Computer Chips in Your Brain, how do you feel?

[booicu]

I saw this segment and I wasn't sure if I was excited or scared... but my feelings were urging more towards fear. I just do not know if it's a good idea to start microchipping people for better intelligence. Especially our children. Are we slowly turning ourselves in robots?

As computer geeks with a pulse on modern technology, I wanted to hear your opinion on the way future is heading. Thoughts?

Here is video:Click Here

[Agilemind]

This version is much closer to widespread availability/application because it is non-invasive and temporary so it much safer than microchips in the brain.

My concern with these things are always the fact that when we go to school we learn a lot more than just the the material of the course, which is very different from lab experiments where the environment is highly controlled so you can't accidentally learn something other than what the experimenter intends.

For instance, how would these cognitive enhancements affect bullying? Would you really want every instance of bullying stored in a kids long-term memory?

I also have concerns because much of what I learnt at school was actually how to game the system -> how to figured out what was likely to be on the test from how the teacher presents the information, how to tell teachers what they want to hear in essays, how to use particular words in the phrasing of questions to figure out which method they want me to use etc...

Cognitive enhancements just increase the ability to learn/memorize not the particular kinds of information they are learning/remembering. Also memory is not the same as understanding so even if we could download the entire history of the USA into someones brain that just means they will be really good at Quiz Shows it doesn't mean they will understand why African Americans and Native Americans are so poor & disenfranchised.

[stultuske]

"chipping people for better intelligence"?
IMHO, if you allow yourself to be "chipped" like that, you've already proven you'll never reach 'better intelligence' anyway.

the human mind and brain make quite the pair, and they do a pretty good job on their own. ok, you'll have to do some effort yourself: study, learn to think for yourself, ...

let's say you allow yourself to be chipped, for a better experience of any kind. I don't know what to think of that. do you really believe that the world will be a more beautiful place if you could see twee additional shades of green? are you truly convinced that a song recorded in 128kbps mp3 sounds that much worse than the original cd? (if you really want the good stuff there, buy the vinyl, nothing beats those small extra sounds that a lot of people just consider noise).

but most importantly: if you are chipped, can you truly say you know what that chip is doing? the technology is pretty advanced right now. twenty years ago, you could easily track a cpu's logs and actions. try that with the latest ones, especially if there are no logs, or if not everything is logged.
what would stop the manufacturer to add some "additional features" on there?
might go from relative harmless stuff, like some subliminal commercial messages (BUY YOUR NEW COCA COLA TODAY), to the really nasty stuff. (This is where the movie Gamer jumps to mind.of course, exaggerated, but that doesn't mean impossible.

if you were to install such chips, to enhance your sight/memory/... you would become dependent on them. if you have a job where you need to remember a lot of information, but never bothered to study, just "plugged in a chip", since it's easier after all, what 'll happen when that chip starts to malfunction? you risk loosing all that information, and your job, since you don't know half of what you need to know to perform your job adequately, so, you do what's human: you become desperate. I don't even want to imagine the number of people that 'll be willing to have some 'back-alley surgeon' perform a risky procedure on them, without any license, just to get a black market chip (cheaper, you know, and probably faster to get) plugged in your head, assuming this one 'll not be one of those crappy black-market ones.

being able to forget is a wonderful thing (though of course not always). it brings spontanity, or joy if a long lost memory pops back up. having our brain (functioning) the way it is, is part of what makes us human.
too bad they want to tamper with that.

[vegaseat]

I have needed this for many years.

[GrimJack]

Actually, they are chipping people who are quadroplegics - I remember back in the 90s an electrode was placed in a quadroplegic's brain and he was albe to move the cursor. It is taking off in the assistive tech world; brain controled wheel chairs. Essentially there is a whole spectrum of people who have disabilities that can be assisted by 'chipping'.

Tech enhancements will come, no doubt about it. I'm not sure if we'll become the cyborgs of popular science fiction, but sensory and motor augmentation are already here and have been for some time. Memory enhancements are exciting, but we're right to be concerned. IMO, life experiences have been diminished, if anything with our recent advances in certain fields like communications, How insular we've become, perversely, since the www and mobile tech. Will memory enhancements just make us lazy and so that we won't bother to process the information, just store it? Will we have applicable knowledge or just a data store? How much residue will be left when a store is wiped? The neurochemical basis of memory formation is not fully appreciated so we interfere with delicate balances at our peril.

[Agilemind]

How insular we've become, perversely, since the www and mobile tech.

Reminds me a lot of the Naked Sun (by Issac Asimov).

[mike_2000_17]

I'm not sure that I see the Matrix-style plug-and-play memory system as being that great. I don't think that human memory is really infinite. It compresses and loses over time.

What is much more appealing to me, with the same kind of tech described in that video, is the prospect of being able to connect to a kind of external hard-drive with recorded "memories" of certain things. For example, I work in a very multi-disciplinary engineering field, it is very hard to remember in details every equation or every concept, and I find myself looking those up constantly in books or wikis. It's just not possible to keep all that in one brain forever. If I could come in to work, plug my brain into an external storage containing all the knowledge I need in a form that can be accessed as if I remembered everything in detail, then that would be really cool and really efficient. And, I don't think that it would take away my individuality or whatever, it would probably enhance it since I don't have to fill my brain with as much technical knowledge.

But I agree with others here, this should not make school "obsolete" or something like that. It's like open-book exams, which are very common in engineering curriculums, where the focus is not on remembering, but on problem solving skills and understanding, neither of which reside within "memory". If you enhance or even replace memory, it won't change the fact that you still have a lot to learn in the ways of skills and understanding.

That's my two cents.

[deceptikon]

Are we slowly turning ourselves in robots?

You've asked this question with the implied assumption that the result is bad, which hasn't been convincingly argued. What's inherently wrong with being partially "robotic"? Until we have a basepoint for discussing the ramifications intelligently, we need to move away from irrational fears.

[mike_2000_17]

Until we have a basepoint for discussing the ramifications intelligently

We have Robocop! These were documentaries, right?

I don't see much wrong with robotic prostetics, and they are certainly coming soon. How much is too much? I don't know. And also, it is important to understand that robotics is not like in the movies, i.e., robots are not more "powerful" than humans, a typical humanoid robot is about an order of magnitude weaker than a human. Electric motors and power technology is still far from being a rival to the strength, power and agility of a human body. Movies have carried this myth that a robot like those in "I, Robot" can hit a guy and throw him 20ft in the air. In reality, current robots of that size can barely lift 10kg, and if they were to hit you with all their force, you would get, at worse, a scratch from its rough metalic edges, but the hit itself would feel that it's coming from a 5 year old kid.

[deceptikon]

How much is too much?

If we don't destroy society in the near future, I can see this question becoming more and more relevant. Barring prosthetics, it's easy to imagine technological enhancements for memory, vision, general health and wellness, strength, stamina, and survivability in harsh environments. Full dive virtual reality would also require a certain measure of invasive interfacing with the body.

How much is too much will depend greatly on ideological views, and also a consensus on when a human is no longer a human. It's doubtful there will ever be any kind of agreement, which practically guarantees strife (if not all out violence) from the different camps.

We can already see what will happen from current experience with genetic research and possibilities therein.

[G_Waddell]

We are the borg prepare to be assimilated...