CAVEAT EMPTOR: A FUTURE WITH BCIs IN IT

Even though only seven test monkeys survived Neuralink, Musk applied for human trials with the FDA. He has global competition, afterall.

While altruistic benefits of transhumanist BCIs, or brain computer interfaces, amount to rapid advances in responsive brain ability, their future is fraught proving human safety. It must survive the slings and arrows of public-private treachery as well relevance in human use.

HOW THE NEURALINK TESTS WENT & HOW IT’S GOING

Neuralink’s BCI tests took place on macaques at publicly funded UC Davis, a California based University. Most of the monkeys expired as a result of testing the Neuralink BCI technologies. Only seven monkeys survived. There were reports even surviving monkeys had adverse neurological reactions. Some were distressed enough “chew their fingers off”, according to one account from The Sun.

Even so, the gold macaron-like chip technology has passed its proving capabilities in initiate tests with the macaques. Musk has applied for FDA approval for human trials in the United States as soon as 2023.

Q: YES, BUT IS IT PRIVATE?

A: Not if it relies on an unencrypted Bluetooth wireless signal; which Neuralink does.

The human BCI hardware functions with a lot of subtle electro-chemical signals automatically generated inside the brain; which technologists call “wet ware”. Most of the chip capabilities are medical encased computing chips that recharge partially from the brain environment but seem to be able to also pick up a wireless energy charge to keep up operations.  Bluetooth, the unavoidable rune of Dutch global bloatware embedded irreparably in any wireless device, as a special interest would no doubt provide an IoT network capability. However, it has been propagating better encryption for it’s firmware. How that actually applies to Neuralink’s secret brain macaron, remains to be seen. So will it be encrypted? Maybe.

Q: Can our brains be hacked?

A: Not directly by BCIs…yet.

BCIs undoubtedly stand to be one of the emerging future’s most invasive technologies to come to modern markets.  However, it isn’t the most invasive in the stack. Let’s remember that Neuralink has global competitors in transhumanist BCI development, primarily from Asia.

There are any number of unintended consequences attached to the IoT-capable BCI, and Nueralink, as a brand. Desperate paraplegics, extorted or kidnapped, would be used to hack banks by a gang of criminals.  Perhaps repressed or perverse applicants for BCIs technologies would hover near IoT capable houses to glean security codes or gain clandestine information about people chosen as their unfortunate targets. One of the worst scenarios, a network of BCIs would be used in a government mind-control experiments to manufacture an involuntary spy ring, remote controlled by a faceless handler who manipulates BCI adopters to relay human intelligence. 

In the latter highly strange category, would be the overdevelopment of the brain’s subtle electromagnetic signals transpondence as means to communicate and intrude into non-wired individuals. This is already available in patented in Voice-to-Skull technologies for specified use by people who can pay for the technology. To pretend a patent in current use by the government or rich psychopaths doesn’t exist is common stonewalling and more gaslighting from authorities who find your lack of consent inconvenient. If you don’t want this in your future, complain. Complain as often as it stands to bother you, within reason. Ask for what you really want; which includes freedom from random hostile intrusion by technology.

Q: WHAT’S GOING TO HAPPEN TO NORMAL PEOPLE?

A: The most important notions unearthed from Neuralink is not, “can it be done?” The ability of a creative technical person is relentless. The question is what will be done with it?

A public movement is going to have to reinforce legal boundaries, demand transparency and notifications where BCIs are in use and to not accept public-private gaslighting from say, credit card companies, when it comes to highly invasive transhumanist technologies.

BCI designers cannot simultaneously develop a wholly invasive technical product using the human body’s subtle signals and pretend it has no impact on the humans it reaches. Normal people must help manufacture the legal standards for technology that impacts them. Their dissent must not be dismissed from the governing tables.

There will be an audit path, and thus, a way to manufacture privacy and human rights audit gaps in technical studies. Biotechnology reforms will be required from time to time or the tech will be dispatched from general use. There is always a limit to public tolerance of any technology that directly injures their interest. That injury must be proven with science as well.

A FUTURE WITH BCIs IN IT

In a future with BCI’s it is likely the end-users, network administrators and governments who will manifest invasive harms against the better counsel of those who created the technology for a specified medical use. The regulatory controls and governance will more than likely apply to them as well as liability for uncontrolled damages. If the hardware actually causes traumatic brain injury or death, that is likely a civil matter or criminal in the case of an ill fated death.

This near future will confront and test ethics boundaries for what rich people, and the governments rented by them, will do. Governments may use a marginal propaganda line, like ‘There is no law to protect the public’.  However, the common law premise of privacy in one’s personal effects remains a proven US Constitutional operating principle, as well as a UNHRC codified human right. Subtle levels of intrusion into a person’s brain environment, to be manipulated for clandestine gain, to coerce artificial consent for unnatural, fraudulent or abusive outcomes is a provable harm. 

All computing technologies have a recordable audit path, making computing one of the easiest vehicles to manifest transparency. If the government, or an unauthorized stalker, used BCIs, or a network of BCIs in disabled hosts, as a clandestine hot spot to invade the minds of a citizen dissenter that would automatically warrant a Congressional hearing. It would elicit injunctive relief for the public from the courts to prevent further exposure to those types of harms.

We can see and know legal patterns in modern life based on precedent.  Our public leaders bear the burden of providing protection and relief from civil harm. They should not shield technical actors, who manifest the worst instincts among us, from public blowback.