A lucky individual has become the first human to receive a brain implant from Elon Musk’s start-up Neuralink Corp, marking a step toward being able to steer computers with our minds.
The device, called Telepathy, is about the size of a NT$5 coin and was inserted with hundreds of wires and electrodes just under the skull. Its aim is to take “control of your phone or computer, and through them almost any device, just by thinking,” Musk said. (1)
Sounds great, so long as the device does not plug people’s brains into the time-sucking matrix of distraction that we call the Internet. Far from enhancing our lives, that could prove a step too far in being “connected.”
Illustration: Tania Chou
Neuralink seems to be far ahead of its peers in terms of technological prowess. (2)
While rival devices have roughly 16 electrodes for gathering brain data, Neuralink’s implant has more than 1,000 and it does not need wiring to a bulky battery that is implanted into a person’s chest, according to a deep dive on the company by Bloomberg’s Ashlee Vance.
Musk, who wants Neuralink to perform surgeries on more than 22,000 people by 2030, is likely to be the first to go mainstream, even if his “maniacal sense of urgency” means it might not be the most reliable product.
Musk has a history of exaggerating milestones on his products, but he has still managed to sell vehicles that partly drive themselves. There is every reason to think that in the next five years or so, many more people would have his coin-sized computer in their brains. That would have profound implications for how we define human identity and connection, especially if these gadgets plug our minds directly into the Web.
The Internet has transformed over the past decade from a place filled with curated forums and niche Web sites, to a noisy mess of algorithms enticing you to click hundreds of other links, while social media have sucked people down rabbit holes of distraction.
Imagine how much harder it would be to resist the lure of algorithms if you do not even have to click a mouse to open up a post.
Now imagine doing that on the Internet in five or 10 years’ time when it is teeming with more artificial intelligence (AI)-generated content than ever before, along with hyper-personalized algorithms that pull you in as many directions as possible.
Today’s keyboard and mouse act as healthy layers of friction between thinking we want to do something on the Internet and doing it, and even then, people often find themselves jumping into behaviors that they would not do in the real world, like posting inept comments on Musk’s public town square, X.
When I reported on the exploits of hacktivists Anonymous years ago, some of the online vigilantes told me that the barrier between what they thought and what they did in online forums was dauntingly thin as they fell deeper into groupthink and egged each other on to hack Web sites — before ultimately getting arrested. When there is virtually no barrier between thinking and acting on the Internet, people often proceed in ways they should not.
History is filled with visionaries whose grand plans for technology did not pan out exactly as dreamed. Mark Zuckerberg wanted to connect the world with Facebook, but ended up dividing people into political silos. OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman has said he wants to bring “trillions” of dollars of economic abundance to humanity, but so far he has mostly helped enrich his own company and Microsoft with his generative AI products.
Musk’s goal for Neuralink is to prevent a future AI apocalypse by making our brains bionic. His reasoning is that a digital superintelligence would eventually become so powerful that it would outthink us, so we would need to add some digital smarts to our limbic system and neocortex to address that existential risk.
“If you can’t beat them, join ‘em,” the billionaire says.
Another potential benefit of the device would be helping those with paralysis. That would follow a long history of gadgets — from the computer mouse to text-to-speech — that first sought to assist people with disabilities before going mainstream, but there is an obvious paradox in that putting powerful AI into our skulls also brings its risks closer to home. Giving our brains a direct connection to the Web could make us far more vulnerable to its addictive pull, too.
Neuralink might bring awe-inspiring freedom to the disabled, but as we marvel at Musk’s technological progress, we might find ourselves sleepwalking into an era where we wish we were not quite so plugged in.
(1) Musk on Monday said that the first human had received an implant and was recovering well.
“Initial results show promising neuron spike detection,” he said, referring to the tiny computer’s ability to detect and record the electrical activity of neurons. Neurons talk to each other through electrical impulses sometimes known as “spikes,” and these are crucial for functions such as thought, sensation and motor control. If the device can detect those spikes, that means it can potentially decode neural activity.
(2) Until now, monkeys implanted with Musk’s device have used it to stare at laptop screens and play simple games with just their brains.
That process is not so novel. There are several companies working on computer-brain interfaces, and about five years ago I tried one of them. After sticking about a dozen electrodes to my head with some gloop, I was able to play a racing game by — weirdly enough — thinking about bending my left arm to move an object on the screen to the left, and vice versa.
Parmy Olson is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering technology. A former reporter for the Wall Street Journal and Forbes, she is the author of We Are Anonymous. This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.
The term “assassin’s mace” originates from Chinese folklore, describing a concealed weapon used by a weaker hero to defeat a stronger adversary with an unexpected strike. In more general military parlance, the concept refers to an asymmetric capability that targets a critical vulnerability of an adversary. China has found its modern equivalent of the assassin’s mace with its high-altitude electromagnetic pulse (HEMP) weapons, which are nuclear warheads detonated at a high altitude, emitting intense electromagnetic radiation capable of disabling and destroying electronics. An assassin’s mace weapon possesses two essential characteristics: strategic surprise and the ability to neutralize a core dependency.
In their recent op-ed “Trump Should Rein In Taiwan” in Foreign Policy magazine, Christopher Chivvis and Stephen Wertheim argued that the US should pressure President William Lai (賴清德) to “tone it down” to de-escalate tensions in the Taiwan Strait — as if Taiwan’s words are more of a threat to peace than Beijing’s actions. It is an old argument dressed up in new concern: that Washington must rein in Taipei to avoid war. However, this narrative gets it backward. Taiwan is not the problem; China is. Calls for a so-called “grand bargain” with Beijing — where the US pressures Taiwan into concessions
Chinese President and Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Chairman Xi Jinping (習近平) said in a politburo speech late last month that his party must protect the “bottom line” to prevent systemic threats. The tone of his address was grave, revealing deep anxieties about China’s current state of affairs. Essentially, what he worries most about is systemic threats to China’s normal development as a country. The US-China trade war has turned white hot: China’s export orders have plummeted, Chinese firms and enterprises are shutting up shop, and local debt risks are mounting daily, causing China’s economy to flag externally and hemorrhage internally. China’s
During the “426 rally” organized by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Taiwan People’s Party under the slogan “fight green communism, resist dictatorship,” leaders from the two opposition parties framed it as a battle against an allegedly authoritarian administration led by President William Lai (賴清德). While criticism of the government can be a healthy expression of a vibrant, pluralistic society, and protests are quite common in Taiwan, the discourse of the 426 rally nonetheless betrayed troubling signs of collective amnesia. Specifically, the KMT, which imposed 38 years of martial law in Taiwan from 1949 to 1987, has never fully faced its
RSS