Can we resurrect the dead? Researchers catalogue potential future methods
From cryonics to time travel, here are some of the (highly speculative) methods that might someday be used to bring people back to life.
22 September, 2020
Credit: Pixabay
- Alexey Turchin and Maxim Chernyakov, researchers belonging to the transhumanism movement, wrote a paper outlining the main ways technology might someday make resurrection possible.
- The methods are highly speculative, ranging from cryonics to digital reconstruction of individual personalities.
- Surveys suggest most people would not choose to live forever if given the option.
<p><span style="background-color: initial;">There's no evidence of an afterlife. But there's also no proof that our medical death needs to be the end of our subjective experience. There's no proof that death is irreversible, or immortality impossible. </span></p><p><span style="background-color: initial;">In fact, some researchers believe immortality isn't just possible, but inevitable. </span><br></p><p>Alexey Turchin, an author, life extensionist, and transhumanist researcher from Moscow, believes artificial intelligence will eventually become so powerful that humans will be able to "download" themselves — or, the quantifiable information contained in their brains — into computers and live forever. </p><p>It'll take a long time to develop that technology — anywhere from <a href="http://immortality-roadmap.com/IMMORTEN.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">100</a> to <a href="https://www.rbth.com/science-and-tech/332066-digital-immortality-turchin" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">600</a> years, according to Turchin. </p><p style="margin-left: 20px;">"The development of AI is going rather fast, but we are still far away from being able to 'download' a human into a computer," Turchin told <a href="https://www.rbth.com/science-and-tech/332066-digital-immortality-turchin" target="_blank">Russia Beyond.</a> "If we want to do it with a good probability of success, then count on [the year] 2600, to be sure."</p><p>That might be out of reach for modern humans. But downloading yourself onto a computer is just one potential route to immortality. In 2018, Turchin and Maxim Chernyakov, of the Russian Transhumanist Movement, wrote a <a href="https://www.academia.edu/36998733/Classification_of_the_approaches_to_the_technological_resurrection" target="_blank">paper</a> outlining the main ways technology might someday make resurrection — and, therefore, immortality — possible.</p>
Immortality and identity
<p>The paper defines life as a "continued stream of subjective experiences" and death as the permanent end of that stream. Immortality, to them, is a "life stream without end," and resurrection is the "continuation of that same stream of experiences after an arbitrarily long gap."</p><p>Another key clarification is the identity problem: How would you know that a downloaded copy of yourself really was going to be <em>you? </em>Couldn't it just be a convincing yet incomplete and fundamentally distinct representation of your brain?</p><p>If you believe that your copy is not <em>you</em>, that implies you believe there's something more to your identity than the (currently) quantifiable information contained within your brain and body, according to the researchers. In other words, your "informational identity" does not constitute your true identity.</p><p>In this scenario, there must exist what the researchers call a "non-informational identity carrier" (NIIC). This could be something like a "soul." It could be "qualia," which are the unmeasurable "subjective experiences which could be unique to every person." Or maybe it doesn't exist at all.</p><p>It's no matter: The researchers say resurrection, in some form, should be possible in either scenario.</p><p style="margin-left: 20px;">"If no 'soul' exist[s], resurrection is possible via information preservation; if soul[s] exist, resurrection is possible via returning of the "soul" into the new body. But some forms of NIIC are also very fragile and mortal, like continuity," the researchers noted.</p><p style="margin-left: 20px;">"The problem of the nature of human identity could be solved by future superintelligent AI, but for now it cannot be definitively solved. This means that we should try to preserve as much identity as possible and not refuse any approaches to life extension and resurrection even if they contradict our intuitions about identity, as our notions of identity could change later."</p>Potential resurrection methods
