In a typical Los Angeles hospital, a young woman named Lauren Dickerson is waiting for her chance to make history. She is 25 and a high school teacher's assistant, with kind eyes and computer cables like futuristic dressing dreadlocks wrapped around her head. Three days ago, a neurosurgeon drilled eleven holes in her skull, placed eleven noodle-sized wires in her brain, and connected the wires to a network of computers. She is now bedridden, with plastic tubes attached to her arm and medical monitors that track her vital signs. She tries not to move.
There is nowhere for an apple to fall in the ward. A film crew prepares to document the day's events, and two separate teams of specialists prepare to go - medical experts from an elite neurology center at the University of Southern California and scientists from the technology company Kernel. Doctors are looking for a way to treat Dickerson's seizures, which, in principle, were controlled through a regimen of epilepsy medication until last year, after which they got out of control. They need the wires to find the source of her seizures in Dickerson's brain. The Kernel scientists are here for a different reason: they work for Brian Johnson, a 40-year-old tech entrepreneur who sold his $ 800 million business and decided to devote himself to an incredibly ambitious goal: He wants to take control of evolution and create a better person. And he wants to do this by creating a "neuroprosthesis", a device that will allow us to learn faster, remember more, evolve together with artificial intelligence, reveal the secrets of telepathy and, perhaps, even unite into a group consciousness. He would also like to find a way to load skills like martial arts like in The Matrix. And he also wants to sell his invention on the mass market at bargain prices so that the product is available to everyone, not just the elites. And he also wants to sell his invention on the mass market at bargain prices so that the product is available to everyone, not just the elites. And he also wants to sell his invention on the mass market at bargain prices so that the product is available to everyone, not just the elites.
All he has now is an algorithm on his hard drive. When he describes neuroprosthetics to reporters and auditors at conferences, he often uses the familiar expression "a chip in the brain," but he knows he will never sell a mass market product that requires drilling holes in people's skulls. Instead, the algorithm will ultimately be connected to the brain using several non-invasive interfaces that are being developed by scientists around the world, from tiny sensors that can be injected into the brain to genetically altered neurons that can wirelessly transmit information. All the proposed interfaces are still dreams or will appear in many years, so he currently uses wires attached to Dickerson's hippocampus to solve an important problem: what to say to the brain,when you connect to it.
This is what an algorithm is needed for. Wires embedded in Dickerson's head will record electrical signals that Dickerson's neurons send to each other during simple memory tests. These signals will then be loaded onto the hard drive, where an algorithm converts them into digital code that can be analyzed and expanded - or rewritten - to improve the patient's memory. The algorithm will then translate the code back into electrical signals and send it to the brain. If this helps her remember several images from the memories she acquired during the data collection, scientists will know that the algorithm works. Then they will try to do the same with memories that have accumulated over time, something no one else has done. If these two tests work, they will find a way to decipher patterns and processes,that create memories.
While other scientists use similar methods to solve simpler problems, Johnson is the only one trying to make a commercial neurological product that can improve memory. In a few minutes, he will conduct his first human trials. This will be the first human trial of a commercial memory prosthesis. “A historic day,” Johnson says. “I'm incredibly excited.”
It was in the yard on January 30, 2017.
Then one might think that Johnson was just another goof with money, dreaming of the impossible. So did John Richardson of Wired, who had the privilege of visiting Johnson's experimental room. According to Richardson, Johnson looked like an ordinary Californian man, in ordinary jeans, sneakers and a T-shirt, full of boyish enthusiasm. His wild claims about "reprogramming the world's operating system" seemed downright dumb.
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But you'll soon realize that this casual style is just a disguise, wishful thinking. Like many successful people, sometimes outstanding and out of touch with reality, Johnson has the infinite energy and distributed intelligence of an octopus - one tentacle is holding on to the phone, another to the laptop, the third is looking for the best escape route. When he talks about his neuroprosthetics, the tentacles combine and contract until you turn blue.
And then there's that $ 800 million that PayPal dumped for Braintree, an online payment processing company that Johnson started at age 29 and sold when he was 36. And the $ 100 million he's investing in Kernel, which will do it project. And decades of animal testing underpinning his fantastic ambitions: Scientists have learned how to restore memories lost due to brain damage, implant false memories, control animal movements with the power of human thought, control appetite and aggression, induce feelings of pleasure and pain, even how send brain signals from one animal to another thousands of miles away.
