Chipped Brains

[SaxonViolence]

The "Cyberpunk" Subgenre of Science Fiction often features people with Computer Chips implanted in their Brain and sockets in their skull to allow direct access to computers--and other electronic devices.

 

A few years ago, I started coming across scattered accounts of Researchers having some success getting living Neurons to attach to Silicone Chips. The goal at the moment, seems to be to allow direct Brain control of Prosthetics, or to bridge severed spines eventually.

 

Anyway, I got to thinking one day.....

 

The Fiction always seems to be about Human Beings with Computer Chips in their Brain. Why not animals with Chipped Brains?

 

Take Dogs for instance. There is a lot of recent research that may tend to indicate that Dogs--and many other Animals may be far smarter than we have previously assumed.

 

Dogs do lack much of our capacity to communicate verbally. They can count up to a few--don't remember the precise number--seven or eight, but even simple "Add, Subtract, Multiply, and Divide" type Arithmetic seems completely beyond them.

 

{Okay, I'm assuming that these Chips, once implanted, become a seamless part of the whole cognition process--not a distinct and always autonomous Electronic "Master".}

 

Presumably, a language chip in the right place, might give a Dog the same working Vocabulary of a person with an IQ of 80 or 90. You could get them to understand Simple Arithmetic. They could be pre-programmed to obey certain commands {Not compelled to do them against their will--though I suppose that you could do that too--I just mean, they could be programmed to automatically know what "Sit, Stand, Heel, Stay and Shut-up" meant. With Sockets in their Skulls, you could directly access their memories and download new "Tricks".

 

Why bother?

 

Well some Dog lovers might really like the idea that their Dog could clearly understand much of what was said to him. You might even be able to program the Dog to be able to aesthetically appreciate Music, or Gourmet Cooking, or whatever.

 

There might also be some market for Brain-Enhanced Sentry Dogs, Seeing-Eye Dogs, Herding Dogs--etc.

 

Thing is tough, the time may come, when a Dog Brain (Or Hog Brain) chipped to the Max, might be the best small-size, relatively cheap, Parallel Processor that we can come up with. Chimp Brains are too hard to come by. Rat Brains, and some others, may prove to be too small to easily work with.

 

Dogs and Hogs both have reasonable sized Brains to work with (I mean Physically large enough to ease the Surgeon's task). Both of them reach breeding age relatively quickly, and have litters.

 

I can't say that I approve of using a Disembodied Dog's Brain to operate a Bulldozer or Drive a Semi Coast-to-Coast.....or whatever--but couldn't care less what you do with pigs.

 

Dogs do have that built-in ability to work and play well with people, and they can be very loyal.....

 

I leave that for y'all to extrapolate.....

 

Saxon Violence

[Mister Agenda]

So we could have a car that comes when we whistle? I think that would be cool. Mine does know how to play dead, though.

[freeztar]

It seems that you are making an argument for pig experimentation. Otherwise, you have to continue your first argument and make a case for human chip implants.

[SaxonViolence]

I would have no problem--if the technology was well developed--to chipping a Dog's Brain up for the purpose of giving both him and his Human(s) a much broader highway for communication.

 

I would strongly object to using disembodied Dog Brains to drive Vehicles, Heavy Equipment or a Line in a Factory.

 

However, if technology ever reaches the curious stage where Chipped-Up animal Brains are the cheapest and most effective PCL Devices (Programable Logic Controllers) available, then by all means, use pig brains. I don't give a Rat's Derrière what you do to hogs.

 

Saxon Violence

[CraigD]

The "Cyberpunk" Subgenre of Science Fiction often features people with Computer Chips implanted in their Brain and sockets in their skull to allow direct access to computers--and other electronic devices.

...

The Fiction always seems to be about Human Beings with Computer Chips in their Brain. Why not animals with Chipped Brains?

If you mean “always” strictly, then you’ve not read Neal Stephenson’s 1992 cyberpunk classic Snow Crash, or have forgotten the important character of Ng Security Industries Semi-Autonomous Gard Unit #B-782, also known as a rat thing, nice doggy, and in his former life, Fido the pit bull puppy. Fictional Fido’s animal-machine interfaces are far more extensive that a few simple “brain chips”, though, his whole body having been replaced with a mechanical one.