<p>Turchin and Chernyakov outline seven broad categories of potential resurrection methods, ranked from the most plausible to most speculative.<br></p><p>The first category includes methods practiced while the person is alive, like cryonics, plastination, and preserving brain tissue through processes like chemical fixation. The researchers noted that there have been "suggestions that the claustrum, hypothalamus, or even a single neuron is the neural correlate of consciousness," so it may be possible to preserve just that part of a person, and later implant it into another organism.</p><p>Other methods get far stranger. For example, one method includes super-intelligent AI that uses a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyson_sphere#:~:text=A%20Dyson%20sphere%20is%20a,percentage%20of%20its%20power%20output." target="_blank">Dyson sphere</a> to harness the power of the sun to "power enormous calculation engines" that would "reconstruct" people who collected a sufficient amount of data on their identities.</p><img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yNDQzMDc2MC9vcmlnaW4ucG5nIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTY0NDg1NjMxMn0.VSndoTKooI91UWoUYslggOh0hOcvrpkENl8r7Qr-eTs/img.png?width=980" id="41844" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="f61cef5ffbfc3fcf15f60da00940970c" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" />
Turchin
<p style="margin-left: 20px;">"The main idea of a resurrection-simulation is that if one takes the DNA of a past person and subjects it to the same developmental condition, as well as correcting the development based on some known outcomes, it is possible to create a model of a past person which is very close to the original," the researchers wrote.</p><p style="margin-left: 20px;">"DNA samples of most people who lived in past 1 to 2 centuries could be extracted via global archeology. After the moment of death, the simulated person is moved into some form of the afterlife, perhaps similar to his religious expectations, where he meets his relatives."</p><p>Delving further into sci-fi territory, another resurrection method would use time-travel technology.</p><p style="margin-left: 20px;">"If there will at some point be technology that allows travel to the past, then our future descendants will be able to directly save people dying in the past by collecting their brains at the moment of death and replacing them with replicas," the paper states.</p><p>How? Sending tiny robots back in time.</p><p style="margin-left: 20px;">"A nanorobot could be sent several billion years before now, where it could secretly replicate and sow nanotech within all living being[s] without affecting the course of history. At the moment of death, such nanorobots could be activated to collect data about the brain and preserve it somewhere until its future resurrection; thus, there would be no need for forward time travel."</p><img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yNDQzMDc2Mi9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYyNjA4MTU2Nn0.U-qXTKkiwqBK3wE4NJXrFGC7xnCwD6OCWQoqcrf54Is/img.jpg?width=980" id="50e6c" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="2080f0ee19e253c1309cad45e212e4a3" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" />
Pixabay
<p>The paper <a href="https://www.academia.edu/36998733/Classification_of_the_approaches_to_the_technological_resurrection" target="_blank">goes on to outline some more resurrection methods</a>, including ones that involve parallel worlds, aliens, and clones, along with a good, old-fashioned possibility: God exists and one day he resurrects us. </p><p>In short, it's all extremely speculative.</p><p>But the aim of the paper was to catalogue known potential ways humans might be able to cheat death. For Turchin, that's not some far-off project: In addition to studying global risks and transhumanism, the Russian researcher heads the <a href="http://immortality-roadmap.com/" target="_blank">Immortality Roadmap</a>, which, similar to the 2018 paper, outlines various ways in which we might someday achieve immortality.</p><p>Although it may take centuries before humans come close to "digital immortality," Turchin believes that life-extension technology could allow some modern people to survive long enough to see it happen. </p><p>Want a shot at being among them? Beyond the obvious, like staying healthy, the Immortality Roadmap suggests you start collecting extensive data on yourself: diaries, video recordings, DNA information, EEGs, complex creative objects — all of which could someday be used to digitally "reconstruct" your identity.</p>But odds are you're not interested. Although Turchin and other scientists are bent on finding ways to avoid death and extend life indefinitely, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2011/may/16/dying-still-taboo-subject-poll" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">surveys</a> <a href="https://quillette.com/2018/03/02/would-you-opt-for-immortality/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">repeatedly</a> <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/60-minutesvanity-fair-poll-the-afterlife/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">show</a> that most people would not opt to live forever if given the choice.
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Top 5 factors that make or break a relationship, according to AI
A new study used artificial intelligence to analyze relationship data from thousands of couples.