Johnson does not dream of this alone - at that moment Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg were almost ready to explain about their own brain-hacking projects, DARPA had already come a long way, and China and other countries undoubtedly developed their own projects. But unlike Johnson, they did not invite reporters to hospital wards.
Here's the gist of Musk's public appearances on his project:
1. He wants to connect our brains to computers using a mysterious device - "neural lace"
2. The name of the company that will do this is Neuralink
Thanks to the F8 conference last spring, we learned a thing or two about what Zuckerberg is doing on Facebook:
1. The project was until recently controlled by Regina Dugan, the former director of DARPA and the advanced technologies group of Google
2. The team works at Building 8, Zuckerberg's research laboratory, which deals with unusual projects
3. They are working on a non-invasive "neurocomputer text-speech interface" that uses "optical imaging" to read neuron signals as they form words, finds a way to convert these signals into code, and then sends them to the computer.
4. If it works, we can "type" 100 words per minute just by the power of thought
As for DARPA, we know that some of its projects are improvements to existing technologies, and some - like an interface that will accelerate the training of soldiers - seem too futuristic, according to Johnson. But we don't know a lot. Only Johnson remains. And he does this because he believes the world must be ready for what is to come.
However, all of these ambitious plans face the same obstacle: there are 86 billion neurons in the brain, and no one understands how they work. Scientists have made amazing progress in uncovering and even manipulating the neural circuits behind the simplest brain functions, but things like imagination and creativity - and memory - remain so complex that all neuroscientists in the world may never figure them out. John Donoghue, director of the Wyss Center for Bioengineering in Geneva, said about Johnson's plans: “I'm careful. As if I asked you to translate something from Swahili into Finnish. You will try to translate one unknown language into another unknown language. " And if that's not enough, he adds, all the tools that are used in brain research are as primitive as "two paper cups connected by a wire."Johnson has no idea if 100, 100,000, or 10 billion neurons control complex brain functions. What codes do they use to communicate. And it will take years or decades to sort out these mysteries, if not more and if they can be solved at all. In addition, he has absolutely no scientific background. He should start with an old joke from neuroscientists: "If the brain were simple enough for us to understand, we would be too dumb to understand."we would be too dumb to understand it. "we would be too dumb to understand it."
You don't need to be a telepath to find out what you are thinking now: what could be worse than the big dreams of optimists from the world of technology? Their schemes for achieving eternal life and libertarian nations floating in space are no better than teenage fantasies; their digital revolutions appear to be destroying more jobs than they are created, and the fruits of their scientific masterminds do not seem particularly encouraging either. “Meet! From the creators of nuclear weapons!"
But Johnson's motives are rooted in a deep and surprisingly tender place. Born into a devout Mormon community in Utah, he learned a complex set of rules that are still so vivid in his mind that he betrayed them in the first minutes of our first meeting: “If you're baptized at age 8, a point. If you entered the priesthood at age 12, point. If you avoid pornography, point. Avoiding masturbation? Point. Do you go to church on Sundays? Point . The reward for the highest score was heaven, where the obedient Mormon was reunited with his loved ones and rewarded with limitless creativity.
When Johnson was four years old, his father retired from church and divorced his mother. Johnson omits painful details, but says his father told him that his loss of faith led to long-term drug and alcohol use, and his mother was so overwhelmed that Johnson went to school in his homemade pajamas. His father recalls letters that Johnson began sending him at the age of 11, one a week. "He always found a way to say 'I love you, I need you' in different ways."
Johnson was a believer when he graduated from high school and went to Ecuador for his mission, in the old Mormon tradition. He prayed and gave hundreds of speeches about Joseph Smith, but he became more and more ashamed of trying to convert sick and hungry children with promises of a better life in heaven. Wouldn't it be better to ease their suffering here on earth?
“Brian came back different,” his father says.
He soon assigned himself a new mission. His sister remembers the exact words: "He said he wants to be a millionaire by the age of 30, so that he can use these resources and change the world."
He first got his degree from Brigham Young University, then he sold cell phones to pay for his tuition, and he swallowed every book that promised progress. An indelible impression was left by "Endurance", the story of Ernest Shackleton about the trip to the South Pole - if pure courage allowed a person to overcome so many difficulties, it would be worth believing in pure courage. He married a "good Mormon girl", fathered three Mormon children, and went to work as a salesman to provide for them. He won the Best Seller of the Year award and started a business that fell apart - which convinced him to pursue a business degree from the University of Chicago.
