Human robots — myth or near reality? Transhumanism coming true with Elon Musk and his way to the future with Neuralink.
It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is most adaptable to change. [Charles Darwin, 1839]
With the technological development which accelerates more and more in last years, Darwin’s quote becomes more adequate. With development of Artificial Intelligence, people will have to adapt to the new challenging environment and learn how to live with robots; or… maybe become as powerful as them in order to keep the control.
This idea brings us to the Transhumanism concept related to the human’s dreams, which has been covered in literature, movies, comic books or even video games since the beginning of the 20th century. Initially treated as science fiction features, these imagination pieces are somewhat turning into reality, due to technological jumps. Among them we can find hearing aids or even body implants (artificial legs controlled by a microprocessor) which enhance human capacities and repair human natural defects.
Although we should wonder if one day Terminator will sit with us around the same table?
According to Elon Musk this concept may come true due to the need of enhancing human capacities to avoid the concept well shown in Matrix movie. That’s why he has invented the concept of Neuralink which will allow humans to be as powerful as future machines. Even though Musk claims that AI will be the real threat to the humanity, we shouldn’t forget to consider both opportunities and risks involved it the human robotization process.
What exactly is Neuralink?
Neuralink is an American company specialised in neurotechnology launched in 2016. Neuralink aims to develop implantable brain–computer interfaces (BCIs) called “Neural Lace”. Even though we already know how to control robotic arms or type with our brains, Musk wants to allow the brain to send information to or from a computer. Thus, it would allow humans to think faster and so they could keep up with advances in AI — at least theoretically.
“Neural lace” is a network of tiny electrodes linked to your brain that allow to communicate wirelessly with the world and is designed to act as an interface which would regulate data exchange. It would enable people to share thoughts and feelings without written or spoken language. The solution may fundamentally alter how we conceive of what it means to be human and how we communicate and interact with our fellow humans (and non-humans).
The question remains…
Even though the idea sounds very enthusiastic and brings opportunities we should still think about the risk that will be involved concerning education, labour or technological risks. Among the last ones we should consider spread hate or build hateful coalitions (Ex. Kingsman movie), possibility to insert any information in the brain, brain’s technology crash or hacking. But the future remains unknown and we keep waiting for the new ideas to come and save the coming era…
Anna Prokopowicz