07 September, 2020
Credit: Pixabay
- Artificial intelligence discovered key relationship predictors in psychology study of over 11,000 couples.
- The researchers utilized machine learning to find the best predictors of relationship success and failure.
- The study showed the survival of a relationship depends more on its quality than individual characteristics of the people.
<p>Does it matter more who you love or how you love? A large machine learning study analyzed data from thousands of couples to identify which characteristics are most vital to predicting the success or failure of a relationship. Using artificial intelligence, researchers found that the individual traits of the partners had less to do with making the couple happy than the characteristics of the relationship itself.</p><p>To put it another way – the dynamic of the relationship you create, with its shared experiences and in-jokes, is more important than the specific traits of the one you are with. </p><p>Psychologist Samantha Joel from Western University in Canada led the research of 11,000 couples and 43 separate self-reported datasets – the first-ever systematic research into people's love life using AI. The couples came from the U.S., Canada, Israel, the Netherlands, Switzerland and New Zealand. </p><p>Joel put their findings in context:</p><blockquote>"Relationships-specific variables were about two to three times as predictive as individual differences, which I think would fit many people's intuitions," <a href="https://news.westernu.ca/2020/07/machine-learning-predicts-satisfaction-in-romantic-relationships" target="_blank">said Joel</a>, adding "but the surprising part is that once you have all the relationship-specific data in hand, the individual differences fade into the background."</blockquote>
<p>According to Joel, feeling good about your relationship can have profound impacts on your health and well-being, as well as productivity at work. Their team identified five predictors of relationship success:</p><p>1. <strong>Perceived Partner Commitment</strong> – the belief in your partner's full level of commitment is the most reliable predictor of the health of the relationship.</p><p>2. <strong>Intimacy / appreciation</strong> – feeling close to or being appreciated by your partner.</p><p>3. <strong>Sexual satisfaction</strong> - how satisfied the partners are with the quality of their sex life.</p><p>4.<strong> Perceived Partner Satisfaction</strong> – how happy one thinks their partners feels about the relationship.</p><p>5. <strong>Conflict</strong> - how often the partners fight.</p>
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yMzcyNzc3OS9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYxNDQxNjM4Mn0.Cf2sqP5IbZqwwpPx4T8nNNi5CusfhTGKR3U3eNxr3OQ/img.jpg?width=980" id="94848" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="47d9aa8a21a9aaeba9e09b7054e357f9" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" alt="relationship predictors graphic" />
Credit: Western University.
<p>If you notice, love figures on this list, being nearly as important as the last two items, but is not in the top position.</p><p>The most important individual differences that affect relationships were found to be satisfaction with life, negativity, depression, attachment anxiety (worrying about the relationship), and attachment avoidance (not getting too attached). Interestingly, all of these accounted for just about 21 percent of variance in the other partner's relationship satisfaction. </p>
<p><span style="background-color: initial;">Besides Joel, the study involved </span><span style="background-color: initial;">Paul Eastwick from University of California, Davis, and 84 other international scholars. "Who I am' doesn't really matter once I know 'who I am when I am with you," Eastwick <a href="https://news.westernu.ca/2020/07/machine-learning-predicts-satisfaction-in-romantic-relationships/" target="_blank">noted</a>.</span></p><p>You can read their study, which utilized the machine learning system <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Random_forest" target="_blank">Random Forests</a>, published in the <a href="https://www.pnas.org/content/117/32/19061" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.</a></p>
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Elon Musk's Neuralink successfully implanted chips in pig brains
"It's kind of like a Fitbit in your skill with tiny wires," Musk said.
29 August, 2020
Credit: Neuralink
- Neuralink is Elon Musk's company that's building brain-machine interfaces.
- The company's ultimate goal is to build an interface that connects human brains directly to computers.
- At a demonstration on Friday, Musk unveiled the company's latest progress, including that it had successfully installed its interface in the skulls of multiple pigs.
