The wrong side of the program of “chipping Russians” is revealed: a serious study of the brain was made a horror story

by time news

“Russians are going to have chips implanted in their brains!” Yesterday’s headlines shouted about this with a reference to the Ministry of Education and Science. The news scared everyone. “Well, it has begun!” – told me a neighbor who believes in the conspiracy theory. A little more, and many would have believed that from the harsh Moscow heat someone’s brains had melted.

Apparently, in order to extinguish the noise, the authorities in the highest echelons lowered a sedative pill to the “ground”: “The Russian government did not allocate money for brain chipping.” The answer turned out to be very popular, you can hear the concern for ordinary people … Only now there was an unfortunate mistake. The research program in question is called “Brain, Health, Intelligence, Innovation”. It was proposed by RAS and Moscow State University. Lomonosov, agreed in March this year by President Vladimir Putin and Mikhail Mishustin, and it has nothing to do with chipping the brain. The program is very necessary for people, since it will take a step forward in the treatment of Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s diseases, and will help to understand the mechanisms of memory and consciousness. But she got bogged down precisely because of the “hype” about “brain chipping” raised in the press. It seems that neither the President nor the Deputy Prime Minister of the country has a decree on the relevant ministers. Here is the opinion of individual journalists who have not really grasped the essence of the matter – this is an authoritative opinion!

The program “Brain, Health, Intelligence, Innovation” was calculated until 2030, and it was supposed to allocate 54 billion rubles for it. Do not be alarmed, this is not so much, considering that the program is designed for 9 years and is “spread out” over several institutes.

Back in January last year, at a meeting of the Moscow State University Board of Trustees, its rector Viktor Sadovnichy and RAS President Alexander Sergeev turned to Putin with a request to support a program for the study of the brain, which in our country will not receive adequate funding. Considering that the topic of brain research is at the forefront of the world today, given the enormous importance of clinical research in the treatment of neurodegenerative diseases of the century, Putin said: “Yes, cook.”

Scientists have prepared their part. It was large and had to be cut. The document was for a long time under the approval of Deputy Prime Minister Tatyana Golikova, and in the end, in March of this year, it lay on the table of the country’s president, who signed it.

However – a strange thing – even after that no one allocated money for the program. As one of the participants, the scientific director of the Institute of Higher Nervous Activity and Neurophysiology of the Russian Academy of Sciences Pavel Balaban, told us, the first tranche on it seems to have been scheduled for 2022. That is, one working year of the program has already been lost?

By the way, our neuroscientists are considered the best in the world, it is to us, according to Balaban, that the whole West travels to treat brain diseases. We would have normal funding, and neither the Americans nor the Japanese would catch up with us. Long-term traditions, hereditary schools …

For example, at the last forum in St. Petersburg, an advanced for our days development of the Institute of Internal Affairs of the Russian Academy of Sciences was shown for completely blind people whose optic nerve does not work. Scientists have created a special electrode implanted into the brain, and thanks to it, the blind have the opportunity to distinguish between light and shadow. There is a project for the optogenetic return of vision (for those who have preserved the nerve). According to Balaban, no one in the world has done this yet, our scientists are going with colleagues from other countries to develop these tools at the same level. They, for example, need money to produce the implantable matrix itself.

The fundamental part of the program concerns the study of the problem of consciousness, which is being carried out by the Institute for Advanced Study of the Brain, Moscow State University, under the leadership of Konstantin Anokhin. He is at the forefront of developing new methods for creating artificial intelligence based on a human neural network. Rector Viktor Sadovnichy himself speaks for mathematicians.

And so an important program for everyone, it turns out, “pushed”, defamed, reduced to a horror story about microchips in the brain ?! “The federal research program, which involved studying the possibility of controlling external devices using microcomputers implanted in the brain, was closed last year, since the Russian government came to the conclusion that it was” inexpedient, “the press service of the Ministry of Education and Science told TIme.

“How so? – scientists shrug their shoulders. – And the president, and the prime minister? They didn’t consider it inappropriate! ” Well, yes, experts admit, in the third point of the program there was a very small part of the developments for the IT industry, like the interfaces described in the scandalous articles for ensuring the control of complex systems (airplanes, nuclear power plants, cars).

Probably, on the basis of this, dashing minds interested in fantasy such as “Lawnmower”, and decided to “hyip”, present serious developments as dangerous know-how for human freedom, which will end with nothing more than a general implantation of microchips into the brains of citizens.

“We don’t even use the term such a“ microchip ”anywhere,” explains Pavel Balaban. “And with the help of our electrodes implanted in the brain, no commands can be transmitted to the brain.”

But the reality is that scientists don’t seem to care much. This is how Evgeny Szhenov, the scientific director of the Scientific and Educational Policy Expert and Analytical Center, commented on the situation with the program “Brain, Health, Intelligence, Innovations”: “Yes, the program” Brain, Health, Intelligence, Innovations “should have been included in the national project” Science “, later -” Science and Universities “. But the project remained motionless after the “hype” about “brain chipping” raised in the media. The logic is that the national project should not contain points ambiguously assessed by the public. At the same time, Rosmolodezh and ANO National Priorities are now collecting initiatives for national projects. So the return of this project to the current agenda is possible. “

Do you understand? Rosmolodezh and an autonomous non-profit organization are, of course, serious organizations. But why do they determine the country’s scientific agenda? What do they have to do with it, when the opinion of academic scientists and researchers of the country’s leading university is much more important in this matter?

Or maybe the “hype” is not accidental? Maybe because of the reluctance to allocate six billion (!) Per year for scientific research, the persons responsible for funding decided to play along with those who compose horror stories and put the brakes on the case? Just keep in mind that if artificial intelligence is created in a dozen years, and it won’t be us, society will remember who today, in 2021, stubbornly pretended not to understand the true meaning of neurobiological brain research.

Published in the newspaper “Moskovsky Komsomolets” No. 28564 dated June 23, 2021

Newspaper headline:
No chipping, no money

.

You may also like

Leave a Comment