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Getty Images / David Jackmanson / Sam Mashkovech
For years the secret open at Valve (makers of game series like Half life and Portal) has been the company’s interest in a new threshold of gaming experiences. We’ve mostly seen this with SteamVR as a virtual reality platform, but the game studio has also openly teased its work on them. “brain-computer interfaces” (BCI) – that is, a means of reading brainwave activity to control video games or modify those experiences.
Most of what we’ve seen from Valve’s skunkworks divisions so far, especially in a lengthy GDC 2019 presentation, has revolved around reading your brain’s state (i.e. , capturing nervous system energy in your wrists before it reaches your fingers, to reduce button-press latency in nervous shooters like that of Valve Counter strike). In an interview with 1 New Zealand News on Monday, Valve co-founder Gabe Newell finally began to tease a more intriguing level of BCI interaction: one that changes the state of your brain.
“Our ability to create experiences in people’s brains, which are not mediated by their meat devices [e.g., fingers, eyes], will be better than it is [currently] possible, ”Newell says in his latest 12-minute video interview. He later claims that “the real world will look flat, colorless, and hazy compared to the experiences you can create in people’s brains.”
“But that’s not where it gets weird,” Newell continues. “Where it gets weird is when who you are becomes editable via BCI.”
How many years before the tentacles?
As an example, Newell throws a relaxed vibe: “I feel demotivated today.” He envisions a world where such a state of being is no longer seen as “a fundamental characteristic of the personality which is relatively insoluble to change” and moves to “feed-forward and feedback loops of who you want to be” .
Or, more simply, “Oh, I’m going to increase my attention right away. My mood should be. this. “
Newell repeatedly uses the phrase “science fiction” to describe this future BCI-driven future, with overt references to The matrix series of films. But it also has a sales pitch example of how mainstream acceptance might start: with brain control apps, whose interfaces resemble modern phone apps, for improvements like easier sleep. .
This is how I want to sleep now.
“Sleep will become an application that you run, that you go into, ‘I need a lot of sleep, so much REM,'” Newell says. “Instead of puffing pillows or taking Zolpidem, I’ll just say that’s how I want to sleep now. From there, satisfied users will tell their friends about, for example, sleeping for 12 hours of flight “completely refreshed with my circadian rhythm,” he estimates.
Newell uses a personal story to illustrate why he thinks the brain-guided perspective is so malleable: He had a cornea transplant over a decade ago, which changed his perception of the color between the two eyes. When her operation corrected the way her eyes saw color, she “disrupted that relationship” in his brain and created duplicate ghost images until he got used to the change over a period of a few weeks.
Where do you go from there, if the brains are so fungible? Newell mentions Valve’s work on synthetic hands as a collaboration with other researchers, then adds, “As soon as you do that, you’re like, ‘Oh, can you give people a tentacle?’ Then you think, “Oh, brains were never designed to have tentacles,” but it turns out that brains are really flexible. “Why Newell immediately jumped to tentacles as a fantastic appendage is beyond us, but hey.
In the short term, cerebral exit before cerebral entry
During this surface-level interview, however, Newell is careful not to estimate when such manipulation of brain inputs might one day occur in the market. In fact, he makes it clear that he is currently in no rush to get there, saying, “The rate at which we are learning things is so fast that we don’t want to say prematurely, ‘Let’s lock everything down and create a product, “when in six months we have something to activate a bunch of other features.”
Instead, it takes the opportunity to confirm significant progress on “modified VR headbands” that include “high-resolution playback technologies”. In other words, Valve wants to capture users ‘brainwave activity more immediately, whether it’s in terms of reducing key latency or understanding how gamers’ moods change during a game or game. application, and to bring such a device to the market. Newell admits it’s more about creating a platform for game and software developers to “start thinking about these issues” before the second and third generation BCI products.
“If you’re a software developer in 2022 who doesn’t have one in your test lab, you’re making a stupid mistake,” he adds.
We are still waiting to learn more about Galea, a headset platform operated by the open-source collective OpenBCI with significant contributions from Valve, which could very well be the first “high-resolution playback technology” headset compliant with the standards. Newell’s proclamations on future BCI options in the game.
In terms of measuring the nervous system, Galea can include EEG, EMG, EDA, PPG, and eye tracking as options. It’s unclear if, for example, his EEG system would require a perfect connection to your scalp, or if any of his other measuring systems are particularly invasive. Still, we imagine that Galea as a whole will be less invasive than Neuralink, the Elon Musk-based neuroscientist product that starts with a microchip connected directly to the human brain.
Trying not to “push consumer acceptance off a cliff”
The juiciest parts of the interview are the most forward-looking, where Newell goes so far as to hint at playing God. If you think that’s overkill, check out this quote:
You’re used to seeing the world through your eyes, but Eyes were created by this low cost bidder who didn’t care about failure rates and RMAs. Yes [your eye] broke, there was no way to fix anything effectively. This makes perfect evolutionary sense, but it doesn’t reflect consumer preferences at all.
Newell is careful to temper these bold statements with the reality of trusting your sensitive data to massive tech companies. If modern handlers of your financial and personal data mess this up, Newell points out, “they will lower consumer acceptance.” And he doesn’t envision a world where everyone feels obligated to use BCIs, just as modern life doesn’t necessarily require smartphones.
The same review would apply to potentially invasive BCIs, Newell says. “Nobody’s going to say, ‘Oh, you know, do you remember Bob? Do you remember when Bob was hacked by Russian malware? Dude, that sucks; is he still running naked through the forests? ‘ … People are going to have to do this because they are convinced that these are secure systems that do not present long term health risks. ”
Newell is also careful not to go into more detail on how exactly a full read-write BCI would sync with users or whether they would require Neuralink-wide surgery – which could very well explain his choice of do not estimate a release window in the foreseeable future.
For the full interview, go to 1 News for its full report.
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