Can we really connect the drain to the Machines? The project of Elon Musk seen by a neuroscientist

Elon Musk board on a new project to design a cortical cord to connect the human brain to a machine. Claude Touzet, specialist of the automatic learning and biological and responsible of a laboratory in integrative neuroscience and adaptive, brings its lighting.

The discovery, at the end of March, of the existence of the draft Neuralink has already caused much ink to flow. In effect, after the autonomous cars moving all alone and rockets capable of return without hindrance on Earth, the American entrepreneur Elon Musk is attacking a any other shipyard, probably even more ambitious, since it would create a "cord cortical" to improve cognitive abilities.

At the present time, the information on Neuralink remain very succinct. We know that Neuralink was recorded last summer in California as a firm of medical research and that a few hirings were made among the specialists of the install of electrodes. Elon Musk itself is not much extravasated on the subject, referring only the project in the broad lines at a conference in January.

 Elon Musk
CC Michelle Andonian 

At the same time exciting, mysterious and complex, the subject poses for the moment more questions than it resolves. But to default to have all the answers, it is nevertheless possible to obtain a light on what is known. Lighting that Claude Touzet, Master of Conferences and responsible of the Laboratory of integrative neuroscience and adaptive in the University of Aix-Marseille wanted to bring us.

Recognizing be " Intrigued" by Neuralink and the new ambitions of Elon Musk, this specialist of the automatic learning and biological however tempers the fantasies of those who imagine already tomorrow a humanity increased. "Track of the man increased does not seem to me credible", Analysis-t-it, mainly because of some physical boundaries, especially at the level of the brain.

The track of the man increased does not seem to me to be credible

to fact, "his idea to increase the output bandwidth of the brain may seem logical, but it must be remembered that the output uses the language that is highly compressed. As well, a word vehicle a lot of information, even if it can encode each word on a number of bits reduced", we explains Claude Touzet. "The cortical cord mentioned by Elon Musk cannot do better than to transit toward the output what we believe to the speed where we believe - and it seems to me that we are already at the limit," he adds.

Then what good such a cortical cord? Claude Touzet imagine two cases of figure in the short term.

In the first, such a link would be relevant in the case" where the access to the floor is impossible", as for patients hit of the Syndrome of confinement (locked-in syndrome), a neurological condition in which an individual is awake and fully aware, with its full cognitive faculties, but in the inability to be able to move or speak, because of complete paralysis outside of the eyelids and sometimes the eyes.

 CC Airman Magazine 

 In the second, this connection could serve as an additional interface, but to what end? That is the question asked Claude Touzet: "If you want to leave your hands in pockets or if you do not want to disturb the silence", it would be useful, but still it is necessary to have the relevant uses behind. For the time being, the medical perspective is better even if the number of patients concerned remains low." In the longer term," continues the Master of Conferences, could be "Retrieve the cortical operation of a complete individual to make a copy" which could be a kind of "backup" of the brain at a given time. "The question then is whether it is possible before to know if it is desirable," he notes. However, the technical challenges are today insurmountable.

 CC Pawel Loj 

"Even using as the unit of treatment of cognition the cortical column, as I proposed in my neuronal theory of the cognition, knowing that it has approximately 100 000 neurons, it remains all the same 160 000 cortical columns in the Cortex… This is a lot! ", Analysis-t-it. "It should be a lace of 160 000 electrodes. Is this feasible? Today we are in a few tens".

But in the future, these barriers could be overcome. Claude Touzet evokes as well the hypothesis of electrodes positioning themselves all alone in the right places thanks to the progress in nanotechnology robotics," and then emitting a signal encoding the identification of each and the behavior of the column to which the nano-electrode is attached". "This is already in the field of the possible", he noted.

Existential question… and response?

"We would then have a copy real time of the operation, cortical brief we would be very close to have a digital clone of the human subject having undergone this implementation," he adds. Remains to know what will be the quality of this "copy" and to determine what it will be. At that time, we will perhaps be in hand one of the keys to better understand us.

"I support for my part that when we know to do this, we will also know what we are (the crystallization of our interactions with our environment) and that this response to our existential question (Who are we?) will revolutionize much more the world that the possibility to make a copy of the history of our interactions with the environment," concludes Claude Touzet.

Appointment In a few tens of years.