Billionaire / Bond villain Elon Musk made headline a few weeks ago when he casually dropped his theory that we ’re all living in a gargantuan video - plot pretense created by a super - intelligent entity . Needless to say , it perk up a few ears .
However , during that sameon - point interview with the founders of Recode , he mentioned something else that went queerly under - reported : his desire to uprise an implantable computer for the human brain that would prevent our next death by ultra - healthy AI beings .
Yep , Mr. Musk ’s next vainglorious passion project is to call on us all into cyborgs .
Flickr/JD Lasica
Musk refers to this brain computing machine whatsis as " neural lacing , " which sounds like the nerdiest lingerie ever , but the terminal figure was in reality coin by the sci - fi novelist Iain M. Banks in hisCultureseries about a utopian futuristic society . Banks is one of Musk ’s biggest influence ( he ’s evennamed several Space X rockets after him ) . In the serial , neuronic lace bear on to mesh - like devices humans would imbed in their Einstein , mean to operate the release of certain neurons with specific thoughts .
The Musk variant of this estimator - brain port - thingy is slightly different . The mesh implant would add a digital stratum of unreal intelligence to our brains , which would work symbiotically with our cortex and limbic systems to raise our intelligence service . It would basically act as a cerebral force - up . If and when AI sprint past us regular - brained homo , his intellection is , a nervous lacing would ensure we ’re not show disused .
Elon Musk ’s a meddlesome clotheshorse ; he ’s capture theHyperloopto work on , plus hisludicrously challenging plans for Tesla … not to cite the whole let’s - go - to - Mars - by-2018 thing . To heap another ridiculous moonshot task onto his already - full dental plate is a bit challenging . However , for years he ’s been very vocal about the threat artificial intelligence poses to humankind , and he even starteda non - profit dedicated to preclude AI from ruining the world . Seems like a worthwhile cause to me .
Recode/Youtube
neuronic lacing is n’t just some suppositional concept Musk is cooking up – there are real moves being made mightily now to develop this engineering . Just last yr , a group of nanotech chemists and engineerspublished a paper about an radical - hunky-dory meshthat can merge with the mind , offer a flexible circuit that could interface with nerve cell . And it ’s not only theoretic , it works . They ’ve plant them into the learning ability of live mouse ( the mesh is thin enough to wind up and shoot with a needle ) , and the mice appear to thrive insensible afterwards .
This is maybe serious news program for Musk ’s jam - packed agenda , since he declared he would only take on the neural lacing project if nobody else steps up to the home base . Of course , the scientists who wrote the paper are far from make this sort of thing safe to implant in living humanity , and they likely have n’t even considered the part about seamlessly integrating the AI " layer " once it ’s there – arguably the most vital element . In all likelihood , Musk is going to be the guy to take on it . But who even knows if he ’d be able to forecast it all out ? allow ’s get to Mars first , then we ’ll verbalize .
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Lieber Research Group, Harvard University
