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Elon Musk to show off working brain-hacking device:
Elon Musk is due to demonstrate a working brain-to-machine interface as part of his ambitious plans to give people superhuman powers.
His brain-hacking company, Neuralink, applied to start human trials last year.
But Friday's demonstration will involve a robot and "neurons firing in real time", a series of tweets reveals.
The interface could allow people with neurological conditions to control phones or computers with their mind.
But the long-term ambition is to usher in an age of what Mr Musk calls "superhuman cognition".
People need to merge with artificial intelligence, he says, in part to avoid a scenario where AI becomes so powerful it destroys the human race.
[...] The device the company is developing consists of a tiny probe containing more than 3,000 electrodes attached to flexible threads thinner than a human hair, which can monitor the activity of 1,000 brain neurons.
The company has been working with monkey brains to its realize brain/computer interface.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 29 2020, @12:07AM (1 child)
As long as I've got a healthy brain, I'm not touching it (first, do no harm). OTOH, in 10 years maybe they'll be doing clinical trials of technology like this for Alzheimer's patients. I'd be on board with that... as long as it comes with privacy protections so that only my doctor can monitor my brain, and only for function not content. Then you get in to the whole philosophical issue. If you have enough electronics in your brain, at what point are you no longer human? In the end, will it really just be slow loss of awareness and death, or a real transfer of consciousness in to an electronic matrix? A few thousand units is nothing. It's a long time before that becomes an issue, but it will definitely be an issue.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by HiThere on Saturday August 29 2020, @01:21AM
That's the sensible choice this year, possibly this decade. Eventually, though...
Eventually I expect the descendant of this technology to make the promise of virtual reality real. I expect it to yield "telepathy", limited "PK", "clairvoyance", etc. Quotes around everything because they'll be possible due to computer intermediation.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.