 

If you’re an even semi-serious student of the cyberpunk genre, Snow Crash should be on your essential reading list. Though I’ve observed that readers tend to love or hate it, from what I’ve read of yours here at hypography, SV, I expect you’d be one of the lovers. :thumbs_up

 

I mention this not just as a point of SF literature accuracy, and because I think the book is a really fun read, if dated in its predictions about computers, for me a bit wistfully, but because Stephenson’s fictional bog brain-controlled robots are well-reasoned scientifically, and a good starting place for speculation on the subject.

 

Presumably, a language chip in the right place, might give a Dog the same working Vocabulary of a person with an IQ of 80 or 90. You could get them to understand Simple Arithmetic.

I think you need to think hard of what you’re presuming here, SV!

 

Present day implanted brain-computer interfaces – “brain chips” – are primarily just that: interfaces, that allow nerve impulses to be detected by computers, or computers to stimulate nerves. They aren’t powerful computers capable of replacing a damages parts of a brain, or adding ones that wasn’t there before, such as human brain speech and language parts to a dog brain.

 

The “processing” done by brain areas is difficult to equate precisely with a functioning computer, but in his famous 1998 paper When will computer hardware match the human brain?, Hans Moravec combined observations about the processing rate (MIPS) required for real-time image recognition, such as that used by OCR scanners and optically guided cruise missiles with the very small image processing nerve systems of insects. Though a 14 years old, Moravec’s approach to approximating the requirements of electronic equivalents of biological “thinking hardware” is still, I think, a good one.

 

Applied to something like the various parts the human brain needed for language, even assuming on the order of 10 times optimization, my guess is that by any near-term state of the art, such a device would be a multi-rack size device requiring several thousand watts of powering and cooling. A simple “language chip” that could be implanted in a dog’s brain this is not!

 

Like Moravec, I’m intentionally ignoring the problem of writing a program for human language processing, but in practical terms, this problem can’t be ignored. It’s a hard one, more-or-less equivalent to a successful solution to the Turning test.

 

Assuming the hardware and software challenges of making an implantable chip that would allow a dog to have language skills similar to a low normal, 80-90 IQ human, some profound high level architectural questions need be addressed. To wit, how does language interact with other mental functions to produce the behavior exhibiting physical entity we call a person?

 

This subject is too long, I think, to consider much in the post, but I’ll throw out what I think’s a consensus among neuro can cognitive psychologiest: that a key to the “mind architecture” of humans, dogs, and similar animals is a “executive function” which takes condenses information from and “issues orders” to other mind systems.

 

Jumping back to Stephenson’s robot guard pit bulls, I’ve a hunch he guessed about right on the subject. Though tremendously augmented with computer and mechanical systems that make them much faster and stronger than any biological dog, Fido and his fellow nice doggies remain, cognitively, dogs, with a simple, emotion-based “vocabulary” involving threat assessment, distinguishing “nice” people from “bad” ones, and protecting the former from the latter. Though they communicate wirelessly using electronic networks (I like the phrase “bark in IP”), the content of their communication is not much different than that of an ordinary dog, yet well-suited to their jobs.

 

With Sockets in their Skulls, you could directly access their memories and download new "Tricks".

Though an old SF idea, the idea of “downloading” ability entered our culture in large part, I think, from the 1999 movie The Matrix. Like all science/speculative fiction, I think it’s important to look more deeply at it in light of real neuroscience.

 

Ordinary experience tell us that learning skills like Kung Fu take time and repetition. Neuroscience tells such learning involves a lot of metabolic energy and physical change on both a molecular and larger anatomical scale. To cut to the chase here, this forces the question:

 

Taking The Matrix as potentially hard SF, rather than escapist fantasy, where has the learning really occurred when Neo says, after a few minutes of “downloading combat training”, “I know Kung Fu”?

