it is a lengthier article, bits below and link is
provided...
"Neuralink has implanted a chip in its first human
brain. But it’s pushing a needlessly risky approach,
former employees say.
Of all Elon Musk’s exploits — the Tesla cars, the
SpaceX rockets, the Twitter takeover, the plans to
colonize Mars — his secretive brain chip company
Neuralink may be the most dangerous.
But helping paralyzed people is not Musk’s end goal.
That’s just a step on the way to achieving a much
wilder long-term ambition.
That ambition, in Musk’s own words, is “to achieve a
symbiosis with artificial intelligence.” His goal is to
develop a technology that helps humans “merg[e] with
AI” so that we won’t be “left behind” as AI becomes
more sophisticated."
But it’s important to understand that this technology
comes with staggering risks. Former Neuralink employees
as well as experts in the field have alleged that the
company pushed for an unnecessarily invasive,
potentially dangerous approach to the implants that can
damage the brain (and apparently has done so in animal
test subjects) to advance Musk’s goal of merging with
AI.
Neuralink is a response to one big fear: that AI will
take over the world.
This is a fear that’s increasingly widespread among AI
leaders, who worry that we may create machines that are
smarter than humans and that have the ability to
deceive us and ultimately seize control from us.
Although Musk is not alone in warning about
“civilizational risk” posed by AI systems, where he
differs from others is in his plan for warding off the
risk. The plan is basically: If you can’t beat ’em,
join ’em.
“Past animal experiments [at Neuralink] revealed
serious safety concerns stemming from the product’s
invasiveness and rushed, sloppy actions by company
employees,” said the Physicians Committee for
Responsible Medicine, a nonprofit that opposes animal
testing, in a May 2023 statement. “As such, the public
should continue to be skeptical of the safety and
functionality of any device produced by Neuralink.”
Nevertheless, the FDA cleared the company to begin
human trials.
Experts also worry that devices like those being built
by Neuralink may be vulnerable to hacking. What happens
if you’re using one of them and a malicious actor
intercepts the Bluetooth connection, changing the
signals that go to your brain to make you more
depressed, say, or more compliant?
Neuroethicists refer to that as brainjacking. “This is
still hypothetical, but the possibility has been
demonstrated in proof-of-concept studies,” Ienca told
me in 2019. “A hack like this wouldn’t require that
much technological sophistication.”
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