Robotization Of Humans: Is Musk’s ‘Neuralink’ An Innovation Or A Fraud
Robotization of humans: Is Musk’s ‘Neuralink’ an innovation or a fraud? Elon Musk: First success in implanting a wireless chip into a patient’s brain, BCI scholar: We are doing business with existing technology without innovation. Continue recruiting patients despite revelations such as euthanasia of laboratory animals.
Robotization Of Humans
The first patient to have a Neuralink chip implanted in the brain is recovering well. Initial results confirmed good nerve impulse detection.
On the 29th (local time), Tesla CEO Elon Musk shared the following message on his former Twitter account, X. Neuralink, a neuroscience startup owned by Musk, is currently engaged in a project aimed at implanting a chip into the human brain to establish a connection with a computer.
Musk said his goal is to make this possible for people who have lost their vision or are unable to move their muscles through chip implantation. Ultimately, the plan is to computerize the brain so that humans can follow AI (artificial intelligence).
However, this experiment also comes with many criticisms. All they do is advertise technology that was developed a long time ago as if it were innovation and sell products with the promise of an uncertain future. Although clinical trials have been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FAD), ethical issues continue to arise.
Is Musk’s challenge innovation or fraud?
The First Chip Implant Patient, What Kind Of Test Will Be Done?
Neuralink’ is a neurotechnology company founded by Musk in 2016 in collaboration with seven scientists and engineers. The existence of this company was first revealed to the world through a Wall Street Journal report in 2017.
At this time, Musk said that Neuralink’s ultimate goal is a human improvement, also called transhumanism (combination of robots and humans), and that we aim to create a device that treats serious brain diseases in the short term.
If it can be proven to be safe and effective, this will be a major game changer, Dr. Leah Kroll, a neurologist and assistant professor at Temple University, told ABC News.
Neuralink attracted attention in April 2021 by demonstrating a monkey implanted with a chip playing a computer game using only thoughts. Neuralink received clinical trial approval from the FDA last May after conducting such animal experiments for several years. According to Reuters, Neuralink said it had received approval to implant the device in 10 patients, but the final number agreed upon was not revealed.
Although Musk announced the success of the first patient’s transplant on the 29th of last month, details about when and how the transplant was performed, and what tests will be performed, were not disclosed.
Neuralink’s first product is called Telepathy, Musk said. The initial users will be people who cannot use their limbs. Imagine if Stephen Hawking could communicate faster than a fast-typing typist or auctioneer, he said.
Accordingly, the first patient implanted with Neuralink’s chip will likely aim to perform specific tasks by moving a mobile phone, computer, or machine using only thoughts.
Patient Treatment Vs Purpose Of Training Robot Humans
However, the academic world is looking at this promotion of Neuralink and Musk with discomfort.
Professor Miguel Nicoleris of Duke University, an authority in the field of Brain Computer Interface (BCI), said in an interview with the science journal Inverse after Neuralink’s monkey experiments were revealed that it is imitating the work of other researchers and is not innovative at all. They are focusing on technology rather than considering the impact on humans, he harshly criticized.
In fact, the BCI field has made many achievements over the past several decades. In 2000, Professor Nicoleris’s research team successfully experimented with moving a robot arm by measuring brain waves by implanting electrodes into the brain of a monkey.
In 2004, researchers at Braingate, a non-profit BCI research consortium, implanted microelectrodes into the brains of patients with quadriplegia, allowing them to operate a TV and send emails just by thinking. Since then, scientists around the world have succeeded in making paraplegic patients wear wearable robots and kicking a ball, or quadriplegic patients drinking water. In 2021, the world’s first quadriplegic patient who had a wireless chip implanted in his brain operated a tablet PC.
This is why, from the BCI academic perspective, Neuralink’s achievements and future goals are not significantly different from the direction in which previous researchers succeeded.
In fact, this was expected to some extent. Musk recruited many scientists from BCI academia before and after establishing Neuralink. Among them, Max Hordak, one of the eight co-founders of Neuralink, was a researcher who worked in Professor Nicolaeris’ lab for several months. Hodak left Neuralink in 2021, and in 2022, only two of the co-founders will remain with the company.
Professor Nicoleris said, Musk is trying to sell the decades of work done by BCI researchers and say he has done something amazing, adding that what he has done is just marketing and theater. He is a master at selling things that may never succeed.
Inverse says Neuralink aims to improve the lives of patients, but it also has a higher goal of enabling humans to rewind memories or download programs to use them. Is their research actually going to help individuals with disabilities? , or whether it is an excuse to study transhumanism, he pointed out.
They Say 21% Of Monkeys Died. Are Humans Okay?
Neuralink was also embroiled in suspicions of violating the Animal Welfare Act.
Wired, an animal rights protection group, claimed in a report published in September of last year that 12 of the monkeys tested at Neuralink suffered strange symptoms such as cerebral edema, partial paralysis, and self-injurious behavior, and many of the monkeys were eventually euthanized.
According to the report, one of the monkeys suffered a brain injury in 2019 when a chip broke during an implant surgery, but did not receive treatment. Another monkey was seen putting his head on the ground after the transplant and digging at the surgical wound until it bled, eventually losing control. Wired found that about 21% of the monkeys in the study died due to problems with the brain chip implants.
PCRM, an American non-profit animal protection group, revealed that Neuralink abused several monkeys, causing psychological pain, extreme pain, and chronic infections due to surgery, and that UC Davis University, which also conducted the experiments, concealed this.
Reuters also reported, based on interviews with former and current Neuralink employees, It is estimated that a total of 1,500 animals, including sheep, pigs, and monkeys, have died as a result of Neuralink’s experiments since 2018.
Based on these revelations and reports in November of last year, four U.S. congressmen asked securities authorities to investigate whether Musk has ever misled investors regarding the chip implantation test. As of June last year, Neuralink’s company value was estimated at $5 billion (about 6.6 trillion won).
Neoscope, a media specializing in medical technology and medicine, said, Unfortunate incidents of laboratory animals dying in the medical field often occur, adding, What Neuralink did wrong, however, was before receiving investment and before recruiting patients willing to undergo risky brain surgery. All of these facts were not disclosed to the public in advance, he pointed out.
Currently, Neuralink’s website continues to recruit patients to have a chip implanted in their brains. To register as a patient, you must meet three conditions:
- Adult 18 years of age or older
- American
- Physical disability (quadriplegia, paraplegia, visual impairment or blindness, aphasia or inability to speak, deafness or hearing loss, etc.).
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