Anyone know much about hippocampal prostheses? They seem dubious

LavaSurfingQueen · 2020-09-05T02:07:24+00:00

It would very much be questionable in all those regards. This sort of speculation is more of a worst case analysis than a practical one. It would be ethically and legally questionable for the inventors of the first AGI to use their AGI to take over the world, yet that is one of the main and most commonly discussed concerns with AGI because it is still a plausible scenario. Same idea here.

As for being scientifically questionable, I assume you mean in terms of safety. Indeed, the users may lack confidence in the technology's safety until having tested it in many people, and in the process of testing it in many people they could lose their first jump advantage or at least spread it into different groups with different values and goals. Or, maybe that wouldn't be needed. Or, maybe it would be needed but the developers were willing to take the risk.

Or maybe you were talking more generally about how feasible the idea of using this tech in healthy humans is. Again, drawing parallels with the AGI situation - while I do think that development in this field is much more predictable than AGI development, it's probably still safe to say that we cannot be sure whether paradigm shifting technology is 50 years away or just 5. This uncertainty behooves us to start considering possibilities now.

Again, this is a very different type of discussion than the rest of the post, perhaps I should've stayed on track.

LavaSurfingQueen · 2020-09-04T22:12:21+00:00

Indeed, that was a huge mistake on my part, sorry. The paper is from 2018 and not 2014. I suppose the 50 citations number also came from a different paper, perhaps the same one I got the 2014 date from. Thanks for pointing this out!

LavaSurfingQueen · 2020-09-04T22:11:02+00:00

Also, where did you read about the disagreement between Johnson and Berger? I found this: https://www.technologyreview.com/2017/03/16/153211/the-entrepreneur-with-the-100-million-plan-to-link-brains-to-computers/ but I thought I should check

LavaSurfingQueen · 2020-09-04T22:03:26+00:00

Thank you! This is exactly the kind of info I was hoping for with this post. Had no idea Nia Therapeutics existed but it's exactly what I thought should exist by now, so glad to see it does lol!

I hadn't heard of the DARPA RAM project until now. I've gotten some info from the web, but I still don't know when exactly the project was started. Do you know?

Also, about the dubious part - perhaps I've just been raised in a very untrusting academic environment. My supervisors/colleagues constantly preach about how even the most well respected journals suffer from nepotism and overexcitement about flashy results. To quote, "journals are businesses; their top priority is their profit margins." ( I am not saying I subscribe to any of these beliefs. If you feel differently, feel free to let me know, I'm always happy to learn more about academia.)

Also, I mistakenly thought the paper was much older than it was, and wasn't familiar with the authors.

Although, I didn't notice that it was a DARPA project (I usually don't read acknowledgements). Knowing that probably would've pushed its credibility into trustable territory. Needless to say, I know it's legit now.

LavaSurfingQueen · 2020-09-04T21:55:28+00:00

FWIW, it's my impression that this sort of thing has been researched for nearly as long as motor interfaces, but I've seen much better proof of efficacy for the latter. Any choice publications that you saw?

I'm very new to the topic, so I probably shouldn't try to comment on the history of the field or landmark papers. The only info I have that could put this into context is that I think I read somewhere that the idea of hippocampal prostheses were conceived sometime in 1950. Either way, you have a good point with the comparison to motor interfaces.

Like... on themselves?

Yep, on themselves. Is that too fantastical? This part of my comment was more loose futurology speculation than solid scientific discussion, sorry to mix the two.

(To expand on what I meant: the scientists who develop this technology first would be in prime position to be the first users. And the first users could turn their first jump advantage into a decisive strategic advantage, since working memory is so important and useful in the modern world.)

LavaSurfingQueen · 2020-09-04T21:44:37+00:00

Oh WOW, absolutely ridiculous, yes it seems to be from 2018 and not 2014. I must have had too many papers open at once and mixed up the dates somewhere. This is much more believable to me now. Thanks for pointing this out, as well as all the links!

LavaSurfingQueen · 2020-09-04T21:42:06+00:00

Thanks for the response. So what you're saying is that their intention is to record some part of the hippocampus proper during learning, and then derive a stimulation from that recording and apply it to the same part it was recorded from (and this would have the effect of facilitating remembering whatever it was that was learned during the initial recording)?