Released in 2008, he stayed in Chicago and launched Braintree, honing his image of a world-conquering Mormon entrepreneur. By then, his dad had quit and openly shared his problems, and Johnson saw his dying dad behind an impenetrable wall. He could not sleep, ate like a wolf and suffered from terrible migraines, trying to fight back with useless drugs: antidepressants, dietary supplements, energy drinks and even blindly obeying the rules of his church.
In 2012, at the age of 35, Johnson hit rock bottom. In his sadness, he remembered Shackleton, and the last hope descended on him: maybe he can find the answer through painful trials. He was planning a trip to Mount Kilimanjaro, and on the second day of the ascent he had a stomach ache. On the third day, altitude sickness appeared. When he finally reached the top, he collapsed powerlessly, in tears, and had to be carried on a stretcher. It's time to reprogram his operating system.
As Johnson himself says, he began by abandoning the pose of the conqueror of the world, which hid his weakness and doubts. And while this whole story may seem overly dramatized, especially since Johnson still displays the image of an entrepreneur who conquers the world, in reality it was so: over the next year and a half, he divorced his wife, sold Braintree and severed his last ties with the church. … To prevent the situation from hitting the children hard, he bought a house nearby and visited them almost daily. He knew he was repeating the mistakes of his father, but he saw no other option: he was going to either die or start living the life he always wanted.
He reverted to the promise he made on his return from Ecuador, first experimenting with a volunteer initiative in Washington, and after its inevitable demise, with a quantum leap venture fund that sponsors companies that invent futuristic products like silicon chips that mimic human organs. But even if all these quantum leaps ended up landing, they wouldn't change the world's operating system.
Finally, a Big Idea dawned on him: if the root of humanity's problems stems from the human mind, the mind needs to be changed.
Fantastic things were happening in neuroscience. Some of them were in tune with miracles from the Bible - with the help of prostheses, controlled by the power of thought, and microchips connected to the visual cortex, scientists taught the lame to walk and the blind to see. At the University of Toronto, neurosurgeon Andres Lozano has slowed and, in some cases, reversed the cognitive impairment of Alzheimer's patients using deep brain stimulation. At a New York City hospital, neurotechnologist Gervin Schalke asked computer engineers to record a picture of the activity of auditory neurons in people listening to Pink Floyd. When the engineers transformed these pictures back into sound waves, they produced a single that sounded exactly like 'Another Brick in the Wall'. At the University of Washington, two professors in different buildings played a video game together using electroencephalographic caps,which transmitted electrical impulses: when one professor thought about firing digital cartridges, another felt the impulse and pressed the "Fire" button.
Johnson also heard about biomedical engineer Theodore Berger. Over the course of 20 years of research, Berger and his collaborators have developed a neuroprosthesis to improve memory in rats. When he began testing the neuroprosthesis in 2002, it looked quite plain - a slice of a rat brain and a computer chip. But the chip contained an algorithm that could transform the patterns of neuron activity into a kind of Morse code that matched actual memories. Nobody had done this before and some were even horrified - just think, reduce our precious thoughts to zero and one! Prominent medical ethics have warned that Berger should not play with our sense of personality. But the implications were enormous: if Berger could convert the language into code, he could figure out how to fix the piece of code associated with neurological diseases.
In rats, as in humans, patterns of neuronal activation in the hippocampus generate a signal or code that the brain somehow perceives as long-term memory. Berger taught a group of rats to perform a task and studied the generated code. He found that rats memorize a task better when neurons send a "strong code" - he compared it to a radio signal: at a quiet volume, you do not hear all the words, but if you increase it, you can make out everything. Then he studied the difference in codes generated by rats when they tried to do something right and when they forgot. In 2011, in a breakthrough experiment on rats trained to lift a lever, he demonstrated that he could write memory codes, feed them to an algorithm, and then send more powerful codes into rat brains. When he finished, the rats who forgot how to lift the leversuddenly remembered.
