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Neuralink: Elon Musk’s brain chips threaten ‘last bastion of privacy’, expert warns
Elon Musk’s brain-chip company is due to begin human trials to treat conditions including paralysis and blindness, but experts warn it poses a risk to freedom of thought and threatens the “last bastion of privacy”.
Neuralink, which is owned by Mr Musk, aims to use microchips to cure blindness, help paralysed people walk and assist disabled people in using computers and mobiles. The chips, which are lined with electrodes, have been designed to decode signals produced in the brain and transmit information to devices via a Bluetooth network.
Mr Musk’s company said on Thursday that the trial had been greenlit by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) after previously being rejected due to concerns about the presence of a lithium battery in the chip.
But Professor Nita Farahany, an expert on the ethical, legal, and social implications of emerging technology and author of The Battle for your Brain, said there were looming ethical concerns with the experiment.
She told i the clinical trial is “promising” and offers hope for people suffering from a range of conditions, including paraplegia, quadriplegia, locked-in syndrome, and “potentially even loss of vision and hearing”.
However, she said the longer-term vision of using brain implants for healthy individuals – a possibility very much on the cards, according to Mr Musk – “poses risks, just as the shorter-term vision for enabling those with loss of functions offers promise”.
“Those risks include threatening our last bastion of privacy, in our brains and mental privacy. Which is why we need to act quickly to secure to everyone a right to cognitive liberty, the right to self-determination over our brains and mental experiences. As a right to access and use neurotechnologies, but also a right from interference with our mental privacy and freedom of thought.”
To achieve this, Ms Farahany believes cognitive liberty should be recognized as an international human right, and updated to reflect the growing power of technology.
“[This] would direct the updating of our interpretation of three existing human rights to address these novel challenges,” she added, “the right to self-determination, privacy – to include mental privacy and freedom of thought – to protect against interference with, manipulation of, and punishment for our thoughts.
“I also believe we should develop technologies and tools that support cognitive liberty and education to help cultivate cognitive liberty in our everyday lives.”
Andy Miah, a bioethicist and professor of future media at the University of Salford, has said the advancement calls for “a complete overhaul of how we think about ethics”.
“Neuralink is as radical a transformation as the advent of gene editing,” he said. “Without doubt, our capability to evolve our cognitive function through technology will be a central feature of our evolution going forward and the rise of artificial intelligence should remind us to not be complacent about our place in the history of life on earth.
“Neuralink is the first step but we should expect more such transformations to how we transform thoughts into action and it’s crucial that we address these implications now.”
The company has been the subject of several federal investigations into its welfare and ethical practices. Last year, the United State’s Department of Agriculture inspector general began investigating the company over potential breaches of the Animal Welfare Act, at the request of a federal prosecutor.
The company has previously claimed to have successfully put coin-sized wireless sensors, described as “a Fitbit in your skull”, into the brains of two pigs, and in 2021 implanted a computer chip into a monkey’s brain that enables it to play video games with its mind.
The company has killed about 1,500 animals since 2018, including more than 280 pigs, sheep and monkeys, Reuters previously reported. In one instance, the news agency said 25 pigs were allegedly implanted with devices that were the wrong size for their brains, an error that could have been mitigated with more time and research.
Neuralink has announced its intention to enhance and augment the able-bodied human experience. In April, the company tweeted: “We want to surpass able-bodied human performance with our technology.”
At an event in November last year, Mr Musk said he can foresee a future in which patients can attend a clinic to have a chip surgically implanted into their brains by a robot. “You’ll be able to save and replay memories,” he said at the presentation. “The future is going to be weird.”
He envisages regularly upgrading the brain chips to stay on top of technological advancements. “I’m pretty sure you would not want the iPhone 1 stuck in your head if the iPhone 14 is available,” he said.
The FDA seal of approval “represents an important first step that will one day allow our technology to help many people”, Neuralink said in a tweet.
The company’s human brain chips have been in the works since 2016, but it has consistently overpromised on its plan. It initially planned to start implanting chips in human brains in 2020, fulfilling a plan it made in 2019. It then said it would get under way in 2022, and was delayed by the animal welfare investigations.
Mr Musk has spoken in the past of his ambition to explore the idea of “human-AI symbiosis”, which he has also referred to as “conceptual telepathy”.
Neuralink is not the only firm pushing such trials. Companies including Synchron and Blackrock Neurotech have already placed implants into disabled people, and the FDA’s go-ahead comes hot on the heels of a similar breakthrough involving brain implants by Swiss researchers.
A man who was paralysed in a cycling accident 12 years ago was able to walk simply by thinking about it, according to recent reports, due to a series of electronic implants that wirelessly transmit his thoughts to his legs and feet, routed through a second implant on his spine.
According to the Neuralink website, the company will prioritise “safety, accessibility and reliability” throughout the trial and subsequent developments. The company did not say when trials will start, and is not recruiting yet.
The regulator has yet to comment on the decision.
https://archive.is/Lhn82
Elon Musk's company Neuralink has received US FDA approval for Human trials
https://www.bitchute.com/video/D3SSrB2QBAHT
We have lost our privacy and there isn't much we can do about it
https://ancient-forums.com/viewtopic.php?p=340889#p340889
MICROCHIP? Flexible AI computer chips promise wearable health monitors that protect privacy
https://ancient-forums.com/viewtopic.php?p=400195#p400195
Elon Musk’s brain-chip company is due to begin human trials to treat conditions including paralysis and blindness, but experts warn it poses a risk to freedom of thought and threatens the “last bastion of privacy”.