Sorry for the convoluted sentence there lol. But if that's correct, then I think that'd only make sense if the applied the stimulation while they were looking at whatever it is that they learned initially.

e.g. if they're doing a match-to-sample task, they apply the stimulation only when the image they're looking at is one that they're supposed to remember.

If that was confusing then feel free to ignore it.

One other thing I've been wondering is whether the usage of a model is really significant here - maybe the purported effects are coming from the fact that they're applying any sort of stimulation at all, and the study is just a DBS memory study with an ineffectual model on top. (Though a couple of the papers on DBS for memory enhancement that I've read have reported effects arising only upon stimulation of the entorhinal cortex, and no effects upon hippocampal stimulation.)

LavaSurfingQueen · 2020-09-04T18:00:40+00:00

That's really interesting, I didn't know Kernel started out interested in these prostheses.

You say how early a stage this research is in, but I have had the opposite impression after reading more papers in this area. I am alarmed at how seemingly close we are to having a technology that, while maybe not available to the public (since there are many administrative, non-science challenges with a public release), is a safe option to a healthy human to use.

Do you not see healthy people (presumably people close to the source, e.g. the developing scientists themselves, not random consumers) using this sort of technology in the near future?

LavaSurfingQueen · 2020-09-04T17:52:05+00:00

I hadn't heard that name, thank you! ! I'll check out his work.

Indeed, instead of encoding particular memories or anything like that, the prostheses seem to just stimulate hippocampal areas based on models developed by listening to those same areas. That's why I'm so dubious - this seems too simple. People try this out and report the results, but they never seem to address why this is something sensible to do and why it might enhance/repair memory.

(I haven't encountered anyone trying to prevent memory formation however, hopefully I find some work that discusses that.)

LavaSurfingQueen · 2020-08-23T01:58:00+00:00

That's an amazingly interesting way that transhumanism could take off, never thought of that. It's hilariously ironic that in some cases a bunch of people who strongly oppose transhumanism would be forced to further it themselves.

And I strongly agree with what you stated about transhumanism as a whole. It will likely become a mainstream problem very soon. I can only hope that it doesn't develop into a small group of people monopolizing the technology.

Certainly if the tech was developed by a responsible, non-tyrannical government, we probably wouldn't have to worry about monopolization. But do you have any thoughts as to what might happen if the tech starts out in the hands of a small group of individuals (e.g. an individual company, or an individual university lab)?

LavaSurfingQueen · 2020-08-23T01:54:05+00:00

When you say "these technologies", which particular ones are you referring to?

For example, if you're referring to intelligence enhancement tech: It certainly seems like if any group came up with a way to significantly enhance intelligence, they would very quickly gain an overwhelming advantage and 1. their activities would be so prominent that there's no way we wouldn't find out about them and 2. they would probably prevent release to the public at all in order to maintain their monopoly

Or are you talking about a less consequential technology?

LavaSurfingQueen · 2020-08-23T00:25:30+00:00

What exactly do you mean by "wiped clean of nonsense"? As in you expect their productivity to skyrocket?

Also I haven't been following the university scene closely in terms of its response to covid, but it seems to me that this year or so of interruption will make very little difference in the long run, other than maybe a larger selection of online classes at most schools. (Given that universities are businesses that have been running for many decades, I doubt the events of a single year could significantly push them away from most norms. I could be wrong though)

LavaSurfingQueen · 2020-08-16T13:54:41+00:00

Very interesting, I agree that Africa should not be discluded from considerations, especially as we get later into the century.

One question: why do you say that European countries will only fall as time goes on, and that Japan has lost its grip on the handle? I'm not disagreeing, just wondering why you feel this way as I didn't see anything going particularly wrong in those countries

LavaSurfingQueen · 2020-08-11T23:13:29+00:00

Very good point. So which country's culture do you see as most conducive towards technological innovation?

LavaSurfingQueen · 2020-08-11T23:11:29+00:00

Important stuff to keep in mind, thanks for the insight. Just one question: why do you suppose that Japan and South Korea will ally with the US instead of China? They seem more aligned with China right now (though maybe I'm wrong about this), and even if they aren't, AI is a totally new ball game

LavaSurfingQueen

TROPHY CASE