Neuralink’s mission has never been clear. We know he’s working on a chip designed to be surgically inserted into the human skull called the brain-computer interface (BCI), but exactly what and for whom remains a mystery.
The best we can say based on what has been revealed so far, it is shaping up to be a terrifying hormone hijacker capable of giving you forced mental orgasms or falling in love.
yes
– Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 19, 2020
Musk originally said that Neuralink’s goal was to produce a BCI so that humans would not lose their competitive advantage against AI. The great idea here is that keyboards and other peripherals are not as efficient as a direct interface intended for action. So with a BCI, you could just think something like “I want to see Tiger King” and your phone will start playing Tiger King on Netflix.
For some reason, Musk believes this will help us if a general AI (super intelligence) rises up against us.
But the path to locking spikes in people’s skulls to take over at least some of their natural motor functions is a little different than, say, getting permission to build a tunnel under Las Vegas, the same concept, different authorities.
That’s probably why Neuralink turned quickly to the medicine. Musk and the company claim that Neuralink will eventually “resolve many brain / spinal injuries” and treat mental illness and cognitive disorders. He claimed he will do everything from “solving” autism (autism is not a disease or a disease, it cannot be cured or resolved) to stimulate the brain’s pleasure center.
This would resolve many brain / spinal injuries and is ultimately essential for AI symbiosis.
– Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 19, 2020
It has that potential
– Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 19, 2020
Putting aside for a moment the fact that humanity’s collective understanding of the human brain and its operations is not deep enough to withstand the kind of directed control that Neuralink’s proposal is even possible … this sounds terrifying.
[[[[Read: Facebook brain computer interface will be the instrument of the collapse of society]In previous tweets, Musk’s proposed conditions, such as obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), can be cured through a device that, until now, appears to be aimed at the general public. These are incredibly tight use cases.
Cognitive disorders like OCD and diseases like ALS are “boutique” conditions, which means that they do not manifest, attack, or respond to treatment in the same way among affected people. In other words: no two people experience these afflictions in the same way. It is ridiculous to assume that a device capable of treating either of these two conditions in individuals would also be marketed to neurologically typical individuals as well.
yes
– Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 19, 2020
What is scary is the idea of an invasive device that can potentially control the hormonal receptors in your brain that share a design with a chip designed to communicate with an external source. This feels dangerous.
Any “chip” with physical access to any part of the human brain capable of triggering a dopamine, serotonin, or oxytocin response, for example, would be the mental equivalent of making heroin as readily available as tap water and then assuming that no one would be hurt.
Since we know that BCI won’t be a quantum computing brain chip (because it doesn’t exist), it will work using classic binary data constraints, and that means it could be physically or remotely hacked. And since it is invasive, we can also assume that you cannot simply “turn it off” if a bad actor gains control. Oh!
Bottom line: Elon Musk and Neuralink are designing an invasive brain chip that, according to Musk, will give the computer access to its nervous system, hormone receptors, and other central neurological functions. And they’re hiring engineers with experience building smartphones to help. Hopefully the world’s collective governments will do a better job of regulating this than their Autopilot and Full Self-Driving features have for Tesla cars.
The good news here is that, like most of Musk’s efforts in heaven, what he promises with Neuralink and what the technological reality of our world says he will really deliver are two completely different things.
- SpaceX has yet to make progress in treating deep space radiation, despite Musk’s claims that he would be ready for a mission to Mars by 2020.
- Tesla is no closer to level four or five of autonomous driving than either BMW or Waymo, despite Musk’s claims that he would have a million robotaxis on the road by the end of 2020.
- In fact, The Boring Company did not revolutionize public transportation by 2020, but, after years of development, unveiled a regular underground tunnel.
We don’t expect much from Neuralink unless you’re ready to commit to building an invasive medical device for neurology patients or a non-invasive consumer device. Either way, we should all have more information soon. Musk and Neuralink have a “progress update” scheduled for August 28.
Posted on Jul 22, 2020 – 19:38 UTC
