Elon Musk wants to
connect the brain
to a computer to download information and memories from deep within the brain.
The American billionaire wants his new technology to give people "supervision "."The future
is going to be weird," said Elon Musk, describing the possible use of brain
implants developed by his neurotechnology company Neuralink in 2020. For the past seven
years, the company has been developing a computer chip, designed to be
implanted in the brain,
where it monitors the activity of thousands of neurons.
The chip, formally
known as a "brain-computer interface" (BCI), consists of a tiny probe with more than three
thousand electrodes, made of flexible wires thinner than a human hair. are
connected. Elon Musk wants to
connect the brain
to a computer to download information and memories from deep within the brain,
as depicted in the 1999 science fiction film "The Matrix." Musk has expressed ambitions to use the technology to
treat diseases such as blindness and paralysis, as well as to use Neuralink to
achieve human telepathy, which he says will help humanity in its war against
artificial intelligence. He has also said that he wants technology to give
people "supervision".
Science fiction or
reality?
We cannot read
people's minds. Giacomo Valle, a neural engineer at the University of Chicago,
USA, said that the information we can decode from the brain
is very limited. Juan
Álvaro Guiego, a BCI researcher at Imperial College London, agreed, saying it's
hard to imagine a BCI reading our minds in this lifetime. The main problem is
that we don't really know where and how thoughts are stored in the brain.
We can't read thoughts if we don't understand the neuroscience behind them,
says Guyago.
Real-world clinical
use of BCI
Musk first
demonstrated Neuralink technology in 2019, introducing a pig with a Neuralink
chip implanted in its brain
and a video of a monkey controlling a pong paddle with its brain. But BCI's
potential is much more than just playing animals. The
technology was first developed to help people paralyzed by conditions such as
spinal cord injuries or locked-in syndrome, according to Guyago. Locked-in
syndrome is a condition in which a patient, despite being fully conscious,
cannot move any part of the body except the eyes.
"If you can translate their (patients') internal
communication into words on a computer, it will be life-changing,"
believes Gayegoke. In these types of cases, BCIs are designed to record
electrical signals from neurons in the motor cortex, then send the signals to a
computer, where they appear as text. The motor cortex is the part of the brain
that sends signals to control body movements. The
motor cortex is generally thought to be unrelated to thought processes. Instead,
it instructs the body to move, such as the movement of the tongue and jaw
muscles to speak. "The scientists also showed that they could read the
intention to write a word by the motor cortex," according to Guyago. Using
complex modeling (with an integrated computer), it enabled paralyzed
participants to type ten words per minute, which was a breakthrough.”
Restoration of the
ability to feel
An important
development in this regard took place in 2016 when US President Barack Obama
shook hands with Nathan Copeland's robotic hand. Copeland was paralyzed after being
injured in a car accident. However, he felt Obama's handshake as if he were
touching skin to skin. This was a demonstration of a different capability of
the brain-computer
interface. In this case, instead of using electrodes to record and interpret the
desired movements from the brain,
the brain
was stimulated with tiny currents to create a sensation, Gayegoke said.
These new BCI
capabilities represent the next generation of deep brain
stimulation. This is a treatment that involves placing electrodes in areas of
the brain
to help people with movement disorders. "These technologies have
been around for a while," said Gayegoke. Since the 1990s, deep brain
stimulation has been used to help millions of people with Parkinson's disease.
Brain surgery for
everyone?
BCIs are still only
used in special cases like Copeland's and NeuraLink's technology has only been
tested on animals. All clinical applications of BCI are still in the research
phase and have not yet been implemented in clinical practice. Neuralink tried to get US federal drug regulators to
approve human trials of its technology last year but suffered a setback when
officials rejected its request, citing major safety concerns. Musk's company is
reportedly seeking permission to conduct human clinical trials later this year.
The Birth of
neurotic ethics
According to
experts, BCIs raise "numerous ethical concerns" that will need to be
carefully considered by researchers, companies, funding agencies, regulators, and consumers themselves. Technology is giving rise to a new field of ethical
inquiry: neuroethics, which is where debates tend to turn more science fiction. For example, what
are the consequences of privacy violations when the data in question relates to
people's thoughts? How can we ensure that lack of access does not exacerbate
social inequality? What happens when this information can be fed directly into
the brain?'
This is the role of
science fiction, after all, to prepare us for what is to come. In the early twentieth century, novels such as
"Brave New World" and "1984" contained warnings about
surveillance and technological control.
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