In April 2019, VNN interviewed Gray Newell, son of Gabe Newell. Gray is the founder of
his own game studio, was 21 at the time of the interview, and the focus of the 90 minute
chat was on Brain Computer Interfacing, which is an exciting and… scary new technology
that companies are already experimenting with. Companies like Elon Musk’s Neuralink, and
another one you might have heard of called Valve. Which Gray knows quite a lot about
since it’s run by his Dad. Check out the full video in the description
below, this video will provide a summary of what was covered, which might help prepare
you for what is discussed in the full video, because there is a lot to take in.
WHAT IS BCI? Brain Computer Interfacing’s goal is to
read and write information directly to your brain. This bypasses primitive and limited
input devices such as mice and keyboards, and hopes to combine the strengths of man
and machine. Imagine the processing and computing power of a computer, combined with the creativity
and free will of a human being. The Matrix was brought up, and is a possibility
with this technology, but from what I gathered, it has the potential to be even more than
that, propelling those augmented with the technology towards the singularity while everybody
else is left behind and unable to find jobs. POTENTIALLY. There’s a chance that it could
do great good or harm, but right now it’s all up in the air as speculation. But the
important thing is: we need to talk about it now.
I got the impression that there is no limit to this technology- it can remedy brain damage.
It can treat PTSD. It will enable better reflexes. Control of drone swarms! It will transform
every facet of life as we know it, leading us head-first into a virtual reality where
we become less and less reliant and constrained by our fleshy, blobby bodies. We will see
what intelligence looks like once it’s stripped of the mortal coil. His words, not mine. And
those who don’t have it will be left in the dust.
In the interview there is a lot of fear, doom and gloom about the technology, but despite
that, Gray considers this technology to potentially be a net-positive for humanity. But we need
to decide NOW if it’s the direction we want to be heading in, and he thinks we need to
talk about it. People need to know that this technology isn’t just feasible- but that
it’s already being done, and that it’s further ahead than you might think. Especially
since the interview is almost 2 years old now.
WHAT DOES BCI LOOK LIKE? Brain Computer Interfaces can be performed
either from outside your head, or from inside. Inside would require an operation to install
some kind of neural link. Obviously, this is far more intrusive than a system that just
sits on top of your head, but it provides a stronger, more direct connection to your
brain. He says the benefit of this is that it enables stuff to be done sooner. In other
words, what can be done with a neural link will be possible without an invasive procedure
about 5-10 years later. But it sounds like, if you want to be on the cutting-edge of this
technology, you’re going to want something installed inside your brain via medical procedure.
WHAT IS BEING DONE WITH IT RIGHT NOW? They can already help with autism, to treat
PTSD, DID, concussion, and to help with sleep problems by using Magnetic e-Resonance Therapy,
which Gray has had himself and spends a large part of the interview talking about what it’s
like. He mentions several great success stories with the technology, like it enabling a severely
autistic person to speak, or to help a veteran with PTSD to become the man he once was again.
MER THERAPY He describes the brain as being like a table
with lots of springs stretched over it, which information travels across. Over time due
to wear and tear, concussions and drug use, these ‘springs’ can get damaged or out
of sync. MER treatment fine tunes the frequencies of these individual springs, or even the entire
table to get the brain to function better. But HOW is this fine-tuning done?
He later reveals that he goes to the Valve offices to have MER treatment done and that
it’s a ‘wildly casual’ process. After having a brain scan done, they showed him
the EEG and told him it looked like he had a concussion and pointed out all sorts of
peaks on the readings, identifying the symptoms he had been having. If you’re tired all
the time, for example, they can help with that. He then has a bunch of electrodes strapped
to his forehead to read brain activity and then to feed it back into the brain again,
quite literally ‘overclocking’ his brain, to fine-tune its frequencies and to make it
more efficient. This is done in 9 second intervals, twice a minute, across 5 half-hour sessions
a week. And each session ends with chocolate milk for him being a good boy, plus the brain
needs something because MER sessions are like workouts for it.
When it’s underway, he says he doesn’t feel it, but that it has a calming effect
on him. But then later says that it can be physically uncomfortable and can cause muscle
spasms, and that it interrupted his sleep cycle for a while. Although it can also tackle
sleep disorders. He says it’s very safe, but that the person administering it could
instantly induce a panic attack if they wanted to. And there’s a 1 in 500,000 chance of
seizures. He says that this should be available to the public within 2 years. Which means
about now.
WHAT’S NEXT? So stuff like this is already possible, but
when and how will it reach your home? Gray speculates that it may take the form of a
VR or AR headset, minus the screen. He speculates the Valve Index’s successor may have the
first components for brain-computer interfacing. Such a device would be a great opportunity
for Valve to begin collecting massive amounts of information from players’ brains as they
play games, since it’s such a controlled environment. Of course, this would all be
helped if Valve were to make some sort of game or experience for the Valve Index that
everybody wanted to play! This interview was done back in 2019, before Half Life Alyx was
announced. It sounds like he isn’t told everything
about it, and doesn’t wish to disclose some of the details he does know, but he says that,
looking at Valve and how it’s been transitioning from software to hardware, it’s clear to
him that this is becoming an increasingly logical next step for them to take. Such brain
scanning features might not even require a new device- he thinks that even the Valve
Index could have a brain scanning feature added to it in the form of a hardware plugin.
