RE: [Popular STEM] Curating the Internet: STEM digest for April 24, 2021
I have always liked to see a youtube video that talks about science and astrophysics. The news of the warp motor surprised me a lot a few months ago, the problem with the motor is that it consumes a lot of energy, maybe nuclear energy works, but my question is how to get it negative energy?
Another piece of news that surprised me is the neuralink company managed to implant a chip in a monkey and it can play video games even if it is from Atari.
This leads to another question !!
If the human being manages to implant a chip or create embryos with human cells in animals to give them intelligence, not counting artificial intelligence; Couldn't all these harm us in the future? perhaps the planet of the apes prophecy will be fulfilled or the terminator.
Thanks for the comment! Your point about the monkey playing video games reminds me of a a TED talk from 2014 by Miguel Nicolelis, where he describes work he did getting monkey brains to communicate directly - not just with a computer, but also with other monkeys. He calls this a "brain net".
The video is below, and the transcript is here. The whole talk was fascinating, but the portion about monkeys collaborating in a brain net begins at about 13:50.
In your closing point, it's easy to imagine things going in a dystopian direction like The Terminator or Planet of the Apes, but there are also a lot of positive results that might arise from it. In that TED talk, Nicolelis acknowledges that even the scientists don't know where this is all leading.
According to Nicolelis the objective of this project is to help human beings with brain disabilities such as autism, I wonder this scientific and technological advance could help a person who is brain dead? From what I understood the monkeys communicate through a second dimension but they act in a third dimension. The interesting thing is that none of the 3 monkeys know of the existence of the others.
Yesterday I saw a news story that said that a group of millionaires is financing a project with SONY and they have given 1000 million for them, SONY thinks creating a metaverse is like a parallel world similar to real where it intends to interconnect us, this sounds like science fiction but these are not impossible to do.
Interesting point about this being helpful for someone who is brain dead. My first thought was, "no way", but after thinking about it some more, I'm not so sure. Maybe.
I was also interested by the points that the monkeys didn't know about each other, and they each only controlled 2 dimensions, but still - they collaborated to manage 3 dimensions.
Ever since watching the Nicolelis TED talk, I have imagined a future where "going to work" means attaching a helmet with a brain-computer-interface to collaborate with the worldwide "brain net". We get connected at the beginning of the work day and disconnect at the end, just like we do with our laptops and desktops now.
So, I hadn't heard about that SONY project, but it definitely doesn't seem too far fetched to me.
I think that a helmet that communicates with an interface would be a bit ordinary if we had to go out on the street with it on, I prefer that they do it like tony stark's glasses.
I think these projects are long-term since it is in its beta version, another point is that governments approve its use in humans since there is a small possibility of damaging the brain.
We will see what the future holds for us, science and technology in these last 2 years are advancing at an enormous speed, it is a pity that in medicine we are taking a step backwards.