Neuralink describes their mission thus:
“Creating a general-purpose, high-bandwidth interface to the brain.”
This is the beginning of the cyborg as something other than science fiction. This is what Zuckerberg pretends he’s doing with that joke Metaverse. I guess there’s no way to stop this. But I don’t see it as a harmless thing. Some good things will come out of it like restoring motion and sight to people who have been injured. But we’ll see plenty of harmful consequences too.
We are excited to share that we have received the FDA’s approval to launch our first-in-human clinical study!
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…
— Neuralink (@neuralink) May 25, 2023
“But we’ll see plenty of harmful consequences too.”
So many movie and books come to mind with the harmful consequences of this technology as their core plot.
Somehow I imagine that the reality of being a cyborg will be much less exciting and much more pathetic than fiction.
My neighbor, a fellow Vietnam veteran has a “Borg” imppant on the back of his head. It has a magnetic battety pack and processor. It helps control the seizures from a traumatic brain injury he got when the Huey he was riding in crashed after taking 12.7 mm machine gun fire to the engine. Without it he can barely walk. He has three powerpack/processing units and each one lasts 24 jours. He looks sort of like the quiet guy in Star Wars on cloud city with the electronics on his head. AI may have some impressive benefits to the wounded… Read more »
Hopefully the therapeutic applications will lead the way. Helping the injured is a noble thing. Plugging human beings into machines to earn a few extra bucks for a soulless corporation; not as noble.
True dat, my friend.