 

I suspect the Wachowski brothers intended otherwise (lines like “nerokinetics off the chart” suggest it), but neuroscience strongly suggests that it isn’t in his brain, but in data defining his avatar in the computer simulated world. Whatever “brain rewiring” is involved is merely linking up his mind’s executive functions with these computer-based abilities. The physical Neo doesn’t know Kung Fu – the virtual one does.

 

Here’s my alternative approach to device augmenting a dog to make a better one.

Rather than attempting to give it human-like language, go with what we know, from dog agility/obedience training, works: pointing. Dogs are capable of performing complicated sequences of tasks when given directions, the most effective being pointing and given short voice commands. So augment them with a computer system that projects a shaped dot in their visual field and audio in their ears. Such systems could be anything from laser-projections on the ground and small speakers in the ears to projecting images on their retinas to cochlear implants and implants on their optic nerves or brains. Add an implant that stimulates their pleasure centers, and I imagine you could build a fantastically capable wireheaded dog.

 

I’d be remiss as a SF fan if I didn’t give a nod to a completely different approach to making a better dog: the gene engineering approach ubiquitous to David Brin’s “Uplift Universe”. Though the fictional genetic science needed for this is presumably far off, it does give you Dogs (capitalized to distinguish them from non-uplifted ones) capable of having deep conversations with humans.

[SaxonViolence]

Back in the early '80s, a local bank ran a half-page add in the local Newspaper.

 

It was a two-toned Orange-Brown and White.

 

It depicted a Future Metropolis that looked like something from a 20's or 30's "Amazing" cover, but with all the weird "Steam-Punkish" Antiquarian aspects filtered out. (A long time before "Steam-Punk" was even a word.....)

 

There were all sorts of Sky-Scrapers. There were so many High Causeways between the buildings that the Walkways looked like Cobwebs. Air Cars built vaguely like Hydroplane Boats were everywhere. (Look out for the Cobwebs, er...Causeways. Never mind.....)

 

Down on the ground. Egg-Shaped Ground Vehicles travelled in eight and twelve lane highways, where each lane resembled a concrete Bobsled Run.

 

And the caption said:

 

"The Future isn't what it used to be."

 

I've been hearing about this "Future" thing all my life, and every Morning I awake expecting to finally see it. And every Morning when I wake up, its still Today.

 

I don't think that your "Future" Thing exists.

 

Now to be half-way serious again.....

 

Take a Novel like "Hardwired" by Walter John Williams. One of the Heroes is the futuristic equivalent of a Bootleg Driver.

 

His ground effect Tank has better than Human Optics in front, in back, on both sides, and looking straight up. It has Short Range forward Mounted Radar and Sonar, and at least Sonar pointed straight down to give him some kind of idea what he's just ran over.

 

Yet by virtue of a handful of chips in his brain, and three evenly spaced jacks in his skull ((9:30; 2:30 and 6:00--the last right above the Spine) He perceives all this in Real Time--actually, in much better than real time,since no unmodified Human could handle driving at that speed in real time.

 

Compared to that--Chipping your Dog up to understand Human Speech seems quite doable.

 

If we stick to the dreary world of now.....

 

eh.....

 

Actually, after I posted that, I thought of several fictional Chipped animals, but I've since forgotten.

 

Oh yeah, anyone ever read "Out Around Blue-Six" ?

 

A discontented hacker genius type went off to live like a Hermit in the Sewers, and declared himself the King of "Kansas"--This is a time so far distant in the future, that all anyone knew of Kansas, is that it existed once, far in their past.

 

Well anyway, you can't expect the King of Kansas to be without Lackeys can you?

 

So he started chipping up coons to do his bidding. Since there is very little room inside a coon's skull, he placed much of the necessary hardware in segmented tubes coming off the coon's skulls.....

 

So everywhere he went, he was attended by hundreds of Dreadlocked Raccoons--they were said to look vaguely like Minature Furry Rastafarians.

 

That I'd like to see in a good High Budget, Top Flight Special Effects, Blockbuster Movie.

