China Signals Brain-Tech Ambitions with Standards Drive

China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology has announced plans to develop standards for brain-computer interface technology, signaling the country's intent to advance in this emerging field. The ministry said it would assemble a committee of experts from various sectors to draft guidelines for brain information encoding and decoding, data communication, and visualization.

Brain-computer interface technology, which enables direct communication between the brain and external devices, has gained prominence with ventures like Elon Musk's Neuralink in the United States. China's move suggests a shift from primarily academic research to more focused development, potentially rivaling Western competitors. Previous Chinese brain-computer interface efforts have been largely confined to university research. In March, state media reported a paralyzed patient regaining some mobility after receiving a brain implant developed by Tsinghua University.

I'll bet they can't wait

[Anonymous Coward]

to install BCI into every citizen so they can have total control and an army of robots.

Re: I'll bet they can't wait

[50000BTU_barbecue]

You sound like a boomer talking about 15 minute cities.

Re:

[hey!]

You start doing that when you realize your grandchildren are going to have to spend 50% of their income on housing.

Re:

[codebase7]

I'm sure they'd like to be able to read the thoughts of every single citizen in realtime as well, so they can sign them up for a mandatory on-demand organ donor program.

If you think the US won't do that as well, you're naive. The main difference will be a mandatory on-demand military service program, but they'll still do it to demonize and eliminate their under performing population as well.

At least until they get real androids, then they'll just use a few of the under performing as political shields, (Think "poor on display to the world" to earn brownie points for "helping" them "get back on track"), and eradicate the rest. As those profits won't make themselves, and i

Re:

[cusco]

I wondered how long it would take for racist drivel to appear, and here it is in the very first post. Of course an AC.

Slashdot, sometimes you're quite predictable.

Quite obviously

[Mr. Dollar Ton]

Control over the population using a mobile phone and QR codes isn't working as well as expected, so a more direct approach is in order.

Gosh, I wonder what they want it for.

[Eunomion]

Something decent and honorable, I'm sure.

Way too early

[iAmWaySmarterThanYou]

All politics aside....

Brain interface tech is bleeding edge stuff. We (humanity) are not ready to create and adhere to a standard for doing something we are barely able to do at a very very basic level.

Way way way way way too fucking early to create a standard for this. Makes no sense.

Re:Way too early

[AmiMoJo]

How often has that been said and we ended up with whatever the first mover did as the de-facto standard?

Regardless of what you think of China's politics, the ability to set strategic goals and mobilize industry to meet them is something we could really learn from. It lets them develop technologies really fast, and so massive infrastructure projects.

It's not slave labour making it possible, it's the government setting a goal and then properly funding and facilitating it. The US did something similar with the space race back in the 1960s.

Re: Way too early

[iAmWaySmarterThanYou]

Typically what happens is the first mover has a good enough or best fit solution.

Or more accurately whoever wins the race sets the standard. Why? Usually because they're better. They win for a reason.

In this case the race hasn't even started. How can you define standards for a thing that doesn't exist outside scifi quality medical and lab experiments around the world for only the most basic interfaces?

This is a field I've been intensely interested in and followed closely since the very first primitive e

Re:

[HiThere]

You overstate the case. Even at the beginning it's feasible to set certain minimal standards. That said, you can't set a very complete standard without hamstringing the entire area. So it really depends on what the proposed standard says. Clearly one that just says "The electrode wires must be thinner than the head of the patient" will be both followed and useless.

Re:

[iAmWaySmarterThanYou]

Why set any standards at all?

I think scientists can figure out the basics like "wire must be smaller than patients' heads". The rest? They have a very vague idea what they're doing at best.

It's like if we created a standardized communications port for AGI robots when we don't have any or even know what the rest of the technology might look like. Why do that?

No standard is necessary or even remotely helpful at this point. I think China is just crippling themselves in this vertical. Not that I'm bothered

Re:

[cusco]

They win for a reason.

All too often that "reason" is because of marketing. I don't think we want a standard for BCI to be set by some marketing drone based on a bunch of buzz words, and that's what will happen if the engineers and scientists don't create a framework. Standards can and frequently do change and evolve, just look at the 802 protocol for networking. It now covers everything from the ancient creaking Token Rings that are still left, to LoRa running John Deere tractors, to 800 gigabyte multi-fiber rings.

Re:

[iAmWaySmarterThanYou]

You don't want any standard set for a technology that barely exists.

Lemme know when they're ready to productize and I'll agree with you.

Re:

[cusco]

You're opposed? That should serve to convince pretty much everyone that they need to embrace standards.

Re:

[iAmWaySmarterThanYou]

Lmao, that's the lowest form of rhetorical fallacy you could have dug up.

Would you like a shovel?

Re:

[timeOday]

I think our private capital model is working very well. Look how much capital was allocated to amazon.com and for how long until it panned out, which it did. Look at Tesla. Look at AI. Look at Neuralink and SpaceX. Also look at VR/AR - into which Meta and Apple have been able to invest massively despite the highly dubious utility of it. Look at medical research. Look at fusion. All of these things are well-capitalized.

Re:

[AmiMoJo]

Doubtless created great shareholder value, but did they address US strategic needs?

Paving the way for the V-Chip :)

[fleeped]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:

[Miles_O'Toole]

I bet a lot of Chinese condemned criminals are going to get an offer they can't refuse.

Re:

[dlleigh]

There will always be more Uyghurs to vivisect. :-(

China has the advantage

[fjo3]

...of not caring about their citizens. They will outpace the West in this technology, because they don't give a damn how many people that are killed or crippled by experiments.

Smart move according to Bostrom

[oumuamua]

In his book Superintelligence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] Bostrom argues exactly for this or genetic improvement of the human gene line. Augmenting our minds may be the only way to compete with robots.
Why compete with robots? Let them do all the work. Unfortunately TPTB may just leave the current capitalist system in place. In 4 years, all you China-bashers could be wishing you lived in China instead of being fined for being homeless in the USA: https://www.theguardian.com/so... [theguardian.com]

The new UI for ...

[Big Bipper]

Windows 13. And if you don't upgrade in time, you'll get a double shot of the new Cov ... Monkey ... Bird ... genetic manipulation Soylent anti-vermin juice right up your ... from your boot screen.