What will Neuralink and the Brain Computer Interface Become?
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What will Neuralink and the Brain Computer Interface Become?

The evolution of the brain-computer-interface, the BCI is one of the great mysteries of technology in the 21st century.

You want mind controlled space ships, it's coming. Just hang on a few more decades. But baby-steps. Beijing has more Unicorns than San Francisco and New York combined, so expect the winning BCI to come out of China, but Neuralink certainly has potential.

Elon Musk’s Neuralink Promise is the Stuff of Sci-Fi Legends

What’s new on Mars, aka Elon Musk’s Brain

Elon Musk is that guy that reminds us we all have an inner cybernetic creature within. Forget the spirit or the soul. I’m talking about the inner machine.

I love this guy!

Elon Musk’s brain-computer interface (BCI) venture Neuralink will provide some more insight into what they’ve been working on for the past two years, during which time we’ve heard very little in the way of updates on their progress. Until Now.

The approaching technology would see groups of minuscule, flexible electrode “threads” implanted into the human brain by a neurosurgical robot.

The neural interface is certainly coming and with it the death of a smartphone era, in part.

Forget Apple, the companies that best leverage this trend will be dominant. Likely candidate? ByteDance out of Beijing funded by the Softbank Vision Fund to take "AI" to the next level.

Merging man with the machine is, in essence, an extinction event for apps and even many elements of the corporate world as it works today.

Services would become more important than goods. We will get subscriptions and discounts for companies to use our data. That world is quickly approaching.

If AI is humanity’s biggest existential threat, people are going to do some crazy stuff to keep up. If someone is going to revolutionize what it means to be human, do we want it to be a tech titan? Zuck, Altman, Musk — the history books aren’t going to have enough egos to fit.

Humanity’s Escape into Trans-Utopia

The BCI race is another sub-race in the global AI arms race. Neural interfaces will evolve in an IoT net that will make the tech of today look primitive.

Neuralink, which was founded in 2016, has already tested an early wired version of this implant in rats (and Musk indicated it has enabled a monkey to control a computer with his brain, too). Musk said human trials could start by the end of next year, though the company doesn’t yet have approval from the US Food and Drug Administration for such a study.

Neuralink will probably not be the winner in the space, but it’s a symbol of where humanity is headed.

BCI like devices will be able to create Matrix-like immersion. As if social media didn’t hack us already back in the 2010s with gimmicks and false promises. Silicon Valley never rests when there is a buck to be made on consumers.

A post-modern world means some men will want to become more like machines, even as some people will want to digital detox and return back to reality.

However, in these stories, powerful rich white males usually win out. Whatever “AI” they create does too.

Who is Elon Musk? You know the guy who is afraid of AI. I mean, he made his fortune as a founder of the revolutionary online-payments company PayPal, and since then, he has announced his intention to revolutionize cars, trains, space travel, intercontinental flight, and city driving.

His dream of BCIs helping us augment ourselves to keep up with AI is perhaps his most audacious and ridiculous idea.

People can be manipulated with simple algorithms and app dopamine triggers. How will we respond to a world of smarter AI and BCI data manipulation? If we are bots now, won’t we just be drones of the next society?

Musk lives on a special planet of his own making. The problem is, in many ways, he’s actually right.

Elon Musk’s SpaceX or Neuralink presentations make us worried about the future. Because humanity is not showing it’s very good at adapting to the world its machines and algorithms are creating.

The most terrifying thing about Musk is he’s actually afraid of the future he sees for us. In his presentations, he’s like a trembling child who can only make jokes to enable himself to go on.

The Illuminati have had their day, it’s time for the Teslaati to take over. So in the future, if I live as a peasant instead of contemplating suicide, I can elect to be uploaded to the machine and downloaded into a robot on Mars.

To be Neuralinked won’t be a major operation, and I’m thankful to hear that. Beam me up Elon! Can companies like Neuralink and Facebook do it before China? It's unlikely, but will be fun to watch.

Man's inventions know no sane limit in 2019, hopefully by 2029 we will have more regulation in AI to protect us from its possible dangers.

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Adam Garlinger

Design, Creative Direction, Identity, Messaging.

5y

In a way he's fulfilling the Nikolai Tesla name.

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