So I have to jump in here and point out this is not necessarily true. Parts of our brains are attached to hardware sensors and outputs we could record and exchange with other humans theoretically. (so you could view a “video” from another person’s experience, hearing what they heard, with the same tactile sensations they felt).
This is because each signal can be mapped to a particular signal from the body, and you could essentially “translate” mappings from one person to another.
To actually do this is likely beyond the scope of neuralink, you probably would need theoretical nanotechnology based wires as you need to tap every signal from the sensory and motor homunculi, I’m just pointing out it’s possible.
For tapping our “mental voice” or “mind’s eye” it’s much, much harder—now it might be easier to surgically ablate parts of someone’s brain and replace it with a synthetic prothesis that functions in a way we can examine in a debugger—but it’s also possible.
The same idea, though—you found a “ground truth” representation for each and every nerve signal, and then you are going from [signal n] → ground truth → [signal 43432] in the other user.
The limit is that a “ground truth representation” has to exist. Hence why if a person “thinks” using essentially language tokens or translatable common emotions, we could tap that and send that to another person, but all the intermediate steps to generate those tokens can’t be send over the link...
Neuralink, while cutting edge, “merely” will have hundreds of thousands of wires at best, which is not sufficient resolution to do most of the above.
But there’s no way to route signal 43432 in one brain to signal 43432 in another brain. That’s because two brains can’t be put in one-to-one correspondence like that. It’s true that the brains of very small creatures have an exact number of neurons. You could do a one-to-one mapping between the 302 neurons in one C. elegans brain and another one. But large brains aren’t like that. Large brains are not identical in that sense.
I’m not sure what you mean by “essentially language tokens or translatable common emotions,” but as far as I know signals in brains consist of spikes traveling along axons and varying concentrations of neurochemicals in synapses.
Most humans have an inner monologue where they internally generate streams of thought in their native language. I am saying you could map those signals back to the tokens for that language. You are likely mapping many signals from different axons to tokens. Then you translate to the recipients language, then translate to the recipients representation for the same token.
Then inject it somewhere by electrically overriding target axons. It might actually feel like the injected thoughts were your own.
Getting this token mapping would take a lot of tracing of wires so to speak, it is an extremely difficult task. I am just noting it is possible.
No, it is not possible. The tokens you talk about don’t exist. We may exchange tokens with one another through speaking and writing, but those tokens do not exist internally as single physical entities in the nervous system. The internal monologue is real enough, but it consists of bunches of spikes within your nervous system.
So I have to jump in here and point out this is not necessarily true. Parts of our brains are attached to hardware sensors and outputs we could record and exchange with other humans theoretically. (so you could view a “video” from another person’s experience, hearing what they heard, with the same tactile sensations they felt).
This is because each signal can be mapped to a particular signal from the body, and you could essentially “translate” mappings from one person to another.
To actually do this is likely beyond the scope of neuralink, you probably would need theoretical nanotechnology based wires as you need to tap every signal from the sensory and motor homunculi, I’m just pointing out it’s possible.
For tapping our “mental voice” or “mind’s eye” it’s much, much harder—now it might be easier to surgically ablate parts of someone’s brain and replace it with a synthetic prothesis that functions in a way we can examine in a debugger—but it’s also possible.
The same idea, though—you found a “ground truth” representation for each and every nerve signal, and then you are going from [signal n] → ground truth → [signal 43432] in the other user.
The limit is that a “ground truth representation” has to exist. Hence why if a person “thinks” using essentially language tokens or translatable common emotions, we could tap that and send that to another person, but all the intermediate steps to generate those tokens can’t be send over the link...
Neuralink, while cutting edge, “merely” will have hundreds of thousands of wires at best, which is not sufficient resolution to do most of the above.
The sensory-motor thing might work.
But there’s no way to route signal 43432 in one brain to signal 43432 in another brain. That’s because two brains can’t be put in one-to-one correspondence like that. It’s true that the brains of very small creatures have an exact number of neurons. You could do a one-to-one mapping between the 302 neurons in one C. elegans brain and another one. But large brains aren’t like that. Large brains are not identical in that sense.
I’m not sure what you mean by “essentially language tokens or translatable common emotions,” but as far as I know signals in brains consist of spikes traveling along axons and varying concentrations of neurochemicals in synapses.
Most humans have an inner monologue where they internally generate streams of thought in their native language. I am saying you could map those signals back to the tokens for that language. You are likely mapping many signals from different axons to tokens. Then you translate to the recipients language, then translate to the recipients representation for the same token.
Then inject it somewhere by electrically overriding target axons. It might actually feel like the injected thoughts were your own.
Getting this token mapping would take a lot of tracing of wires so to speak, it is an extremely difficult task. I am just noting it is possible.
No, it is not possible. The tokens you talk about don’t exist. We may exchange tokens with one another through speaking and writing, but those tokens do not exist internally as single physical entities in the nervous system. The internal monologue is real enough, but it consists of bunches of spikes within your nervous system.
The internal monologue is real enough, but it consists of bunches of spikes within your nervous system.
Therefore you proved it is possible. Please update.