Imagine walking into an operating room and having thousands of microscopically fine electrodes implanted in your brain, all as fast and efficiently as when you had LASIK eye surgery, a procedure designed to boost your brain's potential with a simple cellphone app.
Neuralink's brain-computer interaction technology is impressive, and Neuralink, which still takes Musk's old, familiar approach of bringing together new talent from different fields to accelerate the pace of technological innovation, has now made leaps and bounds toward realizable brain-computer interaction goals. The company has now made leaps and bounds toward the goal of achievable brain-computer interaction. But despite the technological promise of wireless read-write brain-computer interaction, companies like Neuralink run the risk of becoming so focused on what they can do that they lose sight of the ethics behind what they can do.
Ethical challenges
As usual, once the topic of the ethics of advanced technologies such as brain-computer interaction comes up, the analysis is in danger of not continuing. We can even speculate about the potential psychological harm that advanced brain-computer interaction technologies can cause to their users, or the danger of being hijacked by brain hackers. It is easy to think of an anti-utopian future - where social behavior is controlled by machines as we sacrifice autonomy for the convenience of neural networks. However, this type of speculation is rarely useful when trying to weigh powerful technological capabilities against their ethical and socially responsible development. Instead, despite the temptation to fictionalize potential risks or even fabricate subtle rumors, there is an urgent need to think intelligently about what could go wrong and how to respond to them. In the case of neural connectivity technologies, this means grappling with three specific issues facing the field of ethical and responsible innovation.
Physiological effects
First, implanting thousands of electrodes in the brain could have both acute and chronic physiological effects on the body. Ensuring the safety of this technology is by no means an easy task. However, I have reason to believe that regulators, researchers and developers will be able to identify and navigate the key challenges. Having worked for many years on the potential health risks of novel materials, including nanoparticles, I have a great deal of respect for the scientists and regulators who are committed to ensuring that the neurological medical devices developed by Neuralink minimize harm to humans. But at the same time, they must also be open to new ideas as technology continues to innovate.
Psychological and Behavioral Impacts
The second issue is even trickier as it relates to potential psychological and behavioral impacts. When the technology was used for medical purposes, there was always a trade-off between the benefits of neurointeractive technology and the risks of how it might affect a person's mental state and behavior. But as this technology moves from repair to augmentation, the potential behavioral and emotional changes that can result need to be scrutinized more closely. For example, is there a risk of personality changes or addictive behaviors, or the development of chronic mental disorders as people begin to use these devices? In this regard, there is a risk that the long lag between widespread use of this technology and the onset of psychological problems may further complicate matters. If people start relying on this technology before the long-term effects are fully understood, this could spell disaster.
There is also a third ethical dimension, as well as the wider societal implications that this technology could have. While Neuralink is currently focused on using its technology to solve medical problems, the company's long-term goal is to create an artificial Internet overlay that connects to the brain, enabling users to interact with the intelligent machines of the future. It's an audacious goal that aims to transform society. Because of this, it leads to ethical and liability concerns that must be addressed while the technology still has a chance to be used responsibly.