 

"TheMatrix" was Phun--but there were holes in the plot, that you could drive a semi through.

 

In reality--Yeah, you're probably right.

 

Speaking of the "Turing Test".....

 

But that is a matter for a whole other Tread.

 

Saxon Violence

[SaxonViolence]

CraigD,

 

To use Walter Jon William's book "Hardwired" once more.....

 

At some point the Omniscient Narrator mentions (Talking about Sarah), that Sarah has had the skills and moves of a Fourth or Fifth Degree Tae Kwan Do Expert downloaded into her Chip/Brain Set (Its no longer possible to separate them.)

 

And "He" (Narrator) mentions that the Skill-Set of a 5"4" Stocky, Fifty Year Old Korean Master doesn't work astonishingly well in the Body of a 6' 2", Long-Limbed, Very Nordic young Woman.....

 

Not without Beaucoup Practice. Being willing to practice diligently almost every day when possible is what makes her a True Professional, in a World of Gutter-Trash and Amateurs

 

"Hardwired" was out at least a Decade before "Matrix".

 

Once again in "Hardwired", Sarah has a device that telescopes around her Trachea. It is undetectable without an Autopsy. When activated, it comes out and lets her fight as though She had a five or six foot long Sentient Cyber-Snake coming out of her mouth. (It stays anchored).

 

It can throw a very hard punch. It can block a punch and the end has a healthy bite (At one point, she takes out both a man's eye, and a bit of his forebrain with it.....)

 

Its white, completely non stick, and it can be used as a covert Assassination Device.

 

At one point , Princess thinks Sarah is going to kiss her, but its only cover for running the Old Cyber-Snake down Princesse's (Wind-Pipe; or Esophagus? Can't remember)--And thoroughly Puree Princesse's Heart.

 

The only real Drawback, you have to retract it to breath.

 

Sarah almost passes out when an atypical Squeamishness causes her to fear Drawing some small part of Princess inside her (Like I said, Super, Super Non-Stick--But Sarah insists on Washing it before retracting it...)

 

The only Weird part: When her Cyborg Lover awakes and uses his IR vision to watch her Katas, The Cyber-Snake is visible due to its residual warmth.

 

Instead of demanding for Sarah to tell him where he can get one, instead he finds it a massive turn-off, and Feigns Sleep.....

 

Who wouldn't Want a Cyber-Snake?

 

{Don't want to be picky, but can you Download me the Skills of a Capoeira Professor instead of a Tae Kwon Do Master?}

 

{Or Both...}

 

Saxon Violence

[CraigD]

It depicted a Future Metropolis that looked like something from a 20's or 30's "Amazing" cover, but with all the weird "Steam-Punkish" Antiquarian aspects filtered out.

...

I've been hearing about this "Future" thing all my life, and every Morning I awake expecting to finally see it. And every Morning when I wake up, its still Today.

 

I don't think that your "Future" Thing exists.

Right now, I’m sitting with a little fold-open box the size of weight of a paper book (my laptop PC) in my lap, corresponding with people from all parts of the world. The other night, when my lady and I were strolling the streets of our fair city, and felt the urge to dine, we did so with the assistance of a tiny glowing screen gadget (her smartphone) that directed us, via a map and spoken directions to our destination, using a constellation of orbiting satellites able to locate us with a precision of a few meters, to the door of our desired destination.

 

I think our “future” thing is here and now. That it doesn’t match one (or any) 1930s cover artist’s imagining is, I think, a failure of the artist’s powers of speculation, not the future’s tardiness.

 

Alan Kay, who wrote the SmallTalk computer language, and can thus justifiable be considered the grandfather of the ubiquitous Java language that’s rendering the page you’re seeing now, (but i don't think would have made it as a pulp cover artist ;)), drew this pretty accurate sketch of the future ca. 1968

 

 

Despite having to take care not to tread on all the shiny happy children and their nifty tablet computers strewn in my path (I don’t mean this metaphorically – I frequently cut through a town park where I really have to do this), though, I do miss the flying car I was promised. :(

 

Oh yeah, anyone ever read "Out Around Blue-Six" ?

