Musk’s Neuralink Promising For Disabled, 'Ethical Concern' For Masses, Experts Say
Musk’s Neuralink Promising For Disabled, 'Ethical Concern' For Masses, Experts Say
Authored by Petr Svab via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours), December 22, 2022
The
Neuralink implant that aims to allow a person to control a computer with
thoughts has good potential to achieve its initial goal of helping paralyzed
people communicate. It may, at least to some extent, help
restore vision for the blind. It may, to a significant degree, restore limb
control for those with spine injuries, according to several neuroscientists.
But
when it comes to Neuralink’s broader goals of letting healthy people interface
with computers directly via the mind, the technical capability is achievable, but
would lead to expansive ethical, safety, security, privacy, and even
philosophical issues, experts told The Epoch Times.
Neuralink—founded in 2016 by the world’s richest man, prolific entrepreneur Elon
Musk—recently applied to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)
for human trials of its brain implants. The company staged a three-hour
presentation of its progress, including demonstrations of a monkey controlling
a computer with its mind, a robot that can handle some of the most delicate
parts of the required brain implant insertion surgery, as well as a pig whose
legs can be controlled remotely by a computer.
The presentation also included a monkey with a brain implant
that made it see flashes of light, a step toward the company’s proposition to
restore vision for the blind.
“The overarching goal of Neuralink is to create, ultimately,
a whole brain interface. So a generalized input-output device
that in the long term literally could interface with every aspect of your brain
and in the short term can interface with any given section of your brain and
solve a tremendous number of things that cause debilitating issues for people,”
Musk said during
the presentation.
The Neuralink technology “makes a lot of sense” for helping
people with disabilities, said Nicho Hatsopoulos, a
neurology professor at the University of Chicago and one of the pioneers of
brain-computer interface development.
“It is impressive, actually,” he said after
seeing the Neuralink presentation.
Mark Churchland, associate professor of neuroscience at Columbia
University and an expert on brain signal decoding, commended Neuralink for
bringing the brain-computer interface technology a long way from experiment to
product.
“They seem to have a solid wireless interface, which is not an
easy thing to build. And going from needing racks of equipment and computers to
needing an iPhone is impressive,” he said.
“In terms of the actual experiments, it’s not doing anything
that hasn’t been done before, but if you’re doing it better and more easily,
that counts for a lot.”
When it comes to the company’s plans to one day mass-produce the
implants for use by anybody and everybody, both Hatsopoulos and Churchland were
much more reserved.
“We’re going to have to have some serious ethical
conversations,” Hatsopoulos said, noting that “it’s one thing
to help restore function in people who have a disability,” but “another thing
to augment people.”
“Augmentation is going to be a big ethical concern,” he said.
Churchland was more blunt.
“I think that is likely a really bad idea,” he said.
Other experts raised concerns as well, ranging from
philosophical questions over free will to security and privacy issues with
regard to data collected from the brain as well as the potential to hack the
implant.
Level 1: Mind
Mouse
Neuralink’s initial goal is to enable physically incapacitated
people to control a computer. At the current stage of development, the implant
is roughly the size of a small stack of quarters. To install it, first, a piece
of skin would be cut and peeled off the skull of the patient. Then, a small
hole would be drilled in the skull. Next, a series of extremely thin, flexible
wires would be connected to a thin needle one by one and stuck by a robotic
machine inside the surface layer of the brain in the motor cortex area. The
implant would be placed inside the hole in the skull, sealing it.
The skin would be sewn over it and, as it heals, the implant would become
invisible from the outside.
The
person would be asked to think, for instance, about moving their hand in a
certain direction. Corresponding brain activity signals from
the implant would be collected over a period of time, translated to computer
data and commands via artificial intelligence and voila—the implant would then
allow the person to control a computer with their mind.
The Neuralink presentation proved the concept by showing a video of a monkey with the implant. The primate moved a mouse cursor to highlighted positions on a computer screen, getting bits of banana smoothie through a tube as a reward.
In fact, a similar effect can be achieved even without sticking
wires inside the brain as some brain activity can be detected on the surface of
the head, he said, noting he’s currently working on one such technology.
“It can be recordable reasonably well from the electrodes
outside of the skull,” Shimojo said. “Those are done already and it’s going to
be even better.”
The more
invasive path Neuralink has taken is more ambitious and more delicate.
Regulatory authorities don’t allow invasive experimental
techniques unless there’s an urgent medical need, Shimojo noted.
“It’s not a science problem. It’s an ethical problem,” he said.
Such experiments have so far been approved on a small scale for
research purposes.
In the early 2000s, implants developed by Cyberkinetics, a
company co-founded by Hatsopoulos, were tested on several physically disabled
patients. The project fizzled out because its investors lost interest, he said.
