Elon Musk, Other Billionaires Talk Merging Man and Machine
You may have a completely non-human body or alter your personality with BCIs if you so desire. This is the future that Elon Musk and other billionaires are envisioning while talking about merging man and machine.
Elon Musk and other billionaires are developing machines that can read, write, and even change our brains. Brain computer interfaces are what they are called, and they are arriving sooner than you might think.
Elon Musk, the founder of SpaceX, Tesla, and a recently appointed member of the Twitter board of directors, believes that in the not-too-distant future, humans will be capable of downloading our minds into computers or robots.
We may utilize a more sophisticated BCI to transfer our experiences and personalities onto a computer chip, thereby establishing a type of immortality, according to the eccentric millionaire, who also does own Neuralink, a brain computer interface (BCI) firm.
Neuralink’s purpose is not to turn us into machines, at least not in the near future. Its goal is to assist individuals who have suffered brain or spinal injuries. Musk, on the other hand, did not disagree when questioned if he thought it would be possible.
“We could download the things that we believe make ourselves so unique. Now, of course, if you’re not in that body anymore, that is definitely going to be a difference, but as far as preserving our memories, our personality, I think we could do that.”
Musk is not interested in doing it himself; death, he claims, is a necessary aspect of a functional civilization.
Musk cites the United States as an example, labeling its leadership “very, very ancient.”
Nonetheless, he envisions a future in which it would be viable to download something matching your consciousness into a robot, perhaps something similar to the “Tesla bot” Optimus, which he expects to debut next year.
Musk is not the only billionaire who has poured money into BCI.
Meta* had 60 engineers engaged on a gadget that could convert thought to text, but it was shelved last year before it could be completed, partly due to a hurdle in transitioning it from an implant to something that rests on the outside of your head.
According to Bloomberg, Gabe Newell, the owner of PC gaming retailer Valve, has a net worth of over $7 billion. He has already been developing on a BCI initiative for gaming and virtual reality purposes.
BCIs, according to Newell, might be more than just devices that read our minds; they could also write on them, allowing us to have fantasy encounters that exist only in our heads.
“The real world will seem flat, colorless, blurry compared to the experiences you’ll be able to create in people’s brains,” Newell explained in a 2021 interview with a New Zealand news outlet.