The US Military Wants a Chip to Translate Your Brain Activity Into Binary Code
The US Military Wants a Chip to Translate Your Brain
Activity Into Binary Code
By Adam Clark Estes Yesterday 5:40pm
The US Military Wants a Chip to Translate Your Brain
Activity Into Binary Code
It’s been a weird day for weird science. Not long after
researchers claimed victory in performing a head transplant on a monkey, the US
military’s blue-sky R&D agency announced a completely insane plan to build
a chip that would enable the human brain to communicate directly with
computers. What is this weird, surreal future?
It’s all real, believe it or not. Or at least DARPA
desperately wants it to be. The first wireless brain-to-computer interface
actually popped up a few years ago, and DARPA’s worked on various brain chip
projects over the years. But there are shortcomings to existing technology:
According to today’s announcement, current brain-computer interfaces are akin
to “two supercomputers trying to talk to each other using an old 300-baud
modem.” They just aren’t fast enough for truly transformative neurological
applications, like restoring vision to a blind person. This would ostensibly
involve a camera that can transmit visual information directly to the brain,
and then the implant would translate the data into neural language.
To accomplish this magnificent feat, DARPA is launching a
new program called Neural Engineering System Design (NESD) that stands to
squeeze some characteristically bonkers innovation out of the science
community. In a press release, the agency describes what’s undoubtedly the
closest thing to a Johnny Mneumonic plot-line you’ve ever seen in real life.
It reads:
A new DARPA program aims to develop an implantable neural
interface able to provide unprecedented signal resolution and data-transfer
bandwidth between the human brain and the digital world. The interface would
serve as a translator, converting between the electrochemical language used by
neurons in the brain and the ones and zeros that constitute the language of
information technology.
So DARPA wants to turn neural language into digital code,
potentially opening up scenarios wherein the human brain can mainline data and
people can talk to machines simply by thinking. Like having the internet inside
your head—which would not be overwhelming at all.
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