Hi everyone, and welcome back to Geek Time. 欢迎回来【极客时间】. Hi, Brad.

Hey, lulu, how's it going?

It's going. So What are we gonna talk about today?

Have you heard of brain chipping?

Brain chipping. It doesn't mean chipping your brain. It means linking your brain to a chip?

Yeah, putting a computer chip in your brain and connecting the two.

好像叫大脑芯片.

I don't think this is... as an idea, as a concept, this is not new. I'm definitely seeing them in sci-fi films or TV shows or books.

Oh yeah. It's not a new idea, but it's something that's actually been in the news a lot lately because of Neuralink and they're trying to actually brain chips into real life.

Elon Musk again, Musk的公司 Neuralink, 公司之一, 就在做 brain chip的尝试, 把它从科幻变成现实.

So that brings a lot of controversy, a lot of discussion and debates. This is what we're gonna explore in this and the next episode.

So when you say brain chip like you said it literally is connecting a computer chip to your brain. Like how... through some sort of interface? I'm trying to imagine that.

So your brain has a lot of nerve connections and a lot of tissue that connect it to your body. Doctors have started to figure out how to connect something to your brain using those connections.

When you think about it, your eye is connected to your brain and they're starting to develop ways to connect artificial eyes that should be able to see things. It's all just a matter of finding a way to interface a chip with using an electrical pulse that goes into your brain and then sending that signal back to the chip.

I see. So not necessarily implantation.

Yeah, implantation. So in order for it to connect to your brain, you would probably have to actually implant it. You're doing tests... Yeah, implanting that into your brain.

I see, I see.

And you mentioned doctors, so I'm assuming this whole idea, this whole progress initially, at least was aiming to solve some medical problems?

Yeah. There's a lot of issues that stem from issues with your brain, and people have Alzheimer's or they have other memory issues that might benefit from use of these devices.

People who are paralyzed, for example, they basically the thing that's wrong is their brain isn't connected to their spinal cord anymore, and so they can't control their body. If you can use a computer chip to bridge that gap and connect your brain back to your spinal cord, then you could control your body again.

To be honest, you were talking about paralyzed, especially severely paralyzed people like paraplegic, 那种全身瘫痪的高位截瘫的那些病人.

Actually, when Hawking was still alive, I think there was already talks about this brain chipping so that basically your brain sends a signal and then this robotic thing, it's almost like a robotic limbs or whatever they will do things according to what your brain is telling them.

Yeah, now they have done something where they can do some sort of scanning where they get a signal from your brain that could control something like this. It's not very strong from what I've seen. It doesn't work perfectly. It might be something that they could do in the future where they don't actually have to implant something into your brain. But definitely having something connected directly to your brain could help with that issue and make it a lot stronger.

And so, even if you don't have a limb, you could have like a robotic limb and that robotic limb could be controlled by it.

There are some artificial limbs that people use that can be controlled by the muscles you still have, but those are very rudimentary and you can't control it completely. Whereas if you had a chip connected to your brain, you could control that robotic limb with a greater degree of dexterity.

Yeah, I mean it's amazing to think about the future application of this technology because it can be potentially the cure for Alzheimer, not a cure but at least a way to help people with Alzheimer's or like amnesia, memory problems有阿兹海默症或失忆症, 各种各样跟memory有关的一些病症.

And also people, like we said who were paralyzed, for paraplegics and then it will help them regain motor functions.

Again, albeit through a different way, but they will be able to regain limb function through like a robotic, what's that word, prosthetic?

Prosthetic.

Yeah, prosthetics.

And also perhaps people...Oh actually I'm thinking about another application of this. You know kids who find learning very difficult. They're not necessarily having a low IQ, they just have learning disabilities, learning difficulties. So they can just basically become straight A students, no?

They may not become straight a students, but if they have some sort of learning block, a chip might be able to help them maintain that. Because sometimes learning disabilities comes from the way the brain functions, maybe there's a missed signal or something and a brain could prevent that miss signal from going off too much.

Okay. And then could also be new territory for exploration in how to cure certain psychological... psychological illnesses. But I'm sure they've already done it in all of the sci-fi, at least the conceptualization. 很多的科幻作品里面都写过 Brain chipping, 我至少都记得很多. I remember there was a very old one. I mean I've never read it, but I've heard about it. It's called Ghost In The Shell. I think it was in the90s.

Right, so If you look at a lot of movies and anime, you can see a full range of basically brain chipping.

Ghost In The Shell, it has a variety of different brain chip type of devices. One of the main characters, his eyes are missing and so his eyes are replaced with artificial eyes that are controlled by a brain chip. The main character she basically doesn't exist anymore in a physical body. Her whole brain has been transferred onto a computer chip.

And so You can see that full range where you just have someone who is using the device to control their eyes versus another person who just exists entirely in the internet.

Yeah, I mean it is... that makes me think even people who are, for example, in a coma, as long as they're not brain dead, this could also be a way for them to continue living in another form. Maybe ?

If you look at RoboCop. RoboCop is another old one, the man was killed, they replace parts of his brain with chips. He became part man, part machine, all cop. Basically, he wasn't the same, right? Because they couldn't take away his memories. No matter what happened, his memories always came back, but he wasn't all human. And so he didn't have the same feelings presented in his emotions, but he still longed for being a human. He still had feelings deep inside.

Yeah. I mean remember when we were talking about AI and the sentient AI我们之前不是跟Brad做过一次【极客时间】, 是在讲AI的觉醒，and that was confusing enough.

Now you put brain computer merging, so definition of human, what is being a human is about. It is this whole ideas is changing as well as this shifting.

I think one of the more realistic versions of brain chipping in movies is probably like Johnny Mnemonic. In Johnny Mnemonic

Hang on. That's another movie, isn't it? That's another movie.

It's actually an old book. It was turned into a movie in the 90s, but the main idea is that the main character he basically adds storage to his brain using computer chips. And So he is trying to store data on his brain to transport it from 1 group of people to another.

So the data can be saved and used to basically save humankind. But the whole idea is that you're just putting you're enhancing your brain, making yourself smarter, faster. You can hold more data in your brain and those are things that are more possible within today's realm of technology.

This is like adding storage to your computer.

Kinda of, it is really.

Adding storage space. Sometimes it's surprising to think some of these old books, old movies 20, 30years ago or even earlier that they were able to come up with all these really visionary tales, really visionary story lines. And now we can see them turning into reality in front of... yeah, really in all sorts of aspects, it's I think I'm a bit speechless in this because it's almost like we're living in a sci-fi novel.

I feel the same way the further we get into the future, the more I look back at my childhood and think I never would have believed that this would have actually been possible. I dreamt of it and I hoped it would happen, but I never really thought it would happen. And here we are, here we're getting there, we're putting chips and brains. We're just doing it.

Yeah, which is alarming to think at present a lot of the things that people think that's never gonna happen. That's so far fetched to think about going forward maybe in a few decades that will become reality.

I'm a little bit scared. I don't know if I'd want to actually put a chip in my brain, just because I know especially if you're the first gen to do it, but definitely... it's eventually you might have to.

Okay. I think we're gonna wrap up here. I think we've covered a lot of stuff, especially brain chipping really is so new. And I want to leave some of it to the advanced episode where we get more into Elon Musk’s Neurallink and what they're actually doing. This whole merging thing and also talk about this idea of transhumanism.

So if you guys have ever heard of brain chipping, brain chips, and have any comments or any questions, leave us a comment in the comment section. And thank you, Brad, for coming to the show.

No problem. See you in the next episode.

We'll see you next time. Bye

Bye. Everyone.