Five years later, Berger was still looking for the support he needed to carry out human trials. That's when Johnson came along. In August 2016, he announced that he was investing $ 100 million to create Kernel and that Berger would join the company as Chief Scientist. After hearing of the plans of the University of Southern California to implant wires in Dickerson's brain to combat her epilepsy, Johnson turned to Charles Liu, head of the prestigious department of neurorecovery at the University of Southern California School of Medicine and chief physician of Dickerson's trials. Johnson asked for permission to test the algorithm on Dickerson when Liu plugged the wires into it - without disturbing Liu, in between his work sessions, of course. As it turned out, Liu also dreamed of enhancing human capabilities with technology. He helped Johnson get Dickerson's approval and convinced the university's research council to approve the experiment. By the end of 2016, Johnson was greenlit. He was ready to begin the first human trial.
Meanwhile, in her room, Dickerson awaits the start of the experiment, and a reporter for Wired asks her how it feels to be a laboratory rat.
"Since I'm already here, I could do something useful."
Useful? Dreams of superman cyborgs again? "You know he's trying to make people smarter, right?"
“Isn't that cool?” She replies.
Going to the computers, he asks one of the scientists about the multicolored grid on the screen. “Each of these squares is an electrode that is in her brain,” he says. Each time a neuron near a wire is fired, a pink line enters the corresponding cell.
Johnson's team is going to start with simple memory tests. “You will be shown the words,” the scientist explains to her. “Then some math problems will arise to make sure you are not rehearsing words in your mind. Try to memorize as many words as you can."
One of the scientists hands Dickerson a computer tablet, and everyone is silent. Dickerson looks at the screen, absorbing the words. A few minutes after a math problem confuses her thoughts, she tries to remember what she read. "Smoke … egg … dirt … pearls …".
Then they try to do something more difficult, with the sequence of memories. As one of the Kernel scientists explains, they cannot collect much data from wires connected to 30 or 40 neurons. An individual face will not be too difficult to obtain, but it will be impossible to gather enough data to reproduce memories that would be like a scene in a movie.
Sitting on the edge of Dickerson's bed, the Kernel scientist is challenging. "Tell us, when was the last time you went to a restaurant?"
“It was five or six days ago,” Dickerson says. “I was at a Mexican restaurant in Mission Hills. We ate chips and salsa."
He continues. While she retrieves other memories, another Kernel scientist puts on headphones connected to a computer. “At first I heard a whistle. After 20-30 seconds I heard a pop."
“It was a neuron activated,” he says.
As Dickerson continues his story, the reporter listens to the mysterious language of the brain, short claps that move our legs and activate our dreams. She recalls the trip to Kosco, the last rain, and the sounds of Kosko and rain play through her headphones.
As Dickerson's eyelids begin to drop, the doctors say she has had enough, and Johnson's men begin to gather. Over the next few days, their algorithm will turn Dickerson's synaptic activity into code. If the codes they send back to Dickerson's brain make her brain dip a couple of chips in salsa, Johnson will be one step closer to reprogramming the world's operating system.
After two days of frantic coding, Johnson's team returns to the hospital to send a new code to Dickerson's brain. And then a message comes in: everything is of course. The experiment was put on an "administrative pause". The only reason the University of Southern California was able to present later was the problem between Johnson and Berger. Berger later said that he had no idea that the experiment had begun, and Johnson started it without Berger's permission. Johnson said he was taken aback by Berger's accusations. “I don’t know how he could not have known about it. We worked in the laboratory together with the whole team. " The only thing they agree on is that their relationship soon fell apart: Berger left the company and took the algorithm with him. He blames Johnson solely for this breakup. But Johnson never thought to stop. He has big plans.
Eight months later, John Richardson, a trusted correspondent, returned to California to see how Johnson was doing. He looked more relaxed. On a whiteboard at his desk in Kernel's new Los Angeles office, someone wrote a playlist of songs in big letters. “That was my son,” he says. "He interned here this summer." Since breaking up with Berger, Johnson has tripled the number of Kernel employees - now 36 - by adding experts in chip design and computational neuroscience. His new scientific advisor is Ed Boyden, director of the Synthetic Neuroscience Group at MIT. The basement of the new office building houses Dr. Frankenstein's laboratory, where scientists build prototypes and test them on glass heads.
When the moment is right, the correspondent reminds of the purpose of his visit: “Did you say that you have something to show?”.
Johnson hesitates. The correspondent has already promised not to disclose some important details, but he had to promise again. Then he is handed two small plastic cases. Inside, on cribs made of foam rubber, lie two pairs of thin, twisting wires. They look scientific, but they give off something oddly biological, like the antennas of a futuristic robot beetle.