Your description interested me so much I tracked down a copy of Out On Blue Six, in (my technologist’s heart shudders) paper, as this 1989 novel seems to have evaded the scanners of modernity and remained available in no other form – for a novel and writer admired and respected by so many, OOB6 and Ian McDonald is way obscure – read, and thoroughly enjoyed it. The brainchipped raccoons were everything you promised, and then some – you didn’t mention that the Striped Knights division of them were little furry armored badasses with knives and crossbows! :) If only my technology-spoiled brain had a handy text search function...

 

McDonald have his own un-imitated style, but if I had to sum up OOB6 in terms of a couple of less obscure novels, I’d call it a cross between Silverburg’s 1972 The World Inside, for its physical and cultural setting, and Stepheson’s 1992 Snow Crash (about which I ranted much above) for its characters and quirky reverence for badassedness. My guess would be that people that enjoyed one of these 3 novels would like the others.

 

OOB6’s physics and technology is unrealistic enough I’d class it as more science fantasy than hard or semi-firm science fiction, a category I think Silverburg’s and Stephenson’s novels manage to reach, but I’ve no problem with that – I enjoy rewriting on the fly in my head (and occasionally committing to text) minor science realism issues in stories I read. The energy, style, and feel of OOB6 is better IMHO than TWI, and just a notch below SC.

 

Take a Novel like "Hardwired" by Walter John Williams.

Much as I enjoyed following your Out Of Blue Six recommendation, SaxonV, Williams’s stuff looks too much like straight up military SF for my taste. I’ve consumed my share of this genre, but with a few exceptions, like it in small doses only. I think a half decade or so of playing GDW’s old Traveler RPG and similar games ca. 1980 pretty near permanently burned me out on this genre, as the suspension of disbelief needed to accept most of what passes for sensible combat doctrine in these games, books, and movies exceeds what my hard-SF-loving heart can bear.

 

One of the Heroes is the futuristic equivalent of a Bootleg Driver.

 

His ground effect Tank …

Though I’ve not read the book, so apologies if this issue is addressed in it, but this sounds like an example of the poorly though-out ideas for which I dislike the genre.

 

Folk who know the real engineering and use of ground effect vehicles, a superset of hovercraft, know they’re good for traveling over water and flat, relatively debris-free land, but without great increase in their maximum power, unable to climb hills, negotiate uneven terrain, or get to go where you want them to in a strong wind, key requirements for nearly every tank that has ever existed. This has limited the present-day use of combat GEVs to fairly narrow roles, such as landing craft.

 

It’s reasonable to assume that future vehicles will have many times the energy and power of present day ones, but a GEV with many times the power/weight ratio of a present day one is essentially an aircraft.

 

Before an author writes a story in which a car or tank is replaced with a hovercraft, I wish he or she would actually try driving one – for safety’s sake, a radio controlled model, not a car-sized or larger one - down an ordinary road, with or without a crosswind. I think the experience would help them with maintaining realism in their fiction.

 

 

His ground effect Tank has better than Human Optics in front, in back, on both sides, and looking straight up. It has Short Range forward Mounted Radar and Sonar, and at least Sonar pointed straight down to give him some kind of idea what he's just ran over.

 

Yet by virtue of a handful of chips in his brain, and three evenly spaced jacks in his skull ((9:30; 2:30 and 6:00--the last right above the Spine) He perceives all this in Real Time--actually, in much better than real time, since no unmodified Human could handle driving at that speed in real time.

Ah, think about what you just said, SV!

 

Unless via some sort of advanced physics, causality-violating machine that can show events before they happen, there’s no such thing as better than real-time. All present day devices and instances of computer programs called real-time are, more precisely, near real-time. Increasing the speed of sensors, compute hardware, software, and mechanical actuators can allow these systems to approach true real-time performance, but never be better than it.

 

Technical jargon correctness aside, I’m skeptical of claims, common in SF of the past few decades, of a performance advantage using a direct electronic-to-nerve interface – a jack, in SF terms – over than the brain-via nerve-to-muscle-to-machine and sense organ-via nerve-to brain intefaces that have served us well for thousands of years.

