In brief:
Regina Dugan, Former DARPA executive and current head of Facebook’s mysterious Building 8, has released information about the work that the social media giant has been doing on brain-compute-interface meant to let you “communicate using only your mind”
B8 the project the Facebook team is currently working on aims at 4 primary objects. They are said to include: Augmented reality, drones, cameras and direct Brain-computer interfaces (BCIs). Facebook is working on computers that are meant to interface with our brains.
The information released by Dugan about the B8 work:
- Facebook is developing a brain-computer interface that will allow individuals to communicate with other people using nothing but their thoughts- unconstrained by time or distance.
2.They are creating “category defining products” that are “social” initially, products that allow us to form more human connections and at the end unite digital world of the internet with physical world and the human mind.
3.Dugan notes that the brain produces about 1 Terabyte / Second. However, through speech, we can only transmit information to others at about 100 bytes/second. FB wishes to get all information that is transmitted to our speech center out of the “brain” and into the world.
4.Initially, they are hoping to allow humans to type and click through our brains to interact with our technology. For example, People with ALS could type not with eye blinks- rather with their thoughts. Thus, they wish to decode speech and let individuals communicate using our brain waves.
5.Their goal is to allow people type 5 times faster than people can type on an android straight from their brain, meaning they are developing technologies that could read brain to transmit information.
6.Next, they will work to allow people to “type” a staggering 100 words/minute using their thoughts. That’s far faster than most humans can type on a computer. The average person types between 38 – 40 words per minute.
7.They have developed actuators that allow people to “hear” through their skin. Ultimately, with Facebook’s technology, humans can “feel” words.
8.Eventually, they want to allow people to think something and send the thought to someone’s skin. Additionally, they will allow people to think something in one language and have a person receive the thought in an entirely different language.