Elon Musk Wants To Link Your Brain To A Computer. FDA Gives Green Light To Human Trials
Elon Musk, is the man that gave us extremely expensive, sometimes exploding electric cars and private space launches. The man who bought Twitter promising massive changes that haven’t appeared yet (I still can’t get on), has just received FDA approval to implant microchips in human brains that will allow them to link up with computers.
“Neuralink” is a company that Musk founded in 2016. Musk has always referred to the endeavor as a project of his passion. He believes that there are benefits ranging from restoring a patient’s eyesight and motor function to actually controlling electronic devices with your mind.
In a tweet, Musk praised his team, saying:
“This is the result of incredible work by the Neuralink team in close collaboration with the FDA and represents an important first step that will one day allow our technology to help many people.”
Simply put, Neuralink is a brain computer interface. On their blog, “the tesla space,” it’s explained in this way:
“The technology is most closely related to a Fitbit or smart watch, just a very small and simple computer. And that Fitbit is sewn into your brain by a robot surgeon that connects about a thousand tiny wires into the outer layer of grey matter. The biggest downside to a Neuralink installation is you will literally need another hole in your head, but no one will be able to tell. The device is designed to be the same thickness as your skull, so it will sit flush with the bone, then they just fold your skin flap back over and you are good to go. You’re now a cyborg.”
Forgive me, but this sounds like a little too much, a lot too fast for me. I’m all for medical advancements in technology, but this seems like another opening into Pandora’s Box. I have voiced my fears before concerning things like this. I just don’t trust what can be programed into that chip, or what it can make a regular person do once it’s implanted.
Equally as spooky, Musk speaks of this chip as something that will be necessary for the human race to survive, in order not to be dominated in the future by AI. If it feels like your in a Terminator movie, you’re not alone. He sees the chip as a safeguard against AI which will eventually become “much smarter than humans” and will control society. He believes that only by merging with AI will humans develop the capacity to keep up with it.
He went on to say:
“After solving a bunch of brain related diseases there is the mitigation of the existential threat of AI, this is the point of it. This is something I think that’s going to be really important at civilization level scale. I’ve said a lot about AI over the years, but I think that even in a benign AI scenario, we will be left behind.”
Look, Musk is one of the great snake oil salesmen of our time. Is he overstating the dangers of AI, in my opinion … actually no. However, I don’t believe that his Neuralink chip is the only method for controlling our place in history.
On another front, does anyone have overflowing confidence in the FDA anymore? Like the FBI, CIA, elections, vaccines, politicians, etc., etc., etc., their track record has been questionable at best. We still have no idea what is in the vaccines and how did they allow pharmaceutical companies to avoid disclosing what is in them for over 50 years?
In animal trials conducted between 2017-2020, the monkeys haven’t fared so well. While some of them have successfully moved a computer cursor, fifteen out of twenty-three died, from things like self-mutilation, brain hemorrhages and bloody rashes. According to their blog site, there were 23 monkey deaths over the three-year period.
I’m not trying to condemn Musk over the animal deaths. I hate the idea of animal testing, and like you, I wish there was a different way to test all of these products where animals are used. My question is with FDA. Judging by these results, why are human trials being approved so rapidly? Again, I am no expert, but I think having a monkey just move a cursor doesn’t justify waving the checkered flag on “non-human” trials.
Need more to worry about? Musk isn’t the only elite trying to manipulate human brains. A New York based tech company, financed by Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos, called Synchron last year implanted a mind reading device into a patient.
I guess I need to alter my will emphasizing that under no circumstances will I become a Bill Gates cyborg. Is it me, or is this starting to sound like a Robo Cop meets Terminator scenario, where only the elites win?
Pleasant dreams.
