Human brain capable AI interface?

[Blayne]

Yo, so while I understand that the urban legend of Humans not using 90% of their brains is well a myth, I was wondering however compared to a PC or a supercomputer mainframe thingy how well do do we stack up? In my story at some point I want it so by interfacing with a special communications implant an AI can upload itself into the human brain (or the implant) and while not take control can share the body in a way similar to how Baltar and Head Six interacted.

Does the brain conceivably have that storage and processing capacity or would I have to have some or a majority of the "load" shared with the implant?

Essentially I'ld be handwaving how the implent, brain, and AI interact and assume technology could progress in the time alloted to allow it somehow but can the brain theoretically store alot of information assuming it could be determined how many "bytes" a brain could hold and how many "flops" it could process through a kind of Organic brain impulse to computer format translator.

[Starglider]

Drive-by posting due to me dealing with some crazy stuff ATM.

Yo, so while I understand that the urban legend of Humans not using 90% of their brains is well a myth

Kind of. The thing is, the brain learns skills and information by physically altering neurons. Various regions specialise in different skills and information. At any one time, you can only use the physical bits of your brain that have some bearing on the problem, although there will be activity in related areas as well.

I was wondering however compared to a PC or a supercomputer mainframe thingy how well do do we stack up?

The human brain effectively combines a hard drive and a CPU and processes files in-situ. The limitation comes from the fact that you can only have so many 'files' open at once (e.g. you can only have 7+-2 items in short term memory). Computers separate passive storage from an active processor, of with the later is fully general and can be applied to any task the computer has software for. Computer CPUs thus approach 100% utilisation with good software. CPUs also have a number of other advantages, such as deterministic logic, very high precision maths, extreme serial speed and very high effective fan-in ratios. IMHO this largely makes up for the much lower amount of raw compute power it has available.

In my story at some point I want it so by interfacing with a special communications implant an AI can upload itself into the human brain (or the implant) and while not take control can share the body in a way similar to how Baltar and Head Six interacted.

Uploading into the brain itself is frankly quite infeasible. With extreme difficultly it may be possible to alter the person's brain so they have an 'alternate personality' roughly like the AI. There will be no way to implement the AI itself using neurons unless it is already an extremely brain-like design, and even if it is you'd have to use micro/nanobots to physically restructure the target person's brain. You'd still likely lose a lot of capability, even moreso if it only has a tiny fraction of the person's brain to work with.

Putting a copy of the AI into the implant is easy, if the implant has sufficient on-board processing and storage capability. The ability to support a human-level AGI on a chip that will fit in someone's head without cooking their brain is probably less than 50 years away.

[Blayne]

Well the AI's in my story are Halo-esque they're sentient and originally based from living human brains where the human brain is 'scanned' and then processed to generate an AI program that works with in story electronics and are with a few preprogrammed restrictions fully sentient.

But the end result for the upload-to-brain would be functionally the AI could 'speak' to you in such a way that no one else can hear them, so the implant could cover this, but what I would like is for them to be able to generate an 'image' of their avatar near you within visual range and interact with your senses so that they can fake your sense and make it feel like you could touch them but would probably feel artificial and feel fake and with effort walk through them.

If 'sharing' is infeasible then I could probably fall back to have the implant do 90% of the work.

[Skgoa]

But to do that the AI does not actually need to be IN the brain, it simply needs the capability to fake signals coming in from the senses. Think Matrix. Now if I recall my biology classes correctly the implant would best be positioned in the lower back of the head, roughly where the spine is attached. If my limited memory is correct, more or less all sensory data goes through that area and is also analyzed there. This would also eliminate the need to actually change the brain AND result in a somewhat standardized brain<->implant interface, making this more believable.
e/ Actually this is way more realistic (at least to me) than uploading another conciousness into your brain, because lets face it: who would do such a thing voluntarily? The intelligent sensory enhancement implant(TM) on the other hand is much less invasive (you can be shure that it doesn't go through your memories, takes controle over your body etc.) and could even be modular and "upgradable". You could have specialized AI versions for flying, ground combat, brain surgery... You could even make it an extension of the augmented reality schemes that are being implemented right now(QR codes and all that), resulting in a mature and widely accepted technology, which will not feel like a oneshot magic deus ex machina brain upload, as Cortana did in the Halo series.

[Blayne]

Bingo, you've grasped what I'm going to be showing in story, AI's will be widespread and used to help humanity on nearly every level and pretty much why my alternate history USSR remains competitive into the future, they came up with them first.

But thing is, who said that the character would have had the AI uploaded consensually

Part of the plot dealing with those would roughly transpire as Agent investigates smugglers, gets trapped, finds a smuggled AI, AI is programmed for self preservation so latches on via wifi, agent now has ability to hack any electronics and escapes.

But I'ld still like to have it as that not only can they 'fool' your sense but can also 'share' your senses and possibly surface thoughts making it extremely intrusive for some people, what good story wise is a technology is good on all levels? There should be a drawback a reason to opt out, in this case its because they, unavoidably can (or at least I aim for) experience everything you do destroying privacy for you forever, and since their first loyalty is to the State and Party... You get the picture.