I think your article is the first I’ve seen an AI writer paying attention to the application of Neuroscience in AI. Truly sometimes feel the good we seek on this earth might eventually lead to the bad we don’t. I hope the companies make profit off it and humanity remains intact at the end.
Michael and Conrad, hats off for highlighting the transformative potential of BCIs in both medical and everyday contexts. Your piece vividly outlines a future where technology and biology converge in ways previously confined to science fiction. Yet, amid these grand visions, the small detail of non-invasive BCIs' accessibility and safety deserves a nod. It's a crucial point, offering a bridge for the wider public to engage with this tech without the daunting prospect of surgery. This could well be the stepping stone needed for societal acceptance and broader experimentation, laying groundwork for the deeper, more invasive integrations to come. The progression from non-invasive to invasive BCIs represents a fascinating journey towards human enhancement, with each step unlocking new potentials and raising new ethical considerations.
In this region my short-term money is much more on functional BCIs - re-establishing motor function for sufferers of paralysis etc - as opposed to thought-assistive tech. AI-assisted thought seems to be widely considered as 'the-logical-next-step' in hypothesis-mongering around brain augmentation, but this is only true in the same way that 'to the nearest solar system' is the next step after 'to the nearest planet'. Easier said than done, basically.
Also, I would take Musk's proclamation of the success of Neuralink's first clinical trial with a vat-load of salt, as you might most of his other product announcements/forecasts. It seems highly unlikely this stuff wouldn't be global front-page news if it had worked (instead we don't even have a picture of the subject). There's a lot of word around Neuralink that blends the ugly (the test subject deaths, the plagiarism of Miguel Nicolelis' much older work) with the absurd (the grand proclamations, the key staff turnover).
"Today’s Transhumanists rush to establish a race of biodigital Frankensteins. Hypnotized by wet dreams of enhancement, they attach wings to a caterpillar and call it a butterfly, ignore the pulse of their own breathing beings hidden behind a heartless view of the Universe, and charge headlong in passionate pursuit of some contrived delusional notion of ‘progress’.
Especially insidious is the application of Artificial Intelligence to form and control the worldview of the masses, worldwide – a situation that has already gone way too far around the bend, and way too surreptitiously. We live with an extremely sophisticated, extended technocratic ventriloquism that tells us what to believe, how to behave, what to do, and what to say. We fall for it because we don’t really know what it is, nor are we aware of the command it has over us every single day now – individually and collectively."
Scary. OK so you implant an invasive BCI... so to what do you connect the other end, an hallucination-prone AI? BCI may well be game-changing for therapeutic and clinical remedial applications where an "acceptable" risk can be evaluated. Whereas BCI for recreation, entertainment, even "brain enhancement" may deliver a Pandora's box of data overload, addiction, psychosis, even *literal* hallucination. No one today can have any appreciation of long term risks of adverse effects on brain function.
Even the risks of mobile have had a profound impact on a couple of generations. One can only imagine where this is heading with various AI hardware attempts and some people are literally going to attempt to "merge" with AI in rather odd ways.
However for hundreds of thousands of people BCIs could also give them better access to a more normal life so we will have to see.
I think your article is the first I’ve seen an AI writer paying attention to the application of Neuroscience in AI. Truly sometimes feel the good we seek on this earth might eventually lead to the bad we don’t. I hope the companies make profit off it and humanity remains intact at the end.
Thanks for sharing!
Michael and Conrad, hats off for highlighting the transformative potential of BCIs in both medical and everyday contexts. Your piece vividly outlines a future where technology and biology converge in ways previously confined to science fiction. Yet, amid these grand visions, the small detail of non-invasive BCIs' accessibility and safety deserves a nod. It's a crucial point, offering a bridge for the wider public to engage with this tech without the daunting prospect of surgery. This could well be the stepping stone needed for societal acceptance and broader experimentation, laying groundwork for the deeper, more invasive integrations to come. The progression from non-invasive to invasive BCIs represents a fascinating journey towards human enhancement, with each step unlocking new potentials and raising new ethical considerations.
Thanks for the comment, Rob. I touched upon the accessibility and safety of invasive BCIs in this article https://www.humanityredefined.com/p/so-you-have-a-chip-in-your-brain
In this region my short-term money is much more on functional BCIs - re-establishing motor function for sufferers of paralysis etc - as opposed to thought-assistive tech. AI-assisted thought seems to be widely considered as 'the-logical-next-step' in hypothesis-mongering around brain augmentation, but this is only true in the same way that 'to the nearest solar system' is the next step after 'to the nearest planet'. Easier said than done, basically.
Also, I would take Musk's proclamation of the success of Neuralink's first clinical trial with a vat-load of salt, as you might most of his other product announcements/forecasts. It seems highly unlikely this stuff wouldn't be global front-page news if it had worked (instead we don't even have a picture of the subject). There's a lot of word around Neuralink that blends the ugly (the test subject deaths, the plagiarism of Miguel Nicolelis' much older work) with the absurd (the grand proclamations, the key staff turnover).
"Today’s Transhumanists rush to establish a race of biodigital Frankensteins. Hypnotized by wet dreams of enhancement, they attach wings to a caterpillar and call it a butterfly, ignore the pulse of their own breathing beings hidden behind a heartless view of the Universe, and charge headlong in passionate pursuit of some contrived delusional notion of ‘progress’.
Especially insidious is the application of Artificial Intelligence to form and control the worldview of the masses, worldwide – a situation that has already gone way too far around the bend, and way too surreptitiously. We live with an extremely sophisticated, extended technocratic ventriloquism that tells us what to believe, how to behave, what to do, and what to say. We fall for it because we don’t really know what it is, nor are we aware of the command it has over us every single day now – individually and collectively."
https://bohobeau.net/2023/03/21/we-lie-with-ai/
I see, well enjoy your blogging.
You as well...
Scary. OK so you implant an invasive BCI... so to what do you connect the other end, an hallucination-prone AI? BCI may well be game-changing for therapeutic and clinical remedial applications where an "acceptable" risk can be evaluated. Whereas BCI for recreation, entertainment, even "brain enhancement" may deliver a Pandora's box of data overload, addiction, psychosis, even *literal* hallucination. No one today can have any appreciation of long term risks of adverse effects on brain function.
Even the risks of mobile have had a profound impact on a couple of generations. One can only imagine where this is heading with various AI hardware attempts and some people are literally going to attempt to "merge" with AI in rather odd ways.
However for hundreds of thousands of people BCIs could also give them better access to a more normal life so we will have to see.