The head of the American gaming company Valve Corporation says that a future is fast approaching, where video games will use data from people’s brain signals to adjust the experience they receive – and even a future where people’s minds can be adjusted by computers. .
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The head of Valve Corporation talks about BCIs in a long interview. Source: 1 NEWS
Gabe Newell spoke to 1 NEWS about the future of brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) – an area that he and other Valve employees studied several years ago – and talked about how Valve is working to put BCIs to use in the gaming industry.
Newell admits that some of the ideas may seem incredible and said that some of the discussions he is having about BCIs are “indistinguishable from science fiction” – but according to him, game developers would be making a mistake by not investigating BCIs in the near future. term .
To help them do that, Newell said Valve is currently working on an open source BCI software project, allowing developers to start interpreting the signals being read in people’s brains using hardware like modified VR helmets. (virtual reality).
“We are working on an open source project so that everyone can have high resolution [brain signal] read technologies built into headphones, in a lot of different modes, “said Newell.
Valve has worked with OpenBCI headphones.
OpenBCI unveiled a headset design in November called Galea, designed to work alongside VR headsets like Valve’s Index.
Open the design of the BCI Galea BCI headset. Source: OpenBCI
“If you’re a software developer in 2022 and you don’t have one in your test lab, you’re making a silly mistake,” said Newell.
“Software developers for interactive experience[s] – you will absolutely use one of these modified RV head strips to do this routinely – simply because there is so much useful data. “
This data usually consists of readings of the player’s body and brain, which can be used to tell whether the player is excited, surprised, sad, bored, amused and afraid, among other emotions.
Mike Ambinder, principal experimental psychologist at Valve Corporation, plays a game while using an OpenBCI Ultracortex BCI Array. Source: Mike Ambinder / Valve Corporation
Readings can be used by developers to improve immersion and customize what happens during games – how to slightly increase the difficulty if the system perceives the player is getting bored.
In addition to just reading people’s brain signals, Newell also discussed the reality of the near future of being able to write signals to people’s minds – to change how they feel or provide better-than-real visuals at games.
He said that BCIs will lead to much better gaming experiences than a player could get through their “meat peripherals” – as in, their eyes and ears.
“You’re used to experiencing the world through the eyes,” said Newell, “but the eyes were created by this low-cost bidder who didn’t care about failure rates and RMAs, and if it broke, there was no way to fix anything effectively. , which makes perfect sense from an evolutionary perspective, but in no way reflects consumer preferences.
“So the visual experience, the visual fidelity that we will be able to create – the real world will no longer be the metric that we apply for the best possible visual fidelity.
“The real world will appear flat, colorless, blurry compared to the experiences you can create in people’s brains.
“What is strange is when you are editable through a BCI,” said Newell.
At the moment, people accept that their feelings are just how they feel – but Newell says that BCIs will soon allow editing of those feelings digitally, which could be as easy as using an app.
“One of the first applications I hope to see is improved sleep – sleep will become an application that you run where it says, ‘Oh, I need so much sleep, I need so much REM,'” he said.
Another benefit could be the reduction or total removal of undesirable feelings or conditions from the brain, for therapeutic reasons.
Some people who use VR headsets suffer from vertigo due to the incompatibility between what they are seeing and what their body is feeling – but Newell said that now, BCIs have advanced to a point where this vertigo could be suppressed artificially, and that “it is more a question of certification than scientific”.
The configuration of the Valve Index VR. Source: Valve Corporation
Despite several reachable applications for BCIs, Newell said he is hesitant to stop Valve’s progress and turn it into a consumer product, when research speeds are so high.
“The rate at which we are learning things is so fast that you don’t want to say prematurely, ‘OK, let’s just block everything and build a product and go through all the approval processes, when in six months, we will have something that would enable several other resources. “
Valve is also contributing to development projects for synthetic body parts in exchange for expertise.
“It turns out that game engines are really useful, because they simulate a lot of the information you need to create a simulated hand for people,” said Newell.
“You can iterate software faster than iterate a prosthesis, so we give them a framework in which they can do research and work with patients.”
In case you’re wondering, a cyber member of the Valve brand is probably out of the question for now.
“Valve is not in the business of creating virtual prostheses for people,” said Newell.
“This is what we are contributing to this specific research project and, therefore, we have access to leaders in the field of neuroscience who teach us a lot about the neuroscience side.”
On the subject of prostheses, Newell said there are some interesting questions to be answered about the development of artificial limbs.
“As soon as you do that, they say, ‘Well, can we give people a tentacle?’ Our brains were never designed to have tentacles, but we found that brains are really flexible. “
Neuroplasticity is a term that refers to our brain’s ability to relearn how to operate the body when something changes.
Neuroplasticity also occurs when we learn to use tools – an example would be a builder using a hammer for so many years that it looks like a natural extension of your body.
Newell gave a personal example of neuroplasticity. He underwent two corneal transplants in 2006/07, and after surgery a phantom image of some objects was produced in the field of vision between his eyes due to the change in color perception.
The condition went away in a few weeks, while his brain readjusted to the new information received from his eyes.
So the future of BCIs looks interesting, but what about the darker side?
Newell mentioned briefly that BCIs can be used to cause physical pain to people – even pain beyond the physical body.
“Could you make people think that [are] injured when injuring your tool, which is a complicated matter in its own right, “he said.
Game developers can take advantage of this function to make a player feel the pain of the character they are playing as when they are injured – perhaps to a lesser extent.
Like any other form of technology, Newell says there is a degree of confidence in using it and that not everyone will be comfortable connecting his brain to a computer.
He says that no one will be forced to do anything they don’t want to, and that people are likely to follow others if they have good experiences, comparing BCI technology to cell phones.
“People are going to decide for themselves if they want to do that. Nobody makes people use a phone, ”said Newell.
“I’m not saying that everyone is going to love it and insist that they have a brain-computer interface. I’m just saying that each person will decide for themselves whether or not there is an interesting combination of features, functionality and price.”
There will also be a heavy burden on developers to ensure that their BCI products are rigorously tested and protected against breaches.
“There is nothing magical about these systems that makes them less vulnerable to viruses or the like than other computer systems,” said Newell.
“At the moment, you have to entrust all of your financial data, all of your personal information to your technology infrastructure, and if the people who build these people do a bad job, they are going to take consumer acceptance off a cliff.
“Nobody wants to say, ‘Oh, remember Bob? Remember when Bob was hacked by Russian malware? Damn it – is he still running naked through the woods? ‘ or whatever it is. So, yes, people will have to be very confident that these are safe systems that do not present long-term health risks. “
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