically not able to use a mouse or a keyboard to "think" their way around a computer screen, to send emails, etc.


And I thought people who sat at a computer all day and did nothing but type and move a mouse were lazy! Now they won't have to do that much?

The more interesting achievement might have been the successful isolation, by scientists, of one or two neurons whose firing was very correlated to a specific task of a specific nature. In other words, while they had many zillions to work with, they managed to narrow it down to just seven or so which could distinguish the cascade with sufficient resolution.


It occurred to me that, to discover larger combinations of neurons, that could indentify more abstract combinations of cascades, might require a neural network, hooked into enormous numbers of them at the same time, to do the sorting and learning of which are which. So what you then would have would be an unburnt or wide-open neural network linked into a pruned down or learned one.


And both of these neural networks would presumably be attached into their own sensory mechanisms to get feedback as to the results of their actions, the success or failure of the real-world outcome. Perhaps the human being would monitor the location of a cursor on the screen, while the machine would monitor the pressure and temperature in some large tanks at a refinery, for instance.


In order to learn to cooperate, without a direct chemical handshake - which would seem much more expensive and further off than simply monitoring a zillion neurons - the human being's darn-it cortex would have to be discovered and linked into the artificial network. That way, when the computer didn't do the right thing, the person could think "darn this infernal machine!," and the computer would reshuffle the way it interpreted neurons firing.


The question is, without direct feedback on a neuron-by-neuron basis, and both networks attempting to learn at the same time - the computer reshuffling after darnits, and the person also trying to tickle the computer differently in response to his own darnits - could they ever learn to cooperate (cooperate to learn)? Or would both of them making unpredictable, possibly redundant adjustments in response to darnits create an intractable feedback loop?


eLROY

first of all, i can get links to the following, but i dont think theyre that out there.


1) company that makes digital angel (i think its got a new name now) has a contract with california state prison system to implant tracking microchips in prisoners.


2) new devices are going into airports that can tell if youre lying (like when ticket agent asks you all the questions) supposedly by measuring the bloodflow around the eyes.


also im sure you saw about how now air travellers are going to be hit with hard radiation (going to start x-raying passengers). just threw that in.


brad

All day, I've been giggling to myself like a little girl, at the thought of Homer Simpson being wired into a computer which he is trying to learn to use his brain to signal to move a cursor on the screen. Only the computer is trying to learn to read Homer's brain waves at the same time.


So, each time the cursor goes left instead of right, Homer says "D'oh!" and then re-orients left versus right in his brain. Problem is, the computer re-orients its own left and right as well, to try and compensate, each time Homer says "D'oh!"


So what you end up with is a useless computer, a screen with the cursor pinned on the left side, and a flesh broken-record machine repeating "D'oh-D'oh-D'oh-D'oh-D'oh-D'oh-D'oh-D'oh-D'oh-D'oh-D'oh-D'oh-D'oh-D'oh-D'oh-D'oh-D'oh-D'oh-D'oh-D'oh-D'oh-D'oh-D'oh-D'oh-D'oh-D'oh-D'oh-D'oh-D'oh-D'oh-D'oh-D'oh-D'oh-D'oh-D'oh-D'oh-D'oh-D'oh-D'oh-D'oh-D'oh-D'oh-D'oh-D'oh-D'oh-D'oh-D'oh-D'oh-D'oh-D'oh-D'oh-D'oh-D'oh-D'oh-D'oh-D'oh-D'oh-D'oh-D'oh-D'oh-D'oh-D'oh-D'oh-D'oh-D'oh-D'oh-D'oh-D'oh-D'oh-D'oh-D'oh-D'oh-D'oh-D'oh-D'oh-D'oh-D'oh-D'oh-D'oh-D'oh-D'oh-D'oh-D'oh-D'oh-D'oh-D'oh-D'oh-D'oh-D'oh-D'oh-D'oh-D'oh-D'oh-D'oh-D'oh-D'oh-D'oh-D'oh-D'oh-D'oh-D'oh-D'oh-D'oh-D'oh-D'oh-D'oh..."


An eerie and shameful scene in the laboratory.


eLROY


P.S. If you hook into someone's motor cortex to harness those signals to, like, drive a car, what do you do with their flailing limbs in the meantime? I mean, thoe signals have to be en route to somewhere, right? Do they just sit there and flail?