Neuralink, which is owned by Mr Musk, aims to use microchips to cure blindness, help paralysed people walk and assist disabled people in using computers and mobiles. The chips, which are lined with electrodes, have been designed to decode signals produced in the brain and transmit information to devices via a Bluetooth network.
Mr Musk’s company said on Thursday that the trial had been greenlit by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) after previously being rejected due to concerns about the presence of a lithium battery in the chip.
But Professor Nita Farahany, an expert on the ethical, legal, and social implications of emerging technology and author of The Battle for your Brain, said there were looming ethical concerns with the experiment.
She told i the clinical trial is “promising” and offers hope for people suffering from a range of conditions, including paraplegia, quadriplegia, locked-in syndrome, and “potentially even loss of vision and hearing”.
However, she said the longer-term vision of using brain implants for healthy individuals – a possibility very much on the cards, according to Mr Musk – “poses risks, just as the shorter-term vision for enabling those with loss of functions offers promise”.
“Those risks include threatening our last bastion of privacy, in our brains and mental privacy. Which is why we need to act quickly to secure to everyone a right to cognitive liberty, the right to self-determination over our brains and mental experiences. As a right to access and use neurotechnologies, but also a right from interference with our mental privacy and freedom of thought.”
To achieve this, Ms Farahany believes cognitive liberty should be recognized as an international human right, and updated to reflect the growing power of technology.
“[This] would direct the updating of our interpretation of three existing human rights to address these novel challenges,” she added, “the right to self-determination, privacy – to include mental privacy and freedom of thought – to protect against interference with, manipulation of, and punishment for our thoughts.
“I also believe we should develop technologies and tools that support cognitive liberty and education to help cultivate cognitive liberty in our everyday lives.”
Andy Miah, a bioethicist and professor of future media at the University of Salford, has said the advancement calls for “a complete overhaul of how we think about ethics”.
“Neuralink is as radical a transformation as the advent of gene editing,” he said. “Without doubt, our capability to evolve our cognitive function through technology will be a central feature of our evolution going forward and the rise of artificial intelligence should remind us to not be complacent about our place in the history of life on earth.
“Neuralink is the first step but we should expect more such transformations to how we transform thoughts into action and it’s crucial that we address these implications now.”
The company has been the subject of several federal investigations into its welfare and ethical practices. Last year, the United State’s Department of Agriculture inspector general began investigating the company over potential breaches of the Animal Welfare Act, at the request of a federal prosecutor.
The company has previously claimed to have successfully put coin-sized wireless sensors, described as “a Fitbit in your skull”, into the brains of two pigs, and in 2021 implanted a computer chip into a monkey’s brain that enables it to play video games with its mind.
The company has killed about 1,500 animals since 2018, including more than 280 pigs, sheep and monkeys, Reuters previously reported. In one instance, the news agency said 25 pigs were allegedly implanted with devices that were the wrong size for their brains, an error that could have been mitigated with more time and research.
Neuralink has announced its intention to enhance and augment the able-bodied human experience. In April, the company tweeted: “We want to surpass able-bodied human performance with our technology.”
At an event in November last year, Mr Musk said he can foresee a future in which patients can attend a clinic to have a chip surgically implanted into their brains by a robot. “You’ll be able to save and replay memories,” he said at the presentation. “The future is going to be weird.”
He envisages regularly upgrading the brain chips to stay on top of technological advancements. “I’m pretty sure you would not want the iPhone 1 stuck in your head if the iPhone 14 is available,” he said.
The FDA seal of approval “represents an important first step that will one day allow our technology to help many people”, Neuralink said in a tweet.
The company’s human brain chips have been in the works since 2016, but it has consistently overpromised on its plan. It initially planned to start implanting chips in human brains in 2020, fulfilling a plan it made in 2019. It then said it would get under way in 2022, and was delayed by the animal welfare investigations.
Mr Musk has spoken in the past of his ambition to explore the idea of “human-AI symbiosis”, which he has also referred to as “conceptual telepathy”.
Neuralink is not the only firm pushing such trials. Companies including Synchron and Blackrock Neurotech have already placed implants into disabled people, and the FDA’s go-ahead comes hot on the heels of a similar breakthrough involving brain implants by Swiss researchers.
A man who was paralysed in a cycling accident 12 years ago was able to walk simply by thinking about it, according to recent reports, due to a series of electronic implants that wirelessly transmit his thoughts to his legs and feet, routed through a second implant on his spine.
According to the Neuralink website, the company will prioritise “safety, accessibility and reliability” throughout the trial and subsequent developments. The company did not say when trials will start, and is not recruiting yet.
The regulator has yet to comment on the decision.
https://archive.is/Lhn82
Elon Musk's company Neuralink has received US FDA approval for Human trials
https://www.bitchute.com/video/D3SSrB2QBAHT
We have lost our privacy and there isn't much we can do about it
https://ancient-forums.com/viewtopic.php?p=340889#p340889
MICROCHIP? Flexible AI computer chips promise wearable health monitors that protect privacy
https://ancient-forums.com/viewtopic.php?p=400195#p400195
