Humans will become cyborgs; the blind will see, and the paralyzed will move. That’s what Elon Musk tells us about his Neuralink technology, which frankly sounds miraculous and tempting, but! is that all we need to know? Well, certainly not, because, just like any other technology, Neuralink will have some flaws that Elon should again inform us and reassure us about.
In one of his tweets, the controversial billionaire announced that Neuralink is now ready for humans, adding that it’s a matter of time before the tech is submitted for FDA approval, and from that moment on, the comments under his announcement kept getting noticeably differentiated, even among his most loyal supporters, whom many of them expressed their refusal to use the tech, concurrently clearly declaring that it’s time they jump off the Elon’s ride, at least on this matter.
That state of disobedience in Elon’s comment section is not groundless. On the contrary, it’s rational and well-justified, for he’s promoting a scary technology using many promises and fewer reassurances. The way the device is supposed to function, is by itself very frightening, let alone the idea of planting it into our brains directly and living with it as if we are some sort of Frankensteins, but despite all that, what truly is scary the most about the whole matter, are the hackers.
Think about it for a moment. Hackers have always been able to find their way into people’s devices, motivated by different reasons, such as stealing data, using their victim’s computers for their benefit, or simply creating chaos for fun, which all is scary, but none of that is compared to a hacker inside your actual brain, and I’m pointing here to the future Neuralink device that Musk had in previous occasions described it not just as an intermediary between the brain and exterior computers, but as a device that enables you to save, replay, download and upload memories to other machines or even another body.
The device Musk is talking about in his tweet is probably a basic wireless linker between the mind and outer computers, which is honestly not that impressive. Neuralink is not the first scientific party to come up with the idea or the concept of moving objects on a screen using the mind, other labs have already done the same thing by implanting neural-brain interfaces in monkeys, like in 2002, where a group of researches made it possible for a monkey to move a cursor on a computer screen using only his mind, stating at the time that the technology they have reached could be used in the same concept to help paralyzed people.
If moving objects on a screen is the sky for Neuralink’s device, meaning that it’s the limit of what it can do, then our concerns shouldn’t probably exceed the implanting surgery and the health effects. but if it can reach the toe tip of what Elon claims it to be able to do, especially regarding the merging between the AI and our biological intelligence, or the ability to control and transfer memories, then we must be concerned and worried about several scenarios where Neuralink could go wrong, and following are some few that I’m personally scared of:
First scenario: Hackers will sneak into my Neuralink, and thus into my brain where my memories are stored as data, then they will steal my embarrassing life moments and transfer them to another device where they will watch them, laugh at them, and then blackmail me.
Second scenario: a dying person will pay a hacker to get into my brain, erase all my memories, and then install the client’s memories and experiences in my brain, and thus I’ll fade away from existence while they get a new beautiful body.
Third scenario: My intelligence will blend with the AI, and after a while, the AI will learn how to defeat me and take control of my body, so I’ll become a robot.
Fourth scenario: Elon will use my Neuralink to trick me into paying 8 dollars for Twitter, while I’ll still be convinced that it’s my idea and decision.
Joking aside, Neuralink’s future so far looks like something we would see in a science fiction movie, but so were the things that we are doing with our cell phones currently. If science development had taught us anything, it would be that imagination is the limit of what humans can achieve. While the human experience has also taught us that with great inventions comes great responsibility, so Elon has a lot of responsibility to convince us of how safe Neuralink is for humans, and he’s probably going to spend another fortune doing that, so hey Elon, let that sink in.
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