 

To date, such interfaces have demonstrated usefulness for restoring less-than-normal function lost due to defect or injury, but not exceeded or even matched the performance of the normal organs they replace.

 

The brain is a complicated organ, intricately shaped by hundreds of thousands of years of evolution to work well with sense and motor organs that evolved along with it. Every successful human-machine interface of which I’m aware, pre- or post-computerized, followed the approach of extending the natural neuro-perceptual-musculo function of the human body. None add perceptual or motor abilities not previously present. For example, we can, and do, give ourselves “eyes in the back of our heads”, or even 360° vision, with machines using mirrors and cameras, but these systems don’t give us the ability to perceive and react to the information as well as animals with more side-facing eyes, such as rabbits, flys, and some birds, or actual eyes in the backs of their heads, such as spiders. To process such visual input, it appears a brain must be “built for it” via a long process of biological evolution.

 

This is not to say that sense-enhancing systems, such as telescopic and frequency-shifting oculars and sound amplifiers can’t be made and improved on, or that muscle-actuated machine control interfaces can be much improved, such as eye-tracking systems to point machines and computer cursors, and camera and mechanical body part position sensors to control body part analogous machines.

 

However, it’s also not to say that any “improved” sense-enhancing system or body-machine interface is sure to be better than what it improves upon. Vision and hearing enhancement systems can be confusing. Systems that closely track our body parts are subject to false signals from involuntary movements, and may require complicated computerized systems to ignore these movements. These systems can themselves be confusing.

 

Compared to that--Chipping your Dog up to understand Human Speech seems quite doable.

I’ve learned to be very cautious about calling something “doable”, waiting ‘til I have a fairly clear, detailed plan of how I would do it, and even then, waiting ‘til I’ve completed any part of plan that isn’t the same or very similar to one I’ve completed before.

 

Nobody’s done anything remotely like adding vocabulary or syntax to a human – who we already know has the need brain structures for language – by inserting electrodes in nerves or the brain. To say it’s doable in a dog – who we know doesn’t have the brain structures for language – seems to me very premature, and likely wrong.

 

At present, we have some wonderful and amazing microphone, camera and computer systems that can allow humans to read, hear, write, and speak languages they don’t understand, but these systems use sound and text that we humans are already adept at using. Dogs can’t read, don’t appear to be able to syntactically parse spoken language, or truly speak, so these approaches aren’t useful for dogs.

 

Dogs can make and recognize many distinct sounds and body movements, which constitute a kind of non-human language, so I think its reasonable to say making a computerized device that would allow us humans to understand what our dogs are “saying” about as well as, or even better than, dogs understand one another, and even “say” things to dogs using their vocalizations (the body movements would be trickier). However, we can easily show that “dog language” is much more limited than human: one dog cannot tell another, even a very familiar other, something like “behind the second door on the left has a nice human who will pet you and give you a tasty treat, but the third door on the right is a scary one who jump and make load noises.” So even if we had a way to understand and speak to dogs in “dog language”, I expect what we could communicate this way would be about as limited.

 

This isn’t to say that the chipped raccoons (or apes, or dogs, cats, dolphins, birds, etc.) are impossible. However, to accomplish this, I believe we need to have a much more profound, detailed understanding of brain function, which we would have to use to essentially “rebuild” large portions of these non-human animals’ brains. Like the Tinka Tae of Out Of Blue Six (which no longer got along with unmodified raccoons, and ultimately found a remote, raccoon-free place at the fringe of the livable world to live), I suspect that such an alteration would render them essentially no longer a member of their original species.

[SaxonViolence]

I misspoke when I said, "Faster than Real Time".

 

I meant "Perceiving a much richer sensory World at least as fast as a normal human perceives his--perhaps even marginally faster."

 

Many of your other points are telling.....

 

Not that I think of what we do as "Arguing"; I ask to get other's view-points. Sometimes I find that they obviate the question that I was asking.

 

More often than not, actually...

 

Saxon Violence