He doesn’t KNOW this, but thinks it’s pretty obvious that this is the direction
things are headed. He gives an example of how brain-computer
interfacing works: you show people a picture of a checkerboard, and it reads your brain’s
patterns to see what its reaction to that image is. The next step is to try to write
that information to your brain so that you ‘see’ the checkerboard, without actually
having seen it. This is a simple example- once they’ve got this figured then it’ll
get more elaborate, super fast. The big question is: what will this enable
us to do? And I think that IS the big question that people are trying to figure out right
now. It’s difficult to speculate about its possibilities, having not used the device.
But let’s discuss video games, since we all have a good understanding of them already.
Brain computer interfacing would enable you to control them without needing a physical
input device. You’d have better reflexes because it’s reading directly from your
brain instead of waiting for your hands to input an action. It could be used to simulate
sights, sounds… smells, even. Sensations, maybe. But even this feels like it’s underselling
what a direct link to the brain has the potential to be used for- yes, it enables new possibilities
for videogames. But it enables new possibilities for EVERYTHING! It would be great for people
with disabilities. The message I got from the interview is that we’re all effectively
disabled compared with what somebody using this technology could do. So I think really
we first need to get our minds around what our minds can do with this technology.
He says Deus-Ex like augmentations and arm upgrades are less feasible than a Matrix-like
reality, simply because there’s more demand for the latter. Like, why limit this technology
to augmenting reality when it could instead be used to create a whole new reality, with
its own rules? We need to think with portals here.
He says that it can change every facet of human life. How we buy products, how we drive,
how surgeries are performed (and where!). It would have great use in the military, effectively
giving people super-human abilities like coordinating swarms of drones. He basically says that anybody
using this technology will accelerate away from the rest of humanity.
When he says it combines the strengths of computing and the human brain, it sounds almost
like what they want from the human side of things is to be able to map out what our consciousness
is. He thinks this will come before ‘proper’ Artificial Intelligence does, but says that
they’re both approaching, share similarities, and once one of them arrives, the other will
shortly follow. He explains that technology in the future is going to look less like hardware
and more like ‘biology’ to the point where there’s no longer a dividing line between
the two things. It really sounds like this is the technology that could eventually render
our brains redundant, and as the thing that’s holding us back- if there’s even much need
for us any more once this takes off. He mentions that technology is already rendering
people obsolete. The army has a minimum IQ requirement of 84. If you have an IQ below
that, you’re screwed! And don’t look so smug, those of you with an IQ of 85. Because
that requirement’s only going to increase as machines get smarter. Rightly or wrongly,
people are already replacing experts with a google search, but ultimately we’re all
at risk of losing our jobs and uses from this and by the time we realise what’s going
on, it could already be too late. Which again, is why we should be talking about it right
now, even if it does sound like far-fetched sci-fi stuff at the moment.
But it’s coming. Gray implies he knows more about it than he’s able to speak about,
but if progress carries on as it was when he gave this interview in 2019, he gives a
rough timeline of 5 years for human prototypes, and marketable prototypes within 10. That’s
before the year 2030. SAFEGUARDS
But this can’t just get rolled out. It will need medical approval. He does briefly mention
how there would be fail-safes to prevent it from killing people or turning them into potatoes,
and says that some people will try to use this malicious purposes, like to steal information
or to plant viruses in brains, but as you can imagine, this is all wild speculation
and it’s far too soon to know the specifics. CAN this change who you are? Well, yes it
could- but that’s understating its potential. It will enable you to live free of your physical
constraints, giving you control over the chemical balance of your brain and even removing that
aspect from your intelligence entirely. Again, saying that it could ‘change you’ is underthinking
it. He worries about what the top 1% of the 1%
could do with this technology, or what companies could do if they’re given free reign to
experiment with it. It effectively gives people hax. And it benefits the companies to NOT
discuss this, since that would result in more awareness and competition. He’s HOPING that
companies will go open-source and to start talking about what they’re going to be doing,
saying that Elon has done this with his car-driving tech, so hopefully he’ll do the same with
this too. He hopes it doesn’t get to the stage where the government has to get involved
because they do a terrible job of that… but it may be necessary in this instance.
CONCLUSION In conclusion: we need to talk about it. This
is a big technology that’s speeding towards us, and we’re far from being ready to deal
with it, or to cope with its far-reaching and seemingly limitless implications.
Towards the end of the interview, it takes a turn towards the more light-hearted. Gray
mentions that he’s been playing the Witcher 3 lately and various switch games. He talks
about wanting to develop smaller games to keep his company afloat as he works towards
the ‘big’ game. He even discusses the soups available at the Valve offices.
I personally find it terrifying that he can so casually talk about what sounds like the
end of the world, before jumping straight back to discussing his favourite SMASH bros
character. I guess in a way I’m jealous that he’s on the forefront of emerging technologies
and has access to all sort of information and technology that we’re going to have
to wait a bit longer before we get our hands on. The whole video fascinating, and I strongly
recommend you check it out- the 2 years since its release have only made it MORE interesting.