The underlying software was acquired by a company called BrainGate
in 2008 and clinical trials with small groups of patients have been ongoing at
several research institutions, including one called BrainGate2 under
the leadership of Leigh Hochberg, an engineering professor at Brown University.
Science has only recently reached a point where multiple
companies have decided to try to move it from research to a marketable product,
Hochberg said.
He’s currently helping several such companies, including
Neuralink, which is now in talks with the FDA to run clinical trials that could
lead to official approval of its implant as a form of treatment.
“Clinical trials of this type would generally take a few
years,” Hochberg said.
Each new iteration of the implants would then require further
trials, though he hopes software improvements of the system could be
incorporated “with perhaps more speed.”
The technology has been aided by advances in machine learning,
which allows matching brain signal patterns with specific actions, such as
moving a mouse cursor in a particular direction. Machine learning allows the
correlation of brain patterns with physical outcomes without the need to
understand the function of each specific neuron.
“That’s the difference between the scientific approach and
the engineering approach,” Shimojo commented.
Scientists try to find out how things work, such as by exploring
“how each neuron is wired” or “what’s the hierarchy of information processing
in different parts of the brain,” he said. As a result, they try to drill down
to causal relationships.
Engineers, on the other hand, try to solve a problem. If an
artificial intelligence finds a pattern that matches the desired result 95
percent of the time, that may be good enough, he noted.
“I think right now, it’s moving, especially because of this deep
learning progress, in that direction.”
Level 2:
Artificial Eye
The next step for the Neuralink technology would be to restore
sight, the presenters said. The same implant would be inserted at the back of
the skull and connected to the visual cortex, the part of the brain responsible
for processing images from the eyes. A video stream from a camera would then be
encoded as neural signals and used to stimulate neurons responsible for image
processing, thus rendering a picture.
This seems to be possible in principle, but there may be
difficulties in practice.
“There are some constraints that can be removed eventually by
just technical advance. And then there are some intrinsic limitations related
to how the visual cortex itself is organized,” Shimojo said.
Some neurons in the visual cortex indeed correspond to a
location in the visual field. That means correct stimulation of one location in
the brain produces a flash of light at a particular location in one’s vision
and stimulation of another location produces a flash of light at a different
place. Experiments of this kind have been done in apes and Neuralink
demonstrated one.
But “so
far, the resolution is very, very low—ridiculously low,” Shimojo
said.
The flashes of light such stimulation produces can only be
positioned on a grid of perhaps 12 by 12 pixels, he said.
The
picture quality can be improved by stimulating more neurons, i.e. inserting
more electrodes into the brain. The Neuralink implant currently uses over 1,000
electrodes with a promise of 16,000 electrodes on the same chip. For the visual
aid, the presentation proposed two implants with 16,000 electrodes each. If each
electrode could be used to stimulate multiple “pixels,” perhaps a picture
quality on par with a 1980s computer can be achieved.
But even if the number of electrodes is further boosted in the
future, the resulting image quality would still be limited, according to
Shimojo.
The problem is that if one creates a topographic map
of the visual field, assigning each neuron to its position in the field, the
result is nowhere precise enough to make up a clear image.
“The topographic map is kind of crude and diffuse. It’s not
pinpoint,” he said.
People see with clarity thanks to complex, multi-layer image
processing by the brain where the signal can travel back and forth between the
layers and where neurons help adjacent neurons with the tasks.
It’s not clear how the implant could achieve a comparable
result, according to Shimojo.
“It’s not
easily solved by the technical side,” he said.
Musk went as far as to suggest vision can be restored for people
who are congenitally blind because even such people possess a visual cortex.
“Even if they’ve never seen before, we’re confident that they
could see,” he said.
Hatsopoulos wasn’t so convinced.
“I’m not clear that that’s possible,” he said.
The issue is that the visual cortex “develops over the first
several years of life” and the visual input from the eyes “helps organize how
the visual cortex will function,” Hatsopoulos explained.
Around the age of two, the brain loses the initial ability to
develop so rapidly.
That early development is “crucial,” he said, giving the example
of children born with cataracts. The condition can be remedied by surgically
replacing eye lenses, but it needs to be done early on. If the operation is
performed too late, the patient won’t be able to see, even though all the
physical parts are present and functioning.
“Everything is perfectly fine, but the person will not
understand the visual input coming in,” Hatsopoulos said.
Level 3:
Stretching the Limbs
The Neuralink presentation outlined how the implants could
restore limb control for people paralyzed after spine injuries. Aside from the
implant in the motor cortex, another several implants would be inserted into
the spine. Signals from the brain would then be recorded and sent to the spinal
implants, bridging the part where the spinal cord is severed or damaged.
In principle, this is fully achievable, according to the
experts.
