At the University of Goettingen in Germany they're pioneering technology that could greatly extend our control over our own brains. They're developing a means to turbo-charge our grey matter. The aim is to improve the volunteer's ability to subconsciously learn. The test itself is simple. When Leila sees a dot appear on the screen she has to tap a corresponding key on the keyboard. There is a pattern to when the dots appear. But it's impossible to detect. At least before the artificial stimulation of her brain begins.
What we want to do is to facilitate the excitability of her motor cortex. And in order to be able to do that we have to fix an electrode. I presume this is perfectly safe. I mean I'd be a bit nervous about having electricity shot through my brain. Well they're very weak currents.
They're so weak she doesn't notice anything. They're so weak that they just manipulate the membrane potential of nerve cells a little bit. So now we will stimulate the motor cortex here. By anodal electricity positive electricity for minutes. So now stimulation starts. So there's now electricity passing through Leila's brain.
Can you feel anything? No nothing. There's no smoke. I can't see any. And during this stimulation Leila will move her fingers and do the implicit learning paradigm. Then we will measure simultaneously how quick she can respond to the visual target during this time. What we expect to see is with motor cortex depolarisation that's more excitable and then her reaction time will improve.
And then we'll see an increase in speed that she's not constantly picking up a pattern but subconsciously she's getting better at learning. The longer the stimulation lasts the greater its effects will be. In previous experiments lasting hours permanent improvements to the brain were forged. We know from other research basic animal research that new connections between individual nerve cells will be built after about minutes. And after about a day they start to become functional. So it's really changing the structure of the brain by doing this? Yes. It's not just a temporary effect? Yes so we have structural alterations which allow you to move your fingers quicker in this case. With measuring the reaction times we will see that you'll probably speed up in the range of % or so. % and that's significant is it? % you wouldn't expect that? Not without stimulation.
Right. The idea of being able to enhance our intelligence if you don't mind having your brain stimulated hints at the dawn of a brave new world. But if you're going to involve computers then why stop there? Some scientists think the creation of artificial intelligence could transport us to new levels of interaction and understanding. It's something that has occupied the minds of technology researchers for decades and Horizon has featured some of their wilder predictions. Our descendant will not be the child of the loin but the child of the brains the thing we call the computer which does not have to pass through the birth canal.
And does not grow by a tablespoonful of grey matter every years which is the case in the rapid growth of our brain but grows a factor of in power every seven years. The computer generation.
There's no question that it'll match us in narrow reasoning power by and go beyond us to become the great new intelligent race of the future. The artificial intelligences of the future will be worried about weighty problems that we simply can't understand. And they may condescend to talk to us.
They may... amuse us on occasion or play games that we like to play. And in some sense they might keep us as pets. Although those predictions haven't been borne out work on artificial intelligence has continued to race towards the goal of a man-made super-intelligence leading one man to predict that a computer will equal a human brain's power by . His name is Ray Kurzweil inventor and visionary.
He believes that our understanding of the human brain will soon be complete. years from now we will have actually mastered human intelligence. We'll have both the hardware and the software to recreate human intelligence in a machine. Kurzweil was one of the first to make a computer that could read. MACHINE 'For score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth upon this...' If his latest prediction is right then we will understand the human brain at almost exactly the same time as computers equal its power. It's this culmination of events that would lead to the singularity. There's really a point in human history where human society will be profoundly transformed by creating non-biological intelligence. Machines that are ultimately billions of times more capable than human beings today. And we will integrate with this technology and it will enhance human potential. We'll have to wait until to find out whether Kurzweil's prediction is correct. Until then science can only continue in its quest to fully fathom our unique mental abilities. Understanding what makes my intelligence different from that of someone like Einstein's could be a question of my genes or the way I was brought up. Maybe I'm just intelligent in a different kind of way? He was pretty good at physics. I'm pretty good at... Well anyway is not so far away so maybe we'll just have to wait and see who's so clever then.
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