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Navigating the Complex World of Advanced Brain-Machine Interfaces
Does Elon Musk’s Neuralink have what it takes to succeed in the exceptionally complex risk landscape of human augmentation?
In 2018, I wrote extensively about the emerging opportunities and challenges around augmentation technologies in the book Films from the Future — including the advances being promised by Elon Musk’s company Neuralink.
As Neuralink gears up to demonstrate their latest advances in cutting edge brain-machine interface technology, I thought it worth posting a few relevant excerpts from the book here. These are from the chapter that is inspired by the 1995 Anime movie Ghost in the Shell, and focuses on the opportunities and challenges surrounding human augmentation.
Through a Glass Darkly
On June 4, 2016, Elon Musk tweeted: “Creating a neural lace is the thing that really matters for humanity to achieve symbiosis with machines.”
This might just have been a bit of entrepreneurial frippery, inspired by the science fiction writer Iain M. Banks, who wrote extensively about “neural lace” technology in his Culture novels. But Musk, it seems, was serious, and in 2017 he launched a new company to develop ultra-high-speed speed…