“In fact, we’re doing that right now,” Hatsopoulos said. His
university is working with a different implant technology that allows a patient
to control a mechanical arm via the mind.
One challenge is to record from many neurons at the same time
“to give you the rich kind of movement that you would want to get” in order to
produce “movement that’s somewhat normal,” he said.
Reading from maybe a thousand neurons should suffice to restore
“functional movement,” such as allowing a person to feed or dress themselves,
Hatsopoulos said.
“Maybe not as quickly as they would if they had an intact
system, but they can do it,” he said.
Based on its technical specifications, the Neuralink implant
should enable a wide range of movement. Its presentation included a video of a
pig with brain and spinal implants that bent its leg and stretched its thighs
in response to commands sent to the implants.
Facilitating complex movement, such as playing a piano, would
probably require thousands of electrodes, Hatsopoulos said, noting “we’re
taking baby steps right now.”
Another challenge is fine-tuning the stimulation so it targets
muscle threads that don’t tire quickly.
“You’ve got to do more than just activate muscles,”
Churchland said.
“You’ve got to activate them in a relatively natural way to
avoid fatigue. And that’s definitely doable, but it’s certainly not trivial.”
It’s helpful in this endeavor that patients usually actively
cooperate to make the solution work. Even though the number of electrodes may
create a bottleneck, with effort, patients could rewire their brains to take
maximum advantage of the interface.
“With practice, they can get better at it,”
Hatsopoulos said.
The ability to move, however, is not enough. To
truly restore function to a limb requires fixing the sense of touch too.
That means recording sensory impulses from the limb and sending
them to another implant in the brain’s sensory cortex.
In principle, that has already been done as well. Stimulating
some brain cells, for example, can create an impression that one is touching
something, Hatsopoulos said, referring to experiments done at his university.
The issue, again, is reading from and stimulating enough neurons to create a
sufficiently robust touch experience.
The technology still has a long way to go in this regard,
Hochberg acknowledged.
“It’s early, but exciting days,” he said.
For truly natural movement, however, one would need to go
further yet.
A healthy person not only senses limb movement from what he
touches externally, but also gets a sense of movement and limb position from
inside the body.
The phenomenon is called proprioception. Scientists know that
certain brain areas receive those kinds of sensory inputs, but it’s not quite
known how it works.
“That’s the next frontier in this field,” Hatsopoulos said. “No
one has cracked that yet.”
Level 4:
Cyborgs
Musk envisions Neuralink going far beyond helping the disabled.
He portrayed it more as a natural next step from a smartphone or smartwatch.
Just like “replacing a piece of skull with a smartwatch for lack of a better
analogy,” as he put it.```````
“I could have a Neuralink device implanted right now and you
wouldn’t even know. I mean, hypothetically, I may be one of these demos. In
fact, one of these demos I will,” he said to laughs and cheers
from the audience.
He argued that “we are all already cyborgs in a way that your
phone and your computer are extensions of yourself.”
“I’m sure you found if you leave your phone behind you end up
tapping your pockets and it’s like having missing limb syndrome,” he said.
Neuralink for healthy people, however, may be far in the future,
if it ever comes.
“The FDA is not going to approve this for use in healthy
individuals. At least in this version of the implant,” Hatsopoulos said, noting
that “you would have to show an incredible level of safety.”
Shimojo expressed a similar sentiment.
“If the safety is proven, then there’s a possibility, in the
long, long future, that maybe intact, healthy people have electrodes inside of
the brain. But I don’t think that’s going to happen soon,”
he said.
The technology would likely have to get to a point of giving
disabled people greater capabilities than healthy people have.
Musk believes the implant would indeed bestow superior
capabilities.
“We’re confident that someone who has basically no other
interface to the outside world would be able to control their phone better than
someone who has working hands,” he said.
But even if the implant is technically safe in the sense that it
wouldn’t accidentally harm the user and even if it eventually passes regulatory
muster, the technology faces other problems that may prove intractable.
Data Security
The Neuralink implant currently communicates with a computer
using Bluetooth. That can be hacked by a number of easily available tools,
according to Gary Miliefsky, a cybersecurity expert, head of Cyber Defense
Media Group, and a founding member of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
“If you’re in the proximity of the person you will probably be
able to steal some data. So that’s not secure,” he said.
As a first step, the communication between the implant and a
computer would need to be encrypted, but that would drain the battery and
processing power on the implant.
Even then, “people will find ways to hack”
the implants, Miliefsky said.
There are already devices that can “unwind” SSL and TLS
encryption protocols commonly used to secure emails, he said. And new
technologies can go even further.
“Quantum computing can probably break today’s encryption
pretty easily,” he said.
There’s “quantum-proof” encryption on the horizon, but the
processing power it requires is far beyond anything a small implant could
handle now or even in the upcoming decades, he estimated.
