Will People Chip Their Brains to Ditch Their Smartphones When Neuralink “can be considered morally unethical”?

By B.N. Frank

In case you missed it, last summer Elon Musk announced one of his companies had been putting computer chips in animals’ brains and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) was okay with his company eventually doing this to humans as well.

Unfortunately, we’ve all become accustomed to Musk as well as the FDA for making decisions that tend to negatively impact the public on a massive scale (see 1, 2). That’s a whole other thing.

What’s also scary is that there are brain-chipping proponents who believe that a significant amount of people would be willing to have their brains chipped if it meant they didn’t have to own any other tech.

From Derick David at Medium:

How Elon Musk’s Neuralink Could Disrupt the Smartphone Industry

Neuralink, a neurotechnological company based out of San Francisco founded by Elon Musk is developing technology whose ultimate goal is to help cure neurological conditions like Alzheimer’s, dementia, and spinal cord injuries.

The company develops ultra-high bandwidth brain-machine interfaces that connect the human brain to computers. Essentially, it’s a network of tiny electrodes linked to your brain that Neuralink envisions, which will allow us to communicate wirelessly with everything and everyone.

Our thoughts, feelings, hopes, and even behaviors can be expressed without saying a word. In addition, it can allow us to communicate with animals.

As a matter of fact, Neuralink has started testing their brain-machine device with pigs.

Yes, you read that right. Pigs.

They tested it with pigs by putting a computer chip inside their brains.

Again, yes you read that right. Inside their brains.

Neuralink does something that can be considered morally unethical, but when understood the science behind it, it will start to make sense and it will just be like any other scientific innovations we’ve had in our lifetime.

Of course, that doesn’t negate the fact that putting a chip into animals’ brains and in the future, human brains, is incredibly risky, which is why the company takes careful decisions for every step they make.

Dangerous and risky, but innovative and rewarding, when it works.

What can you do with it?

A whole-brain interface would give your brain the ability to communicate wirelessly with the cloud, with computers, and with the brains of anyone who has a similar interface in their head.

That means that anything you type with your hands on your iPhone right now can be entirely done just by thinking about it.

This flow of information between your brain and the outside world would be so easy it would feel the same as your thoughts do right now. It would be second nature to you, if not first.

Basically, a Neuralink brain chip interface is a communication system. It’s like having earpieces, but you don’t respond to the other line by speaking, but by thinking. The signals that go off your neurons are read by an interface that translates into data.

As you can see by now, there are limitless applications for such technology and one could only imagine what it cannot do.

Where Is Neuralink In The Process?

Neuralink has started testing its technology on pigs mid 2020, which resulted in success. Early 2021, the company also tested on monkeys, by having the monkey itself play videogames.

And more recent development, it has been discussed that a possible test on humans could be conducted in mid to late 2021.

Neuralink may fundamentally alter how we conceive of what it means to be human.

Why?

Because of how we communicate and interact with our fellow humans and animals. Neuralink could be the next technological revolution that could disrupt some industries, if not all.

Smartphone and computer for starters.

How could it disrupt the smartphone industry?

Read full article at Medium

The Ultimate Privacy Phone and Laptop from Purism (Ad)

Many people are already giving up or reducing their use of wireless tech due increasing privacy concerns and warnings (see 1, 2, 3, 4). Fortunately, there are safer ways to communicate that also don’t involve exposing ourselves to harmful radiation (see 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8. 9) or further contributing to high levels of unrecyclable toxic Electronic Waste.