[Linxing Preston Jiang] All you gotta do is just sit back and relax.
[Elise Hu] Sit back and relax!
Sit back and relax in your brain bonnet
while strobing lights come at you
at different frequencies.
We are setting out to explore the future
and we're doing it by considering human capabilities.
What will our brains and bodies be able to do
in the year 2050?
Could we be telepathic by then?
Let's find out!
This is Future You with me, Elise Hu!
When you set out to cover the future
it can be tough to decide where to start.
But we settled on the brain
because more than any other body part,
our brains make us who we are
and the next frontier of human evolution
is really focused on how to meld our biological bodies
with machines.
You know, stuff you've seen in the movies.
[Neo] I know kung fu.
[Hu] OK, so we're still a long way
from being able to download new skills
straight into our heads
but a stepping stone technology
called brain-machine interface is here
and it's a way to link our brain activity
with external devices.
Think cochlear implants for the deaf.
That's a mainstream-use case
for a brain-machine interface.
To take the science further,
one U.S. research team figured out
how to network human brains to communicate
through thought alone,
and all without invasive surgery.
They invited us to check it out, so, let's go!
This is the University of Washington in Seattle,
and this is the team at the Center for Neurotechnology
that's doing some big work
and building networks of brains.
But before we get too deep, here's a quick primer
on brain-machine or brain-computer interfaces.
Scientists first discovered
a way to read brain electricity in 1924.
Research on brain-machine interfaces
began in the 1970's when the sort of secretive
government agency DARPA got involved.
In the past 15 years,
discovery and developments in this field
have sped up considerably.
Here's how they work.
Brain-machine interfaces translate brain activity
into data that computers can use
to control software or hardware.
These interfaces are made up
of either surgically implanted chips
or wearable removable caps.
Advanced brain-machine interfaces are two-way channels,
meaning they can read and record brain activity
and stimulate it too.
Which brings us back to Dr. Rao.
Dr. Rao's team created the BrainNet,
the first non-invasive brain-to-brain-to-brain network
which they're gonna let me try by playing a game.
[Rajesh Rao] Preston, here, and Justin
are the two researchers
who will take you through the experiment.
[Hu] Here's how it works.
Three subjects are in three different rooms
playing one game a lot like Tetris.
I am playing as thought sender 1.
Kinsey is thought sender 2,
and Michael is the receiver of our thoughts.
On his end, Michael can't see the bottom row of this game,
but Kinsey and I can, so Michael relies on us
to tell him whether, yes, he should rotate the block,
or, no, don't rotate it, in order to clear the bottom row.
So just to review, Kinsey and I each signal whether to rotate
by looking at the light near 'yes' or the light near 'no.'
Michael receives our signals one at a time
through an electromagnetic pulse from this gray coil.
It targets his visual cortex,
so if Kinsey and I say, yes, rotate the block,
then Michael will perceive a glow in his visual field.
Only Michael can see it.
If we say, no, don't rotate, he perceives nothing.
Now bear in mind this experiment happens in near silence
in three separate dark rooms.
The magic really is in the mind.
OK, hit the lights. Let's do this.
OK. This is a clear do not rotate.
Do not rotate will clear this line if we don't rotate.
Yea! OK, after a false start I've become good at this.
See? We did it!
Teamwork makes the telepathic dream work!
Next, we trekked across campus to talk more with Dr. Rao.
Along the way we refueled
and met a man with a box
full of brains.
[Eric Chudler] This is actually a real human brain.
[Hu] Oh my God!
But I digress.
Just another regular day in the life of neuroscientists.
So we sat down with Dr. Rao to play in the year 2050,
brain-to-brain edition.
To play this game, we asked Dr. Rao
to give us four super scenarios for the year 2050.
First up, what's a possible superhuman capability?
[Rao] Transfer of knowledge and skills
definitely is a possibility.
If you watch the movie The Matrix, right?
Learning kung fu, for example, just by downloading it.
How'd you do in calculus? Were you great in calculus?
[Hu] No!
[Rao] OK!
[Hu] Absolutely not!
[Rao] So that's an example where
just downloading it might not be sufficient,
because you might have questions,
you know, once you've gotten that first download.
So you might want to have interactive tutoring.
So, you know, brain tutoring.
It's a brain tutoring approach.
[Hu] What about a super-villain scenario?
[Rao] There's several different ways in which it can be abused.
So, for example, you could have brain tapping, right?
Which is somebody reading your thoughts, so to say.
And then, for example, you could have
coercion going on.
So somebody could be coercing you
to do certain things that maybe you as a person
may not have wanted to do.
And then finally, I think if you were worried about computer viruses,
imagine you know somebody doing bad with a mind virus, right?
[Hu] Oh, so like malware for the brain?
[Rao] Exactly. Exactly. [Hu] Mind malware!
[Hu] What's a super-thorny issue this tech could create?
[Rao] You know, for example, the haves and have-nots.
[Hu] Right!
[Rao] I mean, it's gonna exacerbate that division between the have–
[Hu] Yeah, who gets the super brain? Who gets the regular brain?
[Rao] Exactly. Yeah.
And not only that, but, you know,
are there going to be government subsidies?
Should there be a minimal kind of
brain-computer interface that's given, right, to children?
[Hu] OK, what's most likely to happen?
[Rao] You know, instead of using your hands to type
or to use your speech,
can you actually just transfer, you know, particular words
that could be communicated directly to someone, right?
And that could sort of replace having to use the device
that you always hold in your hand.
[Hu] We aren't the only ones thinking about this.
Elon Musk started a company called Neuralink
that's trying to make an implantable brain-machine interface.
Billionaire Bryan Johnson founded Kernel,
that is trying to make the neural code programmable.
And Facebook has a project dedicated to thought-to-text–
a way for us to type a hundred words per minute
with our minds alone.
The science raises a lot of questions,
like the more minds meld with machines,
where do our biological bodies end
and machines begin?
And for me,
the ultimate question is
who will we be?
To follow along the future with us,
Future You episodes will drop each month.
And I invite you to send in
your ideas, comments, questions to me -- @elisewho --
the old-fashioned way, not telepathically.
OK, for now, bye!