We probably all know cyborgs from popular culture. The fusion between man and machine is often seen in science fiction content. Neuralink, a fresh tech company founded by Elon Musk among others, is going to take cyborgs from science fiction and bring them to reality (“Cyborg,” 2021).
Neuralink is developing an implantable Brain Machine Interface (BMI) that wants to connect brains with computers. The short-term aim is to treat serious brain diseases with the initial goal being to help people with paralysis. To put it simply, Neuralink wants to give these people a way to communicate with text or speech synthesis without them having to move a muscle (Engineering with the Brain, n.d.).
In the longer run, the aim is to enhance the human brain. This could potentially mean that humans that opt for the Neuralink BMI could get drastically more intelligent, since theoretically this brain can effortlessly communicate with computers, the cloud or other brains that carry the same interface (Masunaga, 2017).
Neuralink and their BMI technology sounds very promising. It will hopefully be the big breakthrough in neuroscience and will help cure millions of humans around the world with brain disease. The potential human enhancement also sounds like a solution for potential Artificial intelligence (AI) conflict with humans. Because some fear that AI will outpace humans and subsequently will take over the world. However, instead of pitting humans against AI, Neuralink brings humans and AI together. This fusion could potentially be the next step in human evolution. Transforming homo sapiens to cyborgs (Makridakis, 2017)(Engineering with the Brain, n.d.)(Masunaga, 2017).
Lastly, I want to bring up a concern that I have with BMI technologies. The first humans with a BMI will have large advantages over humans without a BMI. And because this new technology will likely be expensive, the wealthier humans would be the first to adopt it. This difference in brain bandwidth could disadvantage humans that are less wealthy, increasing inequality between humans. To prevent this potential problem, governments across the world should consider Neuralink a potential basic need for all humans and should timely introduce proper legislation.
References
Cyborg. (2021). In Cambridge Dictionary. https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/cyborg
Engineering with the Brain. (n.d.). Https://Neuralink.Com/Applications/. https://neuralink.com/applications/
Makridakis, S. (2017). The forthcoming Artificial Intelligence (AI) revolution: Its impact on society and firms. Futures, 90, 46-60.
Masunaga, S. (2017, November 20). A quick guide to Elon Musk’s new brain-implant company, Neuralink. Los Angeles Times. https://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-tn-elon-musk-neuralink-20170421-htmlstory.html
This was a very interesting post to read since I hadn’t heard about this subject a lot. I agree it would be nice to have a future with BMI implants in our brain. In my opinion it could actually close the gap between people, if like you said, governments make the right legislation around the technology. Everyone would have the same information availability with the BMI’s. On the other hand since the technology is put inside or on the brain, it could also be a dangerous technology and it would give the companies that make the BMI’s a lot of power.
The conflict between AI and humans is an interesting thing to bring up. I think that combining AI with the human brain would not solve the potential conflict with humans. My reasoning for this is that humans already are in conflict with each other everywhere. If AI gets brought in to this it is not going to solve the human conflicts and will probably only aid the conflicts. Ethics in AI is already a hot topic and I think that with the addition of BMI’s regulators everywhere will have to look into what is being put in the code of the AI and if it is ethical. This will only be more and more important in the future with BMI’s.
Hi, to be honest, I am a fan of Elon Musk, and I have quite some interests in his companies. Of course, neural link is one of them. First, I think your concern is indeed reasonable, and as you said, it may exacerbate the existing inequality in wealth distribution and make the gaps between those who are poor and rich even larger. But I do think the technology itself is beneficial to us at large. The most common business applications for brain-computer interface are VR and medical industry. And there are some very interesting cases that emphasizes the usefulness of the BCI, especially the latter.
There is a company called, kernel Co, whose establishment was based on the 15 years of academic research at the University of Southern California. It was funded by organizations such as the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the US Department of Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). Their funds are extremely abundant, say they got 100 million dollars when it was just founded. They are using AI to “read” the content written into the chip in the hippocampus, and their accuracy rate reaches 80%. I personally think that if this technology gradually matures, it may enhance the memory of the person wearing it, but the enhancement of memory does not actually enhance a person’s IQ. So, it may not necessarily exacerbate the problem you mentioned. But, yeah, we need further substantiation.
I am bullish about the technology also because that it can be used to cure brain related diseases. So, its development indeed can make some people more well off, simply because it relieves their pain. According some reports, approximately 50 to 70 million Americans suffer from chronic sleep disorders. A company, Cerêve, developed a device to help patients with sleep disorders or insomnia to solve the root cause, which is mental allergies during sleep. And now, the US Food and Drug Administration had approved Cerêve’s sleep system as a prescription drug for the market. I think for people who have such issues, this technology will definitely make their happier.
The long-term goal of Neuralink is to “establish a whole-brain interface and brain-computer fusion”-but our understanding of the human brain is still very superficial. So far, there is no theoretical framework for brain function mechanisms, and it is difficult to discover the foreseeable future. Therefore, the long-term goal of Neuralink is not a purely engineering problem, but also involves scientific problems. And some key scientific issues are often difficult to achieve as planned by relying solely on manpower and material resources, sometimes they also rely on opportunity, luck, and the flash of genius. So, let’s not be too pessimistic, perhaps the benefits of this technology outweigh the disadvantages. I also hope so.