<p><br></p><p>Elon Musk's Neuralink is getting closer to its wildly ambitious goal of building a machine that links our brains to computers. This "brain-machine interface" would first be used for medical purposes, like helping paraplegics walk or treating degenerative diseases.</p><p>But the endgame is for humans to achieve "good AI symbiosis." Why? To Musk, the future of AI poses a serious existential threat to humanity, <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2018/03/13/elon-musk-at-sxsw-a-i-is-more-dangerous-than-nuclear-weapons.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">even more so than nuclear weapons</a>. So, "if you can't beat em, join em," as the tech mogul said in 2017. </p><p>Neuralink's demonstration on Friday showed it's making progress on its brain-machine interface, but still has a ways to go. Here are three highlights from the event.</p>
<span style="display:block;position:relative;padding-top:56.25%;" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="2ea6f28208bc94c38d37495bad0aeb3b"><iframe type="lazy-iframe" data-runner-src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/DVvmgjBL74w?rel=0" width="100%" height="auto" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" style="position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;"></iframe></span>
Neuralink implanted a chip inside the skull of pig
<p>At the demonstration were three pigs in pens. One pig, named Gertrude, has been living healthily for two months with the implant in its skull, according to Musk. As Gertrude snuffled around the pen, a screen displayed real-time spikes in neural activity coming from the pig's brain.<br></p><p style="margin-left: 20px;">"We have a healthy and happy pig, initially shy but obviously high energy and, you know, kind of loving life, and she's had the implant for two months," Musk said.</p><p>The coin-sized implant was read-only, meaning Gertrude wasn't using it to control any device. But the demo showed that the implant was capable of wirelessly relaying neural data to external computers. What's more, a pre-recorded video unveiled at the event showed that Neuralink was able to predict the pig's limb movements with "high accuracy" during a treadmill experiment.</p><p>Musk also said Neuralink had implanted a chip into another pig, Dorothy, and then removed it without health complications.</p><p style="margin-left: 20px;">"What Dorothy illustrates is that you can put in the Neuralink, remove it, and be healthy, happy and indistinguishable from a normal pig," Musk said.</p><img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yMzU5NjU3MS9vcmlnaW4ucG5nIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYyMDEwMDY3OH0.gD4vCG_0gO2bBMZUYghDUn7axufzU8s4AS3kMMg794U/img.png?width=980" id="11570" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="cb93fe935e1c04667a34e8e1a48b12f6" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" alt="\u200bNeuralink implant" />
Illustration of Neuralink implant.
Credit: Neuralink
Neuralink could enable people to replay memories
<p style="margin-left: 20px;">"The future is going to be weird," Musk said. "In the future you will be able to save and replay memories [...] You could basically store your memories as a backup and restore the memories. You could potentially download them into a new body or into a robot body."<br></p><p>Sound unnerving? Musk sort of agreed:</p><p style="margin-left: 20px;">"This is increasingly sounding like a Black Mirror episode," Musk said, referring to the dystopian TV show.</p>Neuralink wants robots to install the interface on humans
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yMzU5NzQyNS9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYwODE2Njg2MX0.WaiNYW31lb2_A4kzI_Ct6ykv-TpTKa9EKgPc_06zxk0/img.jpg?width=980" id="d79a9" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="72cc0cdd6547966b23a31e78c7eaa5a3" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" alt="\u200bThe location of a Neuralink implant in a human skull." />The location of a Neuralink implant in a human skull.
Credit: Neuralink / Big Think
<p>Musk said Neuralink eventually wants to use a surgical robot to install the interfaces into human skulls. Neuralink has so far used robots to implant all of its chips, but these experiments have been limited to rodents, monkeys and pigs, according to Musk.<br></p><p>Neuralink hasn't revealed how much the procedure might cost for humans in the future. Musk said it'll be "quite expensive" at first, but hopes the price will eventually drop to a few thousand dollars.</p><p>"I think it should be possible to get it similar to Lasik," he said.</p><p>Of course, Neuralink still faces many safety concerns and regulatory hurdles. But in July, the company received FDA <a href="https://www.fda.gov/regulatory-information/search-fda-guidance-documents/breakthrough-devices-program" target="_blank">Breakthrough Device designation</a>, which expedites approval for technologies "that provide for more effective treatment or diagnosis of life-threatening or irreversibly debilitating diseases or conditions."</p><p>The next major step for the company will be demonstrating that its technology works safely and effectively in humans. In 2019, Musk said he hopes to begin human testing by the end of 2020, though it's unclear whether that'll happen.</p>
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Can a robot guess what you're thinking?
