Would you like to have a chip inside your brain? One that could increase your capacity to think, feel, and handle situations? If so, you don’t have to wait too much longer: Scientists have made significant breakthroughs in developing brain-computer interfaces. Would you sign up for a brain chip?

This August, Elon Musk presented a new iteration of the Neuralink brain implant. The goal is to give human brains a direct interface to digital devices, helping, for instance, paralyzed humans, allowing them to control phones or computers. The chip would pick up on signals in the brain and then translate them into motor controls. Neuralink’s technology is quite stunning. This tiny brain implant has more than 1,000 electrodes and will possibly one day allow a person to transmit neuroelectrical activity to anything digital.

This new technology is not exactly new. However, it surpasses current chips neuroscientists use as a standard today: The chip they use has 64 electrodes. While many in the field imagine using these neural interfaces to control a prosthetic limb or cure paralyzed people, Musk describes the overall project as aiming to “achieve symbiosis with artificial intelligence.”

What is the premise here precisely? The mindset behind Musk’s interest and Neuralink’s mission goes way beyond finding a cure for paralyzed people and is best described by Arielle Pardes in Wired: “Machines with artificial intelligence are outpacing humankind. Ergo, implant computer chips in human brains to level up the species.”

#future #philosophy #neural-networks #technology #artificial-intelligence