By Link Daniel
Original Publication Date: January 21, 2021
Today the brain computer industry is mostly comprised of private entities, academic research teams and government organizations. Governments support academic teams or startups with financing and academic teams provide startups with talent. In some cases those academic teams spin out startups on their own. This may be too simplistic of a picture, yet it illustrates the crux of the issue, which is that innovation is closed. Under this system everyone is incentivized to hold secrets to stay competitive. While competition is healthy and spurs innovation, it does not optimize for what would be possible if every stakeholder was incentivized to collaborate towards shared goals.
The most important goal for the industry as a whole is to create a forcing function that would accelerate the number of neurons we can interface with in order to set a foundation from which we can explore the brain and the mind. The best way to achieve that is when every stakeholder is incentivized to collaborate in an open-source environment, which would encourage others to build on top of what has already been created.
It would also create an environment that is more accessible for everyone. We could have people participate that are currently excluded. The more accessible and the less capital is required to enter the space, the more innovation we will have across the board. If we had more composable brain legos and everyone would have access to them then people from all of the world could tap into this brain computer network to build their own things.
Instead of only having an industry in which private entities compete with each other in order to develop the best brain computer technology, why not create an alternative system by creating a network in which every actor is incentivized to work towards an open standard. In this system, everyone governs and decides upon the future direction of the industry.
We propose a network environment in which protocols are being developed that are open and permissionless allowing anyone in the world to access and build upon them. We need to figure out what we can do to catalyze a Cambrian explosion of decentralized brain computer protocols and brain applications that could be used to heal individuals.
When we create open neuro protocols, we will also be able to govern more effectively instead of governments trying to regulate private entities. Companies will always be ahead of governments, being able to move more swiftly and use capital to influence the direction that governments dictate. If there was an open playing field, governance would be inherently the job of everyone that is involved. It would remove the friction between government and companies placing it into protocols. If we are playing in the open, this would bring certain advantages that are not possible in the closed environment that we are in right now.
Certainly ethics is a very important concern when it comes to the future of brain computer interfaces. We cannot be seriously place ethical questions into the hands of a few people that are controlled by private companies. Only through open protocols can we enforce ethical standards that represent the views of everyone involved. History has shown that private companies will use their power to sway other large stakeholders in the direction that they want without regard for the community at large. If private companies dictate the direction of the industry that would concentrate power in them and not lead to a situation where the course of this industry could be governed by everyone.
We also have to be realistic about a potential scenario in which a company offers a powerful brain computer. It will create a situation in which people will give up their rights and opt into the system that the private company creates. As we witnessed with the evolution of the internet, private entities may shape the public discourse to represent their own interest. We do not need to repeat the same mistake when it comes to the internet of brain computers. Private companies are incentivized to do what they are meant to do and that is maximize shareholder value and create profit. They have to compete in the marketplace in order to come up with innovation that will allow them to gain market share and thrive in the market. This is very difficult and many companies fail. We do not need to undermine private companies nor do we need to rely on them exclusively. We can build an alternative system that holds everyone’s power in check.
It is very difficult to change the existing system as it is already in place and large deployments of capital have already been made. This capital already pursues their own version of the ideal brain computer. We cannot stop this development nor should we strive to do that. What we can do, however, is create an alternative system that will connect all these technologies and bring all stakeholders together in order to incentivize everyone to work towards open neuro protocols. In this world we will still have companies and they will make profits, but it would not be a brain computer world that is controlled by private companies where governments are helplessly trying to catch up and regulate them. We have to do this now, because the longer we wait, the more difficult it will be.
The advantages if neuroscience was to become more open source are plentiful. It would allow all stakeholders to share code and collaborate in ways that would increase upside for everyone. It would make the field more accessible for new players. It would simply accelerate our progress in ways that no amount of capital and private companies can achieve. It would align the incentives in a way that would create more sustainable growth in the future. It would set the foundation for a more sustainable type of governance and respect the interest of the widest, most diverse group of stakeholders.
The difficult question is how to get this alternative system bootstrapped. The current system holds large amounts of capital and is able to attract human capital which attracts further capital and talent. The alternative system needs to be able to match the current system in scope of financial and human capital in order to be taken seriously. In order to get this alternative system started, we need to create strong incentives to contribute to the network while interoperability to the legacy system is kept in place. Without community and capital it will be difficult to make any progress.
The goal is to create a vibrant ecosystem that would allow a different type of growth that is currently not being enabled by the existing ecosystem. It would not undermine the current system and it would benefit everyone. An alternative in which people could share code is a world that will accelerate faster toward its goals. Today private companies need to keep secrets in order to compete with each other and thrive in the market. At the moment the cost of entry is very high because developing brain computers is very capital intensive. The capital that is required needs a return on its capital. Putting capital into open-source environments does not ensure a return on capital. That is a problem as open-source has not had a way to compete with a set of private companies for a long time.
As we can now build open, permissionless systems with crypto-economic primitives, we can build networks that incentivize early stakeholders to contribute capital of any form in return for the native token that the network distributes as it grows. In theory everyone would agree it would be useful to have an alternative system that invites everyone to build upon open, permissionless protocols. In practice, this is difficult to do unless we can financially reward those that risk whatever is valued at the beginning stages of a startup. Now we have the tools to do this in a meaningful way.
In fact, it is great that there are already so many private companies that are spearheading this neuro revolution. We must hope that they will keep innovating and bring us closer to the future of an ideal brain computer. We merely offer an alternative that would augment the current system and supercharge it. It would accelerate the future that everyone is working hard to achieve. We are not here to change the current system as it exists. We are here to offer an alternative which would help everyone involved and increase the number of people participating. We will work with the leading brain computer startups, government organizations and academic teams to allow them to shape the evolution of the network. We will also not rely on any stakeholder from other systems to bootstrap the network as we invite anyone from anywhere in the world to join us.
We are not competing with companies that are developing brain computers. In fact we are not building brain computers. We are building a network of brain computers. When brain computers are ready to be released they can tap into the network. There are many things that can already be developed in anticipation of such a release and we can work with early prototypes and generations of brain computers in order to launch the network. These companies are building the hardware and software to run the brain computer. We are building the network between the brain and the computer through which the data will flow and the network that will connect the brain computer links to the virtual world. We create this network in such a way as to guarantee cryptographic entry into this virtual world and exit into the material world.