It's a very human behavior—arguably one of the fundamentals that makes us us.
27 August, 2020
Photo by Andy Kelly on Unsplash
What on earth are you thinking? Other people think they know, and many could make a pretty decent guess, simply from observing your behavior for a short while.
<p>We do this almost automatically, following convoluted cognitive trails with relative ease, like understanding that Zoe is convinced Yvonne believes Xavier ate the last avocado, although he didn't. Or how Wendy is pretending to ignore Victoria because she thinks Ursula intends to tell Terry about their affair.</p><p>Thinking about what other people are thinking—also known as "mentalizing," "theory of mind," or "folk psychology"—allows us to navigate complex social worlds and conceive of others' feelings, desires, beliefs, motivations, and knowledge.</p><p>It's a very human behavior—arguably one of the fundamentals that makes us <em>us</em>. But could a robot do it? Could <a href="https://www.starwars.com/databank/c-3po/" target="_blank">C-3PO</a> or <a href="https://www.looper.com/163074/hal-in-2001-a-space-odyssey-explained/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">HAL</a> or your smartphone watch your expressions and intuit that you ate the avocado or had an affair?</p><p>A recent <a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/1907.01851" target="_blank">artificial intelligence study</a> claims to have developed a neural network—a computer program modeled on the brain and its connections—that can make decisions based not just on what it sees but on what another entity within the computer can or cannot see.</p>
<p>In other words, they created AI that can see things from another's perspective. And they were inspired by another species that may have theory of mind: chimps.</p><p>Chimpanzees live in troops with strict hierarchies of power, entitling the dominant male (and it always <a href="https://news.janegoodall.org/2018/07/10/top-bottom-chimpanzee-social-hierarchy-amazing/" target="_blank">seems to be a male</a>) to the best food and mates. But it's not easy being top dog—or chimp. The dominant male must act tactically to maintain his position by jostling and hooting, forming alliances, grooming others, and sharing the best scraps of colobus monkey meat.</p><p>Implicit in all this politicking is a certain amount of cognitive perspective-taking, perhaps even a form of mentalizing. And subordinate chimps might use this ability to their advantage.</p>
<p>In 2000, primatologist Brian Hare and colleagues <a href="https://evolutionaryanthropology.duke.edu/sites/evolutionaryanthropology.duke.edu/files/site-images/Hare%20et%20al_%202000_%20Chimpanzees%20know%20what%20conspecifics%20do%20and%20do%20not%20see.pdf" target="_blank">garnered experimental evidence</a> suggesting that subordinate chimps know when a dominant male is not looking at a food source and when they can sneak in for a cheeky bite.</p><p>Now computer scientists at the University of Tartu in Estonia and the Humboldt University of Berlin <a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/1907.01851" target="_blank">claim to have developed</a> an artificially intelligent chimpanzee-like computer program that behaves in the same way.</p><p>The sneaky subordinate chimp setup involved an arena containing one banana and two chimps. The dominant chimp didn't do much beyond sit around, and the subordinate had a neural network that tried to learn to make the best decisions (eat the food while avoiding a beating from the dominant chimp). The subordinate knew only three things: where the dominant was, where the food was, and in which direction the dominant was facing.</p><p>In addition, the subordinate chimp could perceive the world in one of two ways: egocentrically or allocentrically. Allocentric chimps had a bird's-eye view of proceedings, seeing everything at a remove, including themselves. Egocentric chimps, on the other hand, saw the world relative to their own position.</p><p>In the simplest experimental world—where the dominant chimp and the food always stayed in the same place—subordinate chimps behaved optimally, regardless of whether they were allocentric or egocentric. That is, they ate the food when the dominant wasn't looking and avoided a beating when it was.</p>
