In the 1999 film “The Matrix,” characters could simply learn a new set of skills by uploading a program into their brains. When (if ever) will we be able to that in real life?

Michio Kaku: We all saw the movie "The Matrix" where you simply jack in a program into our brain and bingo, we are karate masters. Bingo, we know how to drive a helicopter. Can we do that now or maybe in the near future? And the answer is probably not because the brain is not really a computer. It doesn’t process digital information. Our brain is a learning machine. It learns by itself to correct its previous mistakes.While your laptop today is just as stupid today as it was yesterday—your laptop doesn’t learn.

Our brain has no Windows. It has no software. It has no programming, but it simply learns tasks as it goes along. Therefore, the interface between digital information and memory is quite complicated. These are in some sense two operating systems, so eventually we may master that ability, but we have to reverse engineer the brain and that’s going to take many decades, so don’t expect to become a karate master anytime soon by simply pushing a button.

Directed / Produced by
Jonathan Fowler & Elizabeth Rodd