Can you connect yourself to another person through a brain chip, as in Made for Love?

when?

A brain implant that puts your thoughts and feelings directly within the reach of another person.

Where did you see?

In TV series and science fiction book Made for love Tech entrepreneur Byron Gogol is developing a chip with which you can connect the brains of two people directly.

How close are we?

“Now you and the one you truly love can finally meet. Every thought, every emotion, is shared. Your mind is completely connected. A network of two. This is how advertising begins with tech mogul Byron’s brain chip. Made for love announced. And if it gives you goosebumps, that’s exactly the intent of author Alyssa Notting’s book and its spin-off sci-fi series, which can be watched in the Netherlands from March 8 on HBO Max.

that it supreme principlesAs it’s called in fictional circles: a plot hinged on a single idea that’s easy to convey. A believable idea, even. Because the fact that tech billionaires can choose the brain as their next destination for their future projects has long been a reality in the real world. There Elon Musk, known from Tesla and the space company SpaceX, is working on Neuralink, a company that wants to develop brain chips.

Target? Neuralink is a bit vague about that. What is certain is that the company wants to connect people with machines. For example, to take advantage of brain patterns generated by the firing of neurons and translate them into text or movement across computers. So you can help people who have difficulty speaking, or whose limbs no longer want to move due to paralysis, or so the advertising slogan goes.

But just as Musk uses SpaceX to ferry astronauts to and from the International Space Station, but simultaneously dreams of a sci-fi-like future with his company managing human colonization of Mars, in Neuralink he is paranoid or a visionary of the end, depending on who you ask. for the eyes.

Musk worries that the rise of artificial intelligence is reducing us to lower species, and with Neuralink he hopes to upgrade our brains to a faster and better information-processing machine. I’m thinking of the matrixSimilar to developments you no longer have to learn Chinese, but just have to install a new language module.

Or yes, that too, just as in Made for love: So that you can share ideas with others. By the way, not to further strengthen your romantic bonds, but, say, so that you never have to meet again, make a phone call, or use other forms of traditional human information transmission.

And while this ultimate dream currently seems almost as far-fetched as permanently colonizing our neighboring planet, brain-computer connections do exist. In the past, they have helped improve epilepsy patients’ memory, allow paralyzed people to control which robotic arms can feel again, and ensure that those who can no longer speak can suddenly communicate again.

Who is the (satirical) dystopian vision of the future? Made for love It can breathe a sigh of relief: such applications, while revolutionary, are quite simple compared to reading a complex brain pattern such as human feelings or thoughts.