Mark Zuckerberg Teases AI ‘Brain Chip’—But It Will Be Different Than Elon Musk’s
Mark Zuckerberg Teases AI ‘Brain Chip’—But It Will Be Different
Than Elon Musk’s
By •
If
Silicon Valley were to put a team of tech bros together on a project to
merge computers and people, the lineup wouldn’t be complete without
car and rocket man Elon
Musk and the Valley’s most dubious robot, Mark
Zuckerberg.
In all
fairness, Musk has already proposed a plan to make an actual chip which is
meant to be inserted into human brains. (It will be designed with taste and
wireless cleanliness so you “have
no wires poking out of your head,” as Musk assured.) Zuckerberg has
said he’s interested in the idea of computer-human integration, too, but will
approach it differently than Musk.
At a recent
internal employee Q&A session, the Facebook CEO hinted that such technology
could see promising use cases in Facebook’s future augmented
reality and virtual reality products.
“Brain-computer
interface is an exciting idea,” Zuckerberg told employees, according to a
meeting transcript leaked earlier this month. “The field
quickly branches into two approaches: invasive and non-invasive… We’re more
focused on—I think completely focused on non-invasive.”
“Non-invasive
is like, you wear a band or glasses, you shine an optical light and get a sense
of blood flow in certain areas of the brain,” he explained.
Such a device
would transfer less data between a computer and a brain, according to
Zuckerberg, but that would be enough to allow a person to perform many
sci-fi-sounding tasks, such as clicking a button, scrolling through a menu and
even typing a text message—all without using your hands or any other muscle
movements.
“I think as
part of AR and VR, we’ll end up having hand interfaces. We’ll end up having
voice [interface and] a little bit of direct brain [integration]… But we’re
going for the non-invasive approach,” Zuckerberg reiterated.
“Non-invasive”
is very important, because an overly aggressive wearable tech product that
could inspire explosive news headlines and regulatory scrutiny is the last
thing Facebook needs right now.
“‘Facebook
wants to perform brain surgery,'” Zuckerberg joked. “I don’t want to see the congressional
hearings on that one.”
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