The new interface will connect the brain with the cloud already in this century
Imagine the technology of the future, which will provide instant access to world knowledge and artificial intelligence, literally at will, if you think about something specific. Communication, education, work and the world, as we know it - everything will change. An international group of scientists led by the University of California at Berkeley and the United States Institute for Molecular Production published a paper in Frontiers in Neuroscience, in which she spoke about the appearance of amazing things at the junction of nanotechnology, nanomedicine, AI and computing.
According to scientists, already in this century, a “neuro-cloud interface” (BCI) will be developed, connecting brain cells with extensive cloud computing networks in real time.
Brain nanorobots
The concept of B / CI was originally proposed by the inventor, writer and futurologist Ray Kurzweil - he suggested that neural nanorobots (the brainchild of Robert Freitas, Jr., the senior author of the study) can be used to connect the neocortex of the human brain with the "synthetic neocortex" in the cloud. Our wrinkled neocortex, or simply the “new bark”, is the freshest, smartest, and “conscious” part of the brain.
Freitas suggested that neural nanorobots will provide direct monitoring and control of signals coming in real time from and to brain cells.
“These devices could move through a person’s vascular network, cross the blood-brain barrier and move precisely between or even in brain cells,” explains Freitas. "Then they will wirelessly transfer the encoded information to the cloud-based supercomputer network and receive it from there to monitor and extract brain data in real time."
Internet thoughts
This cortex in the cloud will allow information to be loaded in the brain as in the Matrix, scientists say.
“The human B / CI system, mediated by neural nanorobotics, will be able to provide people with instant access to all the accumulated human knowledge available in the cloud, while significantly improving human learning and intelligence,” says lead author Nuno Martins.
Such technology will allow us in the future to create a “global superbrain” that could connect networks of individual human brains and AI, providing collective thinking.
“A simple experimental version of the BrainNet system has already been tested and allowed to exchange information between individual brains through the cloud,” explains Martins. “Electric signals and magnetic stimulation were used, which allowed the“ recipient ”and“ sender ”to perform joint tasks.”
“At the same time, how neuronanobotics evolves, we foresee in the future the creation of“ superbrains ”that can use the thoughts and thinking power of any number of people and machines in real time. This common “consciousness” can change the approach to democracy, strengthen empathy and ultimately unite culturally different groups into a truly global society. ”
When can we connect?
The group estimates that even existing supercomputers have the computational speed required to process the volumes of neural data in B / CI - and they are becoming faster.
Most likely, the transfer of neural data to supercomputers is likely to become the bottleneck in the development of B / CI.
“This task involves not only finding bandwidth for global data transfer,” Martins warns, “but also how to enable data exchange with neurons through tiny devices embedded deep in the brain.”
One of the solutions proposed by the authors is the use of “magnetoelectric nanoparticles” to effectively enhance the connection between neurons and the cloud.
“These nanoparticles have already been used in living mice to connect external magnetic fields with neural electric fields — that is, to detect and locally amplify these magnetic signals and, thus, allow them to change the electrical activity of neurons,” explains Martins."It works in the opposite direction: the electrical signals produced by neurons and nanorobots can be amplified through the magnetoelectric nanoparticles so that they can be detected outside the skull."
To drive these nanoparticles - and nanorobots - safely into the brain through the blood circulation will be the biggest challenge for everyone in the field of neuro-cloud interfaces. Careful analysis of the biodistribution and biocompatibility of nanoparticles will be required before they can be considered for human development. And yet, Martins is confident that the “Internet of thoughts” will become a reality by the end of the century.