To hack the human brain: a Grand plan of Brian Johnson

In a typical hospital in Los Angeles, a young woman named Lauren Dickerson waits for his chance to make history. She was 25 years old, and she's an assistant high school teacher, with kind eyes and computer cables that look like futuristic dreadlocks of bandages wrapped around her head. Three days ago, the neurosurgeon drilled eleven holes in her skull, placed eleven wire with vermeshelyu in her brain and connected the wires to a network of computers. Now she is confined to bed, with plastic tubes attached to her hand, and medical monitors tracking her vitals. She tries not to move.

In the house are always Packed. Film crew preparing to document the events of the day, and two separate teams of specialists are prepared to work medical examiners of the elite of the center of neurology at the University of southern California and scientists from the technology companies Kernel. The doctors are looking for a method of treating seizures Dickerson, which, in principle, was controlled by a regime of medication for epilepsy until last year, then went out of control. Leads they need to find in the brain Dickerson the source of her seizures. Scientists from the Kernel here for a different reason: they work for Brian Johnson, a 40-year-old technoprogressives, who sold his business for $ 800 million, and decided to devote himself to an incredibly ambitious goal: he wants to take control of evolution and create the best man. And to do that he wants at the expense of creating a "neuroprosthesis", a device that will allow us to learn faster, retain more, to evolve in conjunction with artificial intelligence unlock the secrets of telepathy and maybe even connect in group consciousness. He would also like to find a way to download skills like martial arts like in the Matrix. And he wants to sell his invention to the mass market at bargain prices, to make the product available to all, not just elites.

Everything he has now, is the algorithm on the hard disk. When he describes neuroprotective reporters and auditory at conferences, he often uses many familiar expression "a chip in my brain", but he knows that will never sell a product mass market, which requires drilling holes in the skulls of people. Instead, the algorithm will eventually be connected to the brain by using several non-invasive interfaces that are being developed by scientists around the world, from tiny sensors that can be injected into the brain, to genetically modified neurons that can wirelessly transmit information. All of the proposed interfaces, yet remain dreams or will appear in many years, so he currently uses wire that is attached to the hippocampus Dickerson, to solve an important problem: what to tell the brain when you are connected to it.

It is because of this need the algorithm. Wire embedded in the head Dickerson, will record the electrical signals that neurons Dickerson send each other during simple memory tests. Then these signals will be downloaded to your hard drive, where the algorithm converts them into digital code that can be evaluated and expanded or rewritten — with the aim of improving memory of the patient. The algorithm then translate the code back into electrical signals and sent to the brain. If it will help her remember a few images of the memories that she acquired while collecting data, scientists will know that the algorithm works. Then they will try to do the same thing with the memories that have accumulated over time, this has never been done. If two of these test work, they will grope my way to the deciphering patterns and processes that create memories.

Although other scientists use similar methods to solve problems easier, Johnson is the only one who tries to make commercial a neurologic product that can improve memory. After a few minutes it will hold its first human trials. This will be the first human trial of commercial prosthetic memory. "Historic day," Johnson said. "I am incredibly excited".

Outside it was 30 Jan 2017.

Then one would think that Johnson — another dunce with money, dreaming of the impossible. So I thought, and John Richardson from Wired, who had the honor to visit the experimental chamber Johnson. As says Richardson, Johnson looked like a typical California guy, ordinary jeans, trainers and a t-shirt, full of boyish enthusiasm. His wild statement about "reprogramming the operating system of the world" seemed completely stupid.

But you'll soon realize that this casual style is just a disguise, wishful thinking. Like many successful people, sometimes outstanding, and divorced from reality, Johnson has infinite energy and the distributed intelligence of the octopus was one tentacle holds the phone, another for the laptop, and the third looking for the best way for evacuation. When he talks about his neuroprotection, tentacles together and shrink until you turn blue.

Is the $ 800 million that PayPal has rolled for Braintree, a company for processing online payments, which Johnson created in the age of 29 years and sold when he was 36. And 100 million dollars, which he invests in the Kernel, which will be involved in this project. Decades of animal testing that reinforces his fantastic ambitions: scientists have learned how to restore memories, lost in connection with damage to the brain, to implant false memories, to control the movement of animals by the power of human thought to control appetite and aggression to cause feelings of pleasure and pain, even how to send signals from the brain of one animal to another thousands of miles away.

Johnson is dreaming about this is not alone — at the time Elon Musk and mark Zuckerberg was about ready to explain about their projects on hacking the brain, DARPA has passed a long way, and China and other countries, of course, develop their own projects. But, unlike Johnson, they did not invite reporters in a hospital ward.

This is the essence of public speaking Mask on his project:

the
1. He wants to connect our brains to computers with mysterious devices — the "neural lace"
the
2. the Name of the company that will do it, – Neuralink

The conference F8, held last spring, we learned something about what Zuckerberg does at Facebook:

the
1. Project until recently was controlled by Regina Dugan, former Director DARPA and the group of advanced Google technologies
the
2. Command works in Building 8, research laboratory Zuckerberg, which has been unusual projects
the
3. They are working on non-invasive "brain-computer text-to-speech interface" that uses "optical imaging" to read the signals of neurons as they form the words, finds a way to convert these signals into the code and then sends to the computer
the
4. If possible, we will be able to print 100 words per minute just by the power of thought

As for DARPA, we know that some of her projects are improvements to existing technologies, and some — like interface, which will accelerate the training of the soldiers seem too futuristic, according to Johnson. But we don't know much. It only remains for Johnson. And he does it because he believes that the world needs to be ready for what is to come.

However, all these ambitious plans face the same obstacle: the brain is 86 billion neurons, and no one understands how they work. Scientists have done remarkable progress, revealing and even manipulating neural circuits behind the elementary functions of the brain, but things like imagination and creativity — and memory — are so complex that all neuroscientists in the world can never solve. Here's what he said about the plans of Johnson John Donohue, Director of the Center for bio and neuroengineering Vissa in Geneva: "I am careful. Like if I asked you to translate anything from Swahili to Finnish. You will try to translate the language of one unknown to another unknown language." And if that's not enough, he adds, all the tools used in the study of the brain, a primitive like "two paper cups connected by wire." Johnson has no idea 100, 100 000 or 10 billion neurons control complex functions of the brain. What codes they use for communication. And the years or decades it will take to parse these mysteries, if not more, and if they will be able to resolve. In addition, he has absolutely no scientific background. He should start with the old jokes of neuroscientists: "If the brain was simple enough for our understanding, we would be too stupid to understand."

You do Not need to be a telepath to know what you're thinking: what could be worse than the biggest dreams of optimists from the world of technology? Their schemes achieve eternal life and floating in space libertarian nation — no better than teenage fantasies; they are the digital revolution, it seems, will destroy more jobs than it creates, and the fruits of their scientific inspirers, it seems, is also not particularly encouraging. "Meet! From the creators of nuclear weapons!".

But Johnson's motives are rooted in a deep and surprisingly gentle place. Born in a devout Mormon community in Utah, he learned a complicated set of rules that is still so vivid in his mind, what he gave them in the first minutes of our first meeting: "If you're baptized at age 8, point. If you entered the priesthood at the age of 12 years, point. If you are avoiding pornography, point. Avoid Masturbation? Point. Go to Church on Sundays? Point". Award for the highest score was heaven, where obedient Mormon reunited with their loved ones and were awarded limitless creativity.

When Johnson was four years old, his father left the Church and divorced mother. Johnson omits the painful details, but GOV...