Neuralink: A Brain-changing device
In tv shows and movies you see billionaires secretly venturing into strange affairs such as immortality and superpowers etc, this story is somewhat like that!
In the year 2017, The wall street journal mentioned that Tesla founder and billionaire Elon Musk desired a ‘symbiosis between the human brain and Artificial intelligence.’ This desire was funnelled down in creating a device, an implant, he calls it the Neuralink.
On an interesting podcast with Joe Rogan, the billionaire talks about how the neuralink is a device that will be placed in the skull of a human being and explains its numerous benefits such as improved vision, hearing, curing spine problems, even aiding dangerous diseases such as ‘Parkinsons’ which is incurable and anything wrong with the brain.
How does this Neuralink implant work?
The neuralink, in the past, was a device that would be behind your ear however musk changed the design to the size of a large coin. This implant is not to be put inside the brain but in the skull of a human being. Through surgery, a circular hole is made in your skull, and the implant is fitted in that circular hole, now it is a ‘part’ of your skull. It has wires connecting it and is an inch away from this device. Elon musk calls it ‘A fit bit inside your skull.’
One more question you might have, why is he doing this?
This dates to the year 2019 During Elons podcast with Lex Friedman where he mentions that artificial intelligence might cause an existential problem to human beings since we might end up feeling inadequate compared to the intelligence and therefore one of the ways to avoid that would be to merge the concept of AI and the Human potential, he believes that if you can’t beat them, join them.
In the famous Netflix series, ‘Black mirror’ several episodes depict the dystopian environment that technology can produce as we move to the future. When Elon refers to the neuralink, he mentions that one of the many benefits would be to ‘Replay your memories whenever you want.’
This statement surely does remind me of a black mirror episode.
When it comes to technology, I have observed that ‘progressiveness’ does not directly imply ‘well-being.’ There was a time when millions died of food scarcity which was the largest issue on this planet, however, currently, obesity is killing many more! You see food was not the issue, the way we treated and consumed it was.
If we do not evaluate how technology can be handled by humans, it might just be the very dagger in our hearts.
Once again, there is nothing wrong with technology but our incompetence in handling it might cause a greater problem than not having it at all!