<p>When things became a little more complicated and the food and/or dominant chimp turned up in random places, the allocentric chimps edged closer to behaving optimally, while the egocentric chimps always performed suboptimally—languishing away, hungry or bruised.</p><p>But the way the AI simulation was set up meant the egocentric chimp had to process 37 percent more information than the allocentric one and, at the same time, was constrained by its egocentric position to perceive less about the world. Perhaps the lesson is: Omniscience makes life easier.</p><p>The computer scientists admit that their computer experiment "is a very simplified version of perspective-taking." How the AI-chimp perceives and processes information from its simplified digital world doesn't come close to capturing the complexity of real chimps eyeing up real bananas in the real world.</p><p>It's also unlikely that the AI-chimp's abilities would generalize beyond pilfering food to other situations requiring perspective-taking, such as building alliances or knowing when it's safe to sneak off into the virtual bushes for romantic escapades.</p>
<p>So, might artificially intelligent computers and robots one day develop theory of mind? The clue is in the term: They'd surely need minds of their own first. But then, what kind of mind?</p><p>Across the animal kingdom, a variety of minds have evolved to solve a swath of social problems. Chimpanzees are savvy in an aggressively political and competitive way. Crows are clever in their ability to fashion twig tools, <a href="https://www.livescience.com/52716-crows-ravens.html" target="_blank">attend funerals</a> to figure out what killed a compatriot, and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QIWaXqiWekM" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">team up to bully cats</a>.</p><p>Octopuses <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JOV-DlxTiFU" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">are intelligent</a> in their skill at escaping from closed jars and armoring themselves with shells. Dogs are brainy in their knack for understanding human social gestures like pointing and acting so slavishly cute we'd do anything for them. Humans are smart in a landing-on-the-moon-but-occasionally-electing-fascists way.</p><p>When it comes to theory of mind, some evidence suggests that chimps, bonobos, and orangutans <a href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/chimps-may-be-capable-of-comprehending-the-minds-of-others/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">can guess</a> what humans are thinking, that elephants <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-elephants-unique-brain-structures-suggest-about-their-mental-abilities-100421" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">feel empathy</a>, and that ravens can <a href="https://www.newscientist.com/article/2076025-ravens-fear-of-unseen-snoopers-hints-they-have-theory-of-mind/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">predict the mental states</a> of other birds.</p><p>Minds that have evolved very separately from our own, in wildly different bodies, have much to teach us about the nature of intelligence. Maybe we're missing a trick by assuming artificial intelligences with a theory of mind must be humanlike (or at least primate-like), as appears to be the case in much of the work to date.</p>
<p>Yet developers are certainly modeling artificial intelligence after human minds. This raises an unsettling question: If artificial, digital, sociable minds were to exist one day, would they be enough like a human mind for us to understand them and for them to understand us?</p><p>Humans readily anthropomorphize, projecting our emotions and intentions onto other creatures and even onto robots. (Just <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4PaTWufUqqU" target="_blank">watch these poor machines</a> and see how you feel.) So perhaps this wouldn't be much of an issue on our side. But there's no guarantee the AIs would be able to feel the same way.</p><p>This might not be so bad. Our relationship with AIs could end up mirroring our relationship with another famously antisocial creature. We shout at our cats to stop scratching the sofa when there's a perfectly good catnip-infused post nearby, as the baffled beasts vaingloriously meow back at us. We are servile to them and have delusions of our own dominance, while they remain objects of mysterious fascination to us. We look at them and wonder: <em>What on earth are you thinking?</em></p><p>Reprinted with permission of <a href="https://www.sapiens.org/column/machinations/theory-of-mind/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Sapiens</a>. Read the <a href="https://www.sapiens.org/column/machinations/theory-of-mind/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">original article</a>.</p>
<a href="https://www.sapiens.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/03_12561660_32a4fbfc3f_h_compressed.jpg" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"></a>
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Humans could merge with AI through this specialized polymer
Scientists are seeking ways to safely connect computers to the brain.
