Does it really help us, humans, to merge our brains with artificial intelligence?

We live in the void of metamorphoses, but the echo that runs through the day… that echo beyond time, anguish or caress. Are we near to our conscience, or far from it?

Paul Éluard, “Capital of Pain” (1926)

Neuralink is a company owned by Elon Musk that aims to enhance human intelligence by making a product that allows access to our brains so we can benefit of the super powerful and intelligent technology of Artificial Intelligence. Kinda like a huge usb stick that you connect to your brain and Boom! you got everything you want inside. If this sounds to you like a SCI-FI book or you think that only Neo from Matrix was learning new skills, let me tell you first that this is getting real.

By implating tiny electrodes disposed like a mesh into the brain, you can have better cognitive powers and a better memory. Basically, you’re merging your brain with the one of a robot, because anyway AI is becoming so fast so clever that, as Elon Musk says, there is a good chance that humans may become the intellectual equivalent of the house cat. It’s insane just to read futurists prediction saying that in 25 years technologies will be a billion times more powerful than they are today.

One cannot remain aloof at this groundbreaking idea. Me, I am just wondering — in this case scenario — what will we do with so much information that it could actually help our human problems?

Funny though, we already got external ‘brains’ — smart phones with google and wikipedia and so much information available that it’s impossible to use a one man’s life to read it all, but isn’t it that most of the time real life drains us so much we use our ‘external brains’ just a mean to escape the real world with some second-hand entertainment?

And what exactly does it mean that we will be more intelligent? If you think about a doctor, could you compress all the books into one’s brain so that it can make the perfect diagnosis and treatement for a patient? Or you give already all the data to the patient so it doesn’t need a doctor?

Who will decide when exactly all this intelligence will eventually be used with shabby intentions? Who will be entitled and who not to benefit from this invention? But most of all, on which place will emotional intelligence and the inner spiritual life stand?

And think about just the mere human existence that we all share together: the dissapointment in love, the hurt, additction, having a difficult parent, a divorce, gelousy, infidelity, unsensitivity, the devoid of empathy and ability to sooth the pain of the close ones, going through alone parenthood with all it’s frustrations and anger and impatience, the despair, the feeling of being a failure because you’re not being the best version of yourself that the society tells you you SHOULD be — this is, the universal misery of being a human. If we could solve it easily with just a mouse click — erase the negative so that you can feel only positive, would you do it? Would it be human, after all?

And the paramount issue — will we know better how to love? 200.000 years of evolution and we still don’t know how to do it properly: how to maintain the love but also a career that will makes us feel worthy, how to not choose a selfish idiot even though he/she is beautiful and nice, how not be blinded and how to spot someone who is really proud to have you and will be there for you at worse, how to not give in when it’s becoming unpleasent and the days in paradise are over, when it’s too little and when it’s too much; what do to when the excitement dissappears and a soft inner voice whispers in our ears “you have to live your life, carpe diem, change the lover and chase your movie-like scenario dreams” even though we promised or we were promised a love that will last forever?

Will we know better how to caress someone? My humble opinion is that no matter how intelligent and what a spectacular memory that brings us closer to the perfection of a robot we have, if the emotional side is sore and sick, then our mind is just a cage — shall it be just a bigger and a more polished one.

It’s easier to love and to praise someone who is close to perfection. But is this real love then?

Photo: NA Films/ Film4/ Universal Pictures.