“Nothing is bulletproof. Nothing is foolproof. When they tell
you it’s unhackable, it’s usually hacked in five minutes, whatever it is,” he
said.
Even if the implant-computer communication is somehow secured,
the brain activity data could still be exfiltrated from the computer, such as
by infecting the computer with malware.
“Seventy percent of new malware gets past all the virus
scanners,” Miliefsky noted.
And even if the data is somehow secured on the computer, it
would still need to be accessed by technicians servicing the implant.
Anybody with insider access to the Neuralink system would
immediately become a prime target for every intelligence agency and every
malicious actor in the world, Miliefsky acknowledged.
“They’ll be unsuspecting victims. Absolutely,” he said.
And that doesn’t even include the issue of covert operatives of
all sorts lining up for jobs at Neuralink.
“Insider threat defense is a big issue,” Miliefsky said.
Yet another area of concern is that, once the data exists,
there’s a chance the government could use the legal process to force Neuralink
to preserve the data and share it for purposes of criminal investigations,
counterintelligence, national security, and intelligence collection.
Brain Hack
The implications of a hacked implant appear difficult to fully
grasp.
People seem to be willing to accept some level of privacy
intrusion. Smartphones, for example, can easily be used to listen in on a
person and track one’s movement.
“We’re walking around with spyware every day,” Miliefsky said.
A brain implant, however, can produce personal data on another
level of intimacy.
From the
motor cortex, an implant could record a wide range of body movements, according
to Hochberg.
“It continues to, I think, both amaze and pleasantly surprise a
lot of people in the field just how rich the information is that can be
extracted from small areas of the motor cortex,” he said.
From the visual cortex, everything a person sees could
theoretically be recorded, albeit likely in low resolution.
Moreover, the implant would be under the skin, meaning it can’t
be removed by the user and it can’t be turned off as it needs to maintain the
capability of being turned on and off remotely.
Worse yet, the implant can send signals into the brain too.
Issuing commands to the motor cortex could make one move involuntarily.
Theoretically, it’s possible to make a remote-controlled human,
Hatsopoulos confirmed.
Sending visual signals could make one see things that aren’t
there, distract a person, or perhaps obstruct vision with flashes of light, the
Neuralink experiments indicate.
Churchland, however, dismissed such concerns as too far removed
from the technology’s current reality.
“It’s not physically impossible, but it’s extremely improbable,”
he said.
“Concerns about external manipulation, I think, are fanciful for
the foreseeable future.”
Level 5: Far
From ‘The Matrix’
Musk expects to go even further. As the electrode insertion
technology improves, the implant will be able to reach deep areas of the brain
as well, according to the presentation.
Those parts of the brain are responsible for thought activity
such as memory processing, emotion, motivation, and abstract thinking.
Yet the know-how for decoding signals from these parts of the
brain is so far limited, according to Shimojo.
Machine learning can recognize patterns with a high degree of
probability, but some level of ambiguity may be “intrinsic,” he said.
“The brain is complicated and one neuron is not participating in
one task. The same neuron can be participating in different networks for
entirely different purposes. It’s really highly context-dependent and
environment-dependent.”
Whether it’s possible to fully decode such thought processes
remains an open question.
“Even among neuroscientists, there are different opinions,”
he said, noting that such difficulties may need “some clever creativity to deal
with.”
“So is this eventually overcome? It may be, but it’s very
long-run. It’s not as easy as those demonstrations may indicate.”
Hypothetically, the ability to truly read and write in deeper
areas of the brain would raise profound ethical and philosophical questions.
Accessing memory processing centers, for example, would open
another floodgate of privacy and security issues, according to Miliefsky, from
password theft to national, corporate, and personal secret exfiltration.
“There is not a single computer on the internet that I would say
is safe and secure from a loss of privacy or having enough security that you
could say, ‘Jimmy, who’s got the implant, all of his private thoughts are still
secure.’ And it’s not going to happen,” he said.
Furthermore, linking brain parts responsible for decision-making
with an AI would put in question the integrity of free will, Shimojo argued.
“If you and AI together make a decision about an action, is that
your free will or is it hybrid free will?” he asked.
“Is it ok for people? Is it ok for society? What‘s going to
happen to elections, for instance?”
As Musk explained during multiple talks, interfacing with an AI
is actually the primary goal of why he pursued the implant technology to begin
with.
His original motivation for starting Neuralink, he said, was to
address the rapid development of artificial intelligence.
During the presentation and in previous talks, he opined that as
AI develops, it’s likely to far surpass human intelligence. At that point, even
if it turns out to be benevolent, it may treat humans as a lower life form.
“We’ll be like the house cat,” he said at
the Recode’s Code Conference in 2016.
The solution would be to prevent AI power from getting
centralized in a few hands, he argued.
Comments
Post a Comment