Beyond AI - Dementia & Boosted Natural Intelligence

Is there something better, and more reliable than AI, namely what I am calling BNI (boosted natural intelligence)?

Old Before Their Time

One of the deep undying tragedies of our times is the growing ranks of seniors with dementia, of which there are many varieties. The various approaches to finding a palliative – not a cure, we’re nowhere near yet – have so far failed. There are others of course that are being explored but so far without any luck.

Tragically at least one of these approaches – focusing on amyloid clumps in the brain, has so far been deeply disappointing, and the focus on it might well have actually taken us further from a solution, rather than nearer, via scientific fraud (see more here and here).

New Kids on the Block

However, I think that it is inevitable that in the medium-term at least, if not the shorter term, new solutions will arrive, although it would still be a stretch to call them cures, or even high levels of palliative. The scientific frauds have led to drugs based on attacking amyloid clumps in the brain which don’t work and lead to all-too-common side-effects, sometimes fatal.

But new approaches are emerging that are based on a wider variety of novel channels. Many of these are based on new types of targets and knowledge of novel neural pathways and phenomena.

Dementia – The Counterintuitive New Way to Get Smarter?

This of course would be great news when and if it actually happens. But there’s another wrinkle emerging which could throw open new worlds in the area of AI – artificial intelligence.

But this is something that we have not realized yet. It might well be that these new approaches to dementia are going to open up totally new ways to approach artificial intelligence.

In effect these novel therapeutic targets and agents for dementia caused by various neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s, ALS, FTD (frontotemporal dementia) and Parkinson’s can open up totally new horizons for AI itself.

In attacking causes and concomitants of traditional dementias, we will open up totally new channels for boosting intelligence based not just on brains that have been given a new lease on life, but in fact will enable new horizons and pathways for expanded natural cognition.

 In effect these new approaches to dementia have the potential to expand the range of faculties beyond what we normally possess.

Psst, Want a New Brain?

We can see this potential in a variety of ways. One such is the phenomenon called apoptosis, the name for cell death in the brain. We have for some time realized that one of the main ways in which brains lose normal functioning is when the systems to deal with normal cell death go awry and that the systems for throwing out normal by products of cell death no longer work so that new or repaired cells are no longer formed leaving nothing to repair the brain.

Many of the new approaches address cell death and many of the myriad systems connected to it. Some of these pathways will actually expand neuronal and all-brain performance. In effect what was designed to be a repair actually can have the potential to expand the performance of the original brain.

Discovering some of the amyloid science frauds have had the side-benefit of refocusing on how some of the amyloid pathways, once repaired, can open up access to these new potentials.

Of course, the primary focus has been to repair what was not working properly in the brain. But this new focus is leading to the discovery of new biochemical pathways to improving neuronal performance, especially in parts of the brain that have not been traditionally explored such as glial cells and astrocytes.

Even a few years ago these were regarded as having nothing to do with the performance of healthy brains. We are now discovering that they are actually new doors into expanding the performance of even healthy brains.

Plug-In Noggins

Once such is that of organoid intelligence. This is the process of growing clumps of brain cells in vitro into a self-powered growth in a mini brain. These organoids can develop into self-powered structures that do not act overall as a normal brain but that possess many of their functions. These can be used in conjunction with new chemical and neural mechanisms to expand brain performance.

As of now these are being used in conjunction with animal studies, but it is inevitable they will be used in human brains, partly for medical reasons, but also for non-medical reasons, such as expanding cognition and even as new types of neural protheses.

Work in this area has been catalyzed by neural implants such as those from Neuralink a company started by Elon Musk. These can be viewed as the pioneers of new types of neural protheses that can be used as the basis for extra-medical types of boosted natural intelligence (BNI).

Since these are “natural” in origin they serve as a way to boost intelligence without some of the disadvantages of AI, with its many dangerous and even threatening possibilities that can go rogue or introduce new types of dementia or neural dysfunctions.

It might well be the case that BNI offers us new models of human development that not only provide effective therapies for dementia but also can be harnessed to ameliorate some of the dangerous potentials of AI.

New Brains, New Careers, New Contributions

This opens up some even more exciting possibilities. This includes offering to victims of dementia the possibility of not only repairing this damage but also to expand their original cognitive powers beyond what they possessed as younger adults. Creating a totally new life for people who had believed that they were finished as productive adults?

I think that BNI, boosted natural intelligence could be even more important and have even more human potential than the widely touted AI models themselves might possess.

Boosted natural intelligence is another horizon. It’s near enough that some people who might already be victims of dementia could benefit from it.

In their new, best life.