18 August, 2020
Pixabay
- Companies are developing brain-machine interfaces that aim to connect humans to computers.
- One major challenge is finding materials that can accomplish this without damaging human tissue.
- At a recent event, a team of researchers presented a specialized version of a polymer that could someday make brain-machine interfaces safer and more effective.
<p>Elon Musk's Neuralink has a straightforward <a href="https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1281121339584114691?lang=en" target="_blank">outlook</a> on artificial intelligence: "If you can't beat em, join em." The company means that quite literally — it's building a device that aims to connect our brains with electronics, which would enable us, in theory, to control computers with our thoughts.</p><p>But how? What material would companies like Neuralink use to connect electronics with human tissue?</p><p>One potential solution was recently revealed at the American Chemical Society's Fall 2020 Virtual Meeting & Expo. A team of researchers from the University of Delaware presented a new biocompatible polymer coating that could help devices better fuse with the brain.</p><p>One major problem with implanting any kind of device into the body is scarring. Materials like gold, silicon, and steel tend to damage tissue when implanted. That's why David Martin, an associate dean at the University of Delaware's College of Engineering, and his colleagues have spent years studying a polymer called poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene), or PEDOT. </p>
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yMzU2NDU4MS9vcmlnaW4ucG5nIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYwMzU4NTI0MH0.DlnTFJQvvFvbU55awd8F6MBVtlkSsxbsZfQLi-ymW5U/img.png?width=980" id="b0044" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="36589fc0ed02c7d83e72036de8ef9408" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" alt="Brain-machine interface" />
Neuralink prototype device
<p style="margin-left: 20px;">"We started looking at organic electronic materials like conjugated polymers that were being used in non-biological devices," Martin said in a <a href="https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2020-08/acs-tc072820.php" target="_blank">press release</a>. "We found a chemically stable example that was sold commercially as an antistatic coating for electronic displays."<br></p><p>PEDOT has already helped to improve the performance of medical implants, by lowering impedance without causing excessive scarring. Martin and his colleagues have been working on specializing PEDOT to allow for unique functions. Recently, the team added an antibody to the polymer that can detect when blood vessel growth hormones are attacked by a tumor — a technology that could serve as a breakthrough diagnostic tool in the future.</p><p style="margin-left: 20px;">"Name your favorite biomolecule, and you can in principle make a PEDOT film that has whatever biofunctional group you might be interested in," Martin told <a href="https://www.inverse.com/innovation/integrating-electronics-with-the-body-study" target="_blank">Inverse</a>.</p><span style="display:block;position:relative;padding-top:56.25%;" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="c4b924e1a5bc4fce1b2cf7b7ac2b0fe9"><iframe type="lazy-iframe" data-runner-src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/lA77zsJ31nA?rel=0" width="100%" height="auto" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" style="position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;"></iframe></span><p>By tweaking polymer coatings in similar ways, scientists like Martin could help to advance the field of brain-machine interfaces. The team hopes to next research how these specialized polymers behave in living organisms.</p><p style="margin-left: 20px;">"Recently there have been a number of big players like Glaxo Smith Kline and Elon Musk's Neuralink get into the game; the technology is now rapidly evolving and it is clear there are going to be some remarkable future developments," Martin said. "The ability to do the polymerization in a controlled way inside a living organism would be fascinating."</p>
<p>As for Neuralink, Musk said the company would issue an update this month. Company spokespeople have <a href="https://www.technologyreview.com/2019/07/17/238818/elon-musks-neuralink-says-its-nearly-ready-for-the-first-human-volunteers/#:~:text=Elon%20Musk's%20Neuralink%20says%20it's%20nearly%20ready%20for%20the%20first%20human%20volunteers,-Category%3A&text=During%20an%20event%20in%20San,brain%20to%20detect%20neuron%20activity." target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer dofollow">said</a> the technology's first applications will be for medical purposes.</p>
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