These are prototypes of Johnson's brand new neuromodulator. At one level, this is just a scaled-down version of deep brain stimulants and other neuromodulators currently on the market. But unlike a typical stimulator that simply fires electrical impulses, Johnson's stimulator is designed to read the signals that neurons send to other neurons - and there are not just a hundred neurons that can handle the best of today's tools, but many more. This in itself can already be considered a powerful achievement, but the consequences will be even more powerful: with the Johnson neuromodulator, scientists will be able to collect data from the brains of thousands of patients, and their task will be no less than writing accurate codes for the treatment of various neurological diseases.
In the short term, Johnson hopes his neuromodulator will help him “optimize the gold rush” in neurotechnology - financial analysts predict a $ 27 billion market for neural devices in six years, and countries around the world are investing billions in the burgeoning race to decode the brain. In the long term, Johnson believes his signal-reading neuromodulator will advance his big plans in two ways: provide neuroscientists with new data they can use to work with the brain; and will also provide Kernel with a steady stream of income, which it will need to launch innovative and useful neural tools, keep the company afloat and steer it towards new breakthroughs. By doing both, Johnson will be able to observe and wait until neuroscience reaches the levelwhich will allow him to direct human evolution towards mind-enhancing neuroprostheses.
Liu likens Johnson's ambition to a desire to fly. “Back in the days of Icarus, people always wanted to fly. We don't grow wings, so we build airplanes. Often, these solutions acquire even greater possibilities than nature allows - not a single bird has flown to Mars. But now that humanity is learning to redo its own capabilities, we can actually choose how we evolve. This is the most revolutionary thing in the world.
The most important motive, of course, remains profit, which always stimulates rapid innovation in science. This is why Liu thinks Johnson could give us wings. “I have never met someone who wants to get their baby to market so quickly,” he says.
"When will the revolution come?"
“I think faster than you think,” Liu laughs.
Let's go back to where we started. Is Johnson a fool? Is he a fool because he just wants to waste his time and fortune on a crazy dream? One thing is for sure: Johnson will never stop trying to optimize the world. In his house, which he rents on the Venetian Beach, he develops idea after idea. He even takes skepticism as useful information when he is told that a magical neuroprosthesis sounds like another version of Mormon paradise.
"Cool! I like".
He constantly lacks data. He even tries to suck them out of the correspondent. What are its goals? Regrets? Joy? Doubt?
Sometimes he pauses to check the "constraint program."
“First, you have this biological curiosity. You need data. And when you consume this data, you impose the boundaries of meaning formation."
“Are you trying to hack me?” The correspondent asks.
Not at all, Johnson says. He just wants people to share algorithms. “There is fun in life - it’s endless puzzle solving. And I think: what if we can speed up data transfer thousands of times? What if my mind sees only part of reality? What stories could we tell then?"
In his spare time, Johnson writes a book on managing human evolution and looks to the bright side of our mutant humanoid future. But today its relevance sounds different.
“How would you respond to Ted Kaczynski's fears? That technology is a cancer-like development that will consume us?"
"I would say that he is completely wrong."
"What about climate change?"
“That's why I'm in such a hurry. Time is our enemy."
You can ask him if he will work on cybernetic brains when hungry hordes of people on a devastated planet destroy his laboratory in search of food - and here he will give a signal of concern for the first time. The truth is, he's afraid too. The world is getting too complicated, he says. The financial system is shaking, the population is aging, robots want to take our jobs, artificial intelligence is on its heels, climate change is fast approaching. “It's getting out of hand,” he says.
He turned to these dystopian ideas before, but only before his sales rose. Now he is pleading. “Why don't we embrace our own simulated evolution? Why don't we just do our best to adapt faster?"
And here you can argue: if he can ever make a neuroprosthesis that changes our brain, what kind of superpower will he give us? Telepathy? Group thinking? Instantly loaded kung fu knowledge?
He answers without hesitation. Since our thinking is limited to what is known and familiar to us, we cannot imagine a new world that would not be another version of the world we know. We have to present something much better. So he would try to make us more creative - that would create a new framework for everything.
Such ambitions flare up gradually. They can force you to get to the South Pole when everyone says it's impossible. They can force you to climb Kilimanjaro when you are close to death and help you build a $ 800 million company by 36 years old. Johnson's ambition leads him right into the heart of mankind's oldest dream: to achieve enlightenment in the operating system.
By hacking into our brains, he wants to make us one with everything.
Ilya Khel