Humans to order machines with power of thinking: Turkish expert

Beyazıt Şenbük – ISTANBUL

People will give orders to machines with the power of thinking in the near future when the real and the virtual worlds will collide, said a Turkish expert working in the global technology conglomerate Meta, formerly known as Facebook.

Tuğçe Taşçı, who is working as a researcher in a department at Meta, where the virtual reality glasses are designed, insisted that mobile phones, “human’s indispensable need of today,” will no longer exist in the future.

“In the future, everybody will unite the real and the virtual worlds with VR glasses or special contact lenses. There won’t be any mobiles,” the 31-year-old scientist said.

According to Taşçı, digital wristbands will take place of all communication devices and “These wristbands will be people’s personal assistants.”

When asked about the functions of these wrist straps, she gave an example, saying, “Let’s say, one buys coffee from a coffee shop every morning before work. His or her wristband will connect to the coffee shop and ask them to make the coffee ready before his or her arrival at the shop.”

However, the real change in the future will be “ordering with brain power.”

“I am now working at Meta’s ‘Reality Labs’ department, where we work on a system enabling people to control all digital devices just by thinking,” she said and went to say: “Our team is now designing a wristlet, which can detect signals of motor neurons coming from the brain to the arms.”

When they succeed in their trials, a disabled or crippled person will be able to move a robotic arm just by thinking.

Taşçı summarized the difficulties they face due to the complex structure of the human brain.

“The perception capacity of the human brain is sufficient enough for people’s daily work. However, we are stuck at muscle power for the ability to move.”

“For example, people can think very fast, but can only speak as the mouth permits us to do so. When we open a TV, what do we do? Think of opening it, grab the remote control and press a button. So many useless steps to do so. We are working on a project when we can open the TV only by thinking.”

Born in the Turkish capital Ankara, Taşçı graduated from the electronics engineering of the Middle Eastern Technical University (ODTÜ).

Moving to the U.S. in 2021, she joined Stanford University.

Working at Apple as an apprentice, she was then employed at Google making researches on “movement with thinking” in the world giant’s “X” department.

“Google spends 20 percent of its income on this department,” she said.