Elon Musk’s Neuralink; Ethics of brain chip addressed

     Neuralink, a neurotechnology company co-founded by Elon Musk, is experimenting with brain chips to change electron signals in the brain. Musk promises that the technology “will enable someone with paralysis to use a smartphone with their mind faster than someone using thumbs,” according to The Guardian.

     “I think we have a chance with Neuralink to restore full-body functionality to someone who has a spinal cord injury,” Musk says. “Neuralink’s working well in monkeys, and we’re actually doing just a lot of testing and just confirming that it’s very safe and reliable and the Neuralink device can be removed safely.”

     “In terms of the current purpose–which is to help people with debilitating diseases, mental disorders, just injuries in general that are based in the spinal cord–I think [it’s] amazing,” junior Jeremy Jestel says. “It’s perfect for what it is. It can do a lot of good by bringing back hearing, [or] sight senses.”

     Jestel disagrees with the general use for the chip. “Once you put it into the average person, the average person then gets an advantage,” he says. “Unless you’re giving it to the whole population and there’s a serious guarantee–which would never happen–[of] no corruption, no data, [nothing] being used against you or the population. There is a serious risk factor and I don’t agree with that.”

     “I think it shouldn’t be used because, even if they say they can use it for good, I think that there’s a lot more all-natural ways and more ways that you can spiritually or physically get better,” junior Nathan Santana says. “It might take longer but I feel like it’s safer in general; without having a chip in the back of your head.”

     Santana mentions how somebody has to be controlling the chips. “If there’s somebody controlling it then that also means there’s somebody in charge and there’s somebody that could then shut down those chips,” he explains. “Who’s to say someone programs it and [then] you don’t even have control of your body anymore. The intent is good, but I think that ultimately it’s bad.”

     Neuralink confirms that monkeys died while being tested, but denies allegations of animal cruelty, according to CNN. They were euthanized after suffering from surgical complications or infection from the implants.

      Recently, the monkeys were able to play a game of pong from their mind with the Neuralink chip feeding the information from the monkey’s neurons into a decoder, according to Interesting Engineering. Neuralink claims to “have gone beyond the regulatory demands to provide care to its animals,” subsequent to the deaths of the monkeys. This care includes housing, diet, socialization, removing restraints, and retiring animals uninterested in the experiment.

     “I’m not generally the biggest animal rights activist person, but I do think that when you’re putting a brain chip into monkeys for the sole purpose of testing on them with high risk factors, you’re eventually psychologically torturing them,” Jestel says. “This happens a bunch with specifically Neuralink, where they’ll endlessly torture a monkey because their brain chip malfunctions, and that’s not good that’s really messed up. That’s ethically wrong.”

     “Even with the health of the animals–I mean I get testing because it makes sense, you know you don’t want to test it obviously on humans but I also think that every life is its own entity–I think that by killing and putting these chips into monkeys it’s kind of not right,” Santana says. “If you think that it’s going to work and you feel so strongly about it then put it in yourself, and then you can prove to the people that it works, no ‘let’s go through all these animals and see which ones die and which ones stay alive and then keep that.’”

     Jestel thinks Neuralink’s research will constantly grow. “A lot of people think it’ll be an asymptotic approach where it’ll stop [and] it’ll eventually just even out and won’t progress any further, but I truly believe that it will just progress further and further,” he says. “Over time I fully believe they’ll go for AI symbiosis between man and robot and man and machine, and I wholeheartedly morally disagree with that. It takes away the meaning of life in my opinion and I disagree.”

     Musk plans to begin experimenting on humans in 2022 and hopes that everybody in the future will use the brain chip, according to Fortune. “I think personally that people want to be better, so I think that this will catch on,” Santana says. “I’d give it 10-15 years in all honesty, but ultimately I think this’ll be such a big push in the advancement of humanity, that it’ll kind [of] be like having a credit card or having your phone. It’ll be a normality that gets implanted in humanity. As much as I don’t want it to and as much as some other people don’t, I think that this will become something that will happen.”

     Jestel believes people will use it, too. “Look at the terrible things in our society that people use constantly,” he says. “Everything in our society, whether it be designed to take your attention, whether or not it’s good for you–social media is terrible for so many people yet look at how huge portions of our population use it every day knowing it gives them that sudden pleasure and comfort when it destroys the rest of their life. I 100 percent believe that that sudden pleasure and comfort will blind anyone to the negative effects of Neuralink.”