'The dystopian possibilities seem endless': How attempts to merge human brains with machines could go disastrously wrong

In this adapted excerpt from "The Future of Language: How Technology, Politics and Utopianism are Transforming the Way We Communicate" (Bloomsbury, 2023), author Philip Seargeant examines brain computer interfaces designed to help locked-in patients communicate, and why Technology companies like Facebook are using them as the basis for wearable devices that could transform, for good or ill, how everyday users communicate.  

When my grandmother suffered a stroke some years ago, for several days she completely lost the ability to communicate. The whole left side of her body, from her scalp to the sole of her foot, was paralysed, and for those first few days she could barely move. She couldn’t talk at all; the best she could manage, if she wanted to draw our attention to something, was to gesture vaguely with her one good hand. Once the medical team had settled her in the ward, she kept lifting her finger to her lips with an increasingly exasperated look in her eyes. It took me an age to realize that she was indicating she wanted something to drink. She’d been lying helpless on the floor of her house for almost twenty-four hours before she was discovered, and by now she was desperately thirsty. 

When the hospital’s speech therapist came around to visit a day or two later she gave us a ‘communication board’. This was basically just a piece of cardboard, slightly tattered at the edges, with the letters of the alphabet printed on one side. On the other side there were a few simple pictures – images of a bottle of pills, a cluster of family members, a vicar, that sort of thing. If my grandmother wanted to tell us something, now she pointed slowly from letter to letter, spelling out key words. It was a tortuously slow process, especially with her coordination skills still so shaky. It also required a lot of guesswork on the part of the person she was talking to, as they had to try to piece together, from isolated words, the full meaning of what she was trying to convey. 

Finding ways to make the brain speak is at the heart of research into what is known as brain-computer interface (or BCI) Technology, an area of neuroScience that’s investigating how we can control machines with our minds. BCI Technology works by the use of sensors, placed either in or around the brain, which pick up neural activity that can then be read by a computer and used to operate external devices. It’s a means of establishing a communication path between computer and brain which doesn’t rely on the muscular movement that has hitherto allowed for the interface between the two. It’s a form of real-life mind control, allowing people to execute simple tasks using nothing more than the power of thought. And one of the tasks that’s currently being worked on by researchers is the idea of ‘typing’ with the brain.

Studies show that this sort of BCI technology can provide a way for patients with locked-in syndrome to communicate via a BCI speller, or for paraplegics to control prosthetic limbs or computerized devices. It’s early days for this sort of research, but already there are encouraging signs of what might be possible. In 2017, a small group of participants on a project in the United States, all of whom were paralysed (one had suffered a spinal injury; the others had Lou Gehrig’s disease), were able to ‘type’ with their brains at somewhere between three and eight words per minute. Okay, so this isn’t particularly fast. A professional typist averages up to eighty words per minute, and smartphone users can manage about thirty-eight words per minute. But it already rivals a patient struggling to get by with a ‘communication board’. And it’s infinitely better than having no access to communication at all. 

The participants in this particular study had tiny electrodes implanted on the surfaces of their brains, penetrating about a millimetre into the motor cortex. These were connected to a series of wires protruding from their heads which were then attached to a network of cables. For casual, everyday use this is clearly a bit unwieldy. But, as I say, it’s early days for the research and the aim is to achieve similar results through the use of wireless implants or ‘non-invasive’ devices such as headsets placed over the scalp (although the closer one can get to the signal that needs to be read, the clearer that signal is). 

The potential, and the market, isn’t limited simply to helping those with speech impairments. Unsurprisingly, both the entertainment industry and the military see great possibilities in the technology. Then there are the big tech companies who are currently ploughing huge amounts of money into this research. They see it as a universal technology which will revolutionize the way we connect both with each other and, possibly more importantly (at least from their point of view), with our digital devices. In 2019 Facebook Labs introduced their vision for a future enhanced by BCI technologies by inviting us to ‘imagine a world where all the knowledge, fun, and utility of today’s smartphones were instantly accessible and completely hands-free’. This imaginary world is one in which the multiple capabilities of the smartphone aren’t limited to a little black box you manipulate with your hand. Instead, the plan is for a non-invasive system that you can wear on your head. For Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, non-invasive solutions are preferable not only because they sidestep the difficulties that are caused by the body rejecting physical implants (which is proving to be a real problem for many projects) but also because, as he somewhat sardonically noted to his colleagues, he’d like to avoid having to give testimony at a congressional hearing on allegations that Facebook now wants to perform brain surgery on its users.