The Rise of Brain Computer Interfaces (BCI) that Can Compete with Rogue Super-AIs, w/ Trent McConaghy

AI-Curious with Jeff Wilser

If AI gets super intelligent and super powerful, will it be benevolent? Or will it want to crush us like ants?

Perhaps they’ll be benevolent. Maybe they’ll be “aligned” with our interests. But if not? What should we do? How can we prepare for this nightmarish scenario?

Trent McConaghy has a plan. McConaghy has been working in AI for decades, both as an entrepreneur and as a researcher, and he’s widely respected in the field.

And he recently gave a speech to the “existential-risk” (x-risk) group at NASA about how, to prepare humanity for this all-powerful AI…We need to become more than humans. Specifically, we need to embrace the idea of Brain-Computer Interface, or BCI.

BCI, says McConaghy, can even help unshackle us from the constraints of being a flesh-and-blood human. In a literal mind-meld with computers, we could be 1,000 times smarter and live longer.

This sounds like deep sci-fi, but McConaghy lucidly breaks down the vision in a way that’s step by step, easy to understand, and almost feels…plausible?

Whether you agree with the theory or not, McConaghy’s thoughts are FASCINATING and he makes for a wildly engaging conversation about the future of AI. I’m confident that anyone even remotely interested in AI — or sci-fi — will find his thought experiments intriguing.

Among many other sweeping and futuristic topics, we cover:

Why economic incentives make AGI (or “ASI,” for Artificial Super Intelligence) is perhaps more likely than we think (13:50); Why we might soon be like an anthill compared to god-like entities of Artificial Smart Intelligence (23:00); whether these all-powerful ASIs will protect human rights (26:00); why we need a “more competitive substrate” that helps us be more than human and hyper-boost our intelligence (29:00); how creating powerful Brain-Computer-Interfaces is more grounded and less sci-fi-ish than you might think (35:00); how we will some day —maybe soon — be able to just think of videos and use telepathy to send to friends (45:00); why the human “bio-stack” won’t be enough and we’ll need a synthetic solution (53:00); the dangers of “bike shedding” the risks of ASI (59:30); how BCI could plausibly go mainstream (61:30); why when we’re 94 years old we might switch from our “bio-stack brain” and migrate to our “silicon-stack” side (65:00).

So join us on a futuristic and fascinating journey….

McConaghy’s presentation to the existential-risk group at NASA:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1tLK1sBCMNuJTNX8Pi99iDmLzFiIsUOk5/view

McConaghy’s Medium article that breaks down the BCI theory:
https://medium.com/@trentmc0/bci-acc-a-path-to-balance-ai-superintelligence-80bb6f32e39c

McConaghy on Twitter/X:
https://twitter.com/trentmc0

Ocean Protocol, the blockchain-powered AI ecosystem that McConaghy founded:
https://oceanprotocol.com

My article about AI and blockchain where I first interviewed McConaghy, and he shares a part of this theory (which got me fascinated in the first place):
https://www.coindesk.com/consensus-magazine/2023/09/21/is-crypto-ai-really-a-match-made-in-heaven/

And finally Jeff Wilser (me) on Twitter/X:
https://twitter.com/jeffwilser