Brain-computer interface
Brain-computer interfaceiStock

Elon Musk recently demonstrated a working Neuralink brain-machine interface device implanted on a pig, reported Tesmanian. Neuralink aims to solve brain-related issues with the brain chip called ‘Link’. Musk said the device could help solve memory loss, strokes, addiction, depression, anxiety, even monitor a users’ health.

Ultimately, Musk's vision for Neuralink is for humans to merge with Artificial Intelligence (AI) – “Such that the future of the world is controlled by the combined will of the people of Earth … I think that that’s obviously gonna’ be the future that we want,” Musk stated.

Thirty-five years ago, Fusion Threshold author Ronald Sones wondered "Suppose that instead of entering information into a computer through a keyboard, a mechanism only marginally improved during the century or so since it was invented, what if we could somehow transmit information directly from our minds into computers through some kind of radio frequency link? But then further suppose that many computer users could do the same thing, and that these users were linked together through a large communications network, and that the high speed links between the computers and the users were two-way, rather than just one way?'”

Fusion Threshold author Ronald Sones spoke to Arutz Sheva about recent advances in brain-computer interface technology, and what to watch for as people's minds begin to be connected to each other using "neural hacking".

Why is your Fusion Threshold manuscript relevant especially now?

"Because now, literally every day, news items are coming out about brain-computer interface projects. Most of them, right now, have to do with Elon Musk’s Neuralink Company and their experiments with linking a pig’s brain to a computer via a direct electrical connection. But many other organizations are doing work with computers reading brain waves. For example, there are commercially available systems for allowing someone to think words and have them transmitted into a computer.

"But it appears that most of the people who discuss this publically have only a dim awareness of where the technology is leading, and evidently have no awareness of the social implications of this work, nor of how quickly these effects will take place.

"What do I mean? If we can interface a brain to a computer, we can overcome a huge stumbling block in transferring information from the brain to the computer. That is, we can free ourselves from having to use keyboards or even speech inputs to enter information into a computer.

"What’s so bad about them? Within and between computers, information is normally transferred at rates of millions or even billions of characters per second. But with a keyboard, one can enter information only at about 10 to 20 characters per second; and with speech, not much faster when accounting for pauses and the need to stop to enter punctuation. We are limited to acoustic bandwidth; that means information, at best, can be carried with media that operate at around 1000 vibrations per second, or 1000 hertz, or 1 KiloHz. Without getting into technical details, this limits the data transmission rate in characters per second to about one one-hundredth of the vibration rate.

"But with a direct brain to computer link, it becomes possible to transmit information at radio frequency bandwidths, or 1000 KiloHz (AM band) or 100,000 KiloHz (or 100 MegaHz – FM band); i.e., 10 kilo-characters per second to a mega-character per second. There’s more though: The human brain actually receives information far faster than that, through the optic nerve. In other words, we receive lots of information in the form of light through our eyes. How fast is that transmission? Light waves vibrate at a frequency of about 500 TRILLION Hz, or 500,000 gigaHz, or 5000 giga-characters per second. 'A picture is worth a thousand words'? No, a picture is worth more like a trillion words.

"Assume we can just achieve only the slower radio frequency link, then what? Well, obviously several people are going to be able to do it, and their computers will be able to interchange information with each other. That means that people will be able to converse “telepathically” with each other through their computers. Lots of commentators have thought of this, but what they don’t seem to realize is that it will be possible now for the individuals involved to transmit information among themselves at a far faster rate than they could now.

"This has tremendous implications. As time has gone on, as mentioned in my manuscript, quoting Alvin Toffler, technical developments have been coming faster and faster. A recent example: the iPhone 3G was introduced in 2008. The iPhones 4, 5, and 6 each came 2 years after each predecessor. But all of the iPhones after those have been coming every year in succession."

Ronald H. Sones
Ronald H. SonesCourtesy

"A major limiting factor in how fast technology can be developed is the speed with which the people involved in developing that technology can communicate with each other. As time has gone on, with the development of the printing press, the telegraph, the telephone, radio, video, and the Internet, this speed has steadily increased. Now, if developers will be able to communicate with each other with high speed computer aided telepathy, can you imagine how fast technological developments will come? You probably can’t. Maybe no one can. But you can bet quite a bit that it will be much faster than they come today.

"Now, as these high speed technological developments feed on each other, we are fast approaching what tekkies like to call The Singularity. What is a 'singularity'? It happens when the value of something becomes so high that it becomes meaningless to talk about it. For example, if you divide 1 by some denominator, you get a quotient. As you reduce the size of that denominator, the quotient gets larger. As the denominator gets closer and closer to zero, the quotient gets larger and larger, toward infinity. When the denominator reaches zero, that’s when a singularity occurs.

"The point here is that as brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) are developed, and people become linked together through these interfaces, the speed at which people will develop technology related to all technology fields, not just the BCIs, will increase exponentially, since all of the developments will have impact on all of the others. To me, at least, this means that this exponential increase in technology will result in the Singularity coming much faster than most people imagine – I suspect within the next 5 years.

"As a result of this singularity, what will we see? Just a small part of what will happen is that people’s minds will be connected to computers that will perform all physical operations. If you want a car, just imagine what kind of car you want, and the appropriate machines will immediately build it for you. This is but a tiny consequence of the singularity – much more is described in my manuscript, particularly with regards to all social institutions.

"But, for one thing, we will have powers which will seem god-like compared to what we have now. But, this has happened many times before. For example, imagine a Rip Van Winkle who fell asleep in the year 1500CE, and awakens today. If he could even understand electricity, the automobile, the airplane, television, the Internet, super markets, indoor plumbing, he would think that we live like gods. And likewise, the world of the Singularity will seem god-like to us, except it’s not going to take 500 years for it to happen; it will be more like 500 days.

"G-d-like indeed. In Devarim (Deuteronomy) 14:1, it says You are the children of Hashem (The L-rd), your G-d. So, don’t we expect children to grow up to resemble, at least in some ways, their parents? We’ll see."

Brain-computer interface
Brain-computer interfaceiStock