Intel Says Brain Implants Could Control Computers By 2020

Lucas123 writes "Scientists at Intel are working on developing sensors that would be implanted in a person's head in order to harness brain waves that could then be used to control computers, televisions, cell phones and other electronic equipment. Intel has already used Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (FMRI) machines to determine that blood flow changes in specific areas of the brain based on what word or image someone is thinking of. People tend to show the same brain patterns for similar thoughts. 'Eventually people may be willing to be more committed ... to brain implants. Imagine being able to surf the Web with the power of your thoughts.' said Intel research scientist Dean Pomerleau."

Comments

Why implants?

[BobMcD]

Why do people insist on looking towards devices that need to be surgically implanted to operate?

Sure the interface is more difficult when it is outside the skull, but the barriers to adoption would be much lower also, would they not? Not to mention support, upgrades, product life cycle, etc.

Are they really that shortsighted?

Bad choice of killer app.

[Metasquares]

The convenience of being able to navigate to a URL without having to type it is a really limited example. How about writing music with it? Being able to notate exactly what's playing in your head without needing to manually write a single note down? Weeks worth of work reduced to a few minutes! Or art: Can't draw? Just visualize!

Anything you can think about but can't actually do would be fair game.

Even with those sorts of apps, I still wouldn't get an implant unless my skull was being opened up for some other reason already. It's certainly not a fair tradeoff against something as simple as web browsing, as the summary suggests. I'm all for the braincaps. That's where BCI technology's headed anyway. And those have the distinct advantage of being removable as well...

Re:Bad choice of killer app.

[Virtual_Raider]

Or art: Can't draw? Just visualize!

(...) As Maurice Grosser said, "The painter draws with his eyes, not with his hands. Whatever he sees, if he sees it clear, he can put it down, [with] no more muscular agility than it takes for him to write his name. Seeing clear is the important thing." (...) If you can do that, expressing it in some form or another is relatively easy. Which of course, isn't to say it is 100% easy.

I couldn't disagree more vigorously. I can sort-of-draw. I'm much better than average but nowhere nearly as good as, say, a comic artist. I can see with photographic quality the object in my mind, but it takes great effort, skill and training to put it in paper. I took some basic classes and my drawing improved with those techniques but its still leagues away from what I would like to convey because I didn't practice enough to become more proficient and I didn't learn enough to do it better.

I can play a song almost to the last note in my head. It took me 6 months to be able to reproduce some boring pop melody at barely 1/4 speed closely enough to be recognizable by somebody other than myself. Maybe I have no "talent". Or maybe "not 100%" is near-zero for beginners and increases only with practice.

Don't get too carried away

[dave562]

It seems like they're at the point where they can recognize thought patterns. They intend to map those patterns to a UI. Just the other day I found myself sitting in front of a PC and browsing the web (imagine that). I've been using a Mac a lot lately. I wanted to scroll the page down and I found myself reaching for the touch pad to do that nifty two finger drag motion.

Some where between wanting to scroll the page down and the actual muscle action of reaching for the non-existent track pad was a series of neuro-chemical impulses. It seems like the researchers are identifying those. It would be kind of cool to be able to move a pointer around the screen and do basic web browsing actions (forward, backward, click, scroll, etc) without ever having to reach for the mouse. It seems like I first read about people using alpha waves to control mouse pointers over a decade ago at this point. It's about time they're getting to the point of doing something that might be useful.

Now once they get to the point of bringing up search results based on our thoughts, that is when I will start worrying.

Re:But Unfortunately...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, that's why I'd never trust anything that could potentially write directly to my brain.

Your fear prevents you from evolving.

Direct neural communication between groups of humans (and augmented by computers) would produce a thinking, conscious being who's cognitive capacities are a step above that of a human (in the same sense that human cognition is a step above that of monkeys).

This pattern is not new. Single-celled organisms formed cell colonies, which were an evolutionary step up, only after they opened their membranes to each other to allow direct chemical communication. Cell colonies accepted similar levels of integration in the formation of tissues, organs, and gargantuanly huge interconnected ecologies (specifically, humans).

Allowing direct neural reads and writes is the natural continuation of this pattern. Your fear will prevent you from taking this evolutionary step up. You will eventually sit in a zoo throwing dung at tourists, while the true visionaries reach beyond the stars.