Elon Musk is a famous entrepreneur, inventor, and investor. He is most famously known for his car company, Tesla. However, in 2006, he became the co-founder of the company called Neuralink which is a neurotechnology company that aims to link artificial intelligence with the human brain. The company's aim is to develop a microchip that is implanted into the brain as a brain-machine interface (BMI). The paper discusses how a BMI is typically used in clinical disorders such as robotic limbs and speech synthesizers. During a conference/Q&A session, he stated that a monkey has been able to control a computer with its brain. Another news article states that it's possible there is less chance of causing damage to the thin polymers that are used for Neuralink. In addition, Elon Musk has stated that he would like to use this in disorders but would ultimately create a relationship with artificial intelligence. Musk aims to start implanting in humans by next year.
As exciting as it is to see all of this amazing technology, there are lot of red flags that pop up after reading the research and all the news revolving around Neuralink. I think the first concern that came up is 'justice'. Meaning, if Elon Musk is aiming to try and make this company something that is trying to combine AI with the brain and not for clinical/medical use, then is it more likely that the rich will be the only people able to afford this? Furthermore, Elon Musk claims that this could cause less damage, but given that this has never been implanted a human brain, I think it is unfair to make such a strong claim that this could cause less damage to the brain compared to the BMIs (i.e stroke, hemorrhage). I think it's interesting that the research that is linked to the official Neuralink was only written by Musk, but not any neurosurgeons or neuroscientists and therefore it can be difficult to trust a lot of what the research paper discusses.
What are everyone else's thoughts? Is it okay to be implanting a chip in our brain just to link computers to our own? Are there not any health implications that should be discussed?
Works Cited:
Musk, E. (2019). An integrated brain-machine interface platform with thousands of channels. doi: 10.1101/703801
Slashdot. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://tech.slashdot.org/story/19/07/17/0431248/elon-musk-unveils-neuralinks-plans-for-brain-reading-threads-and-a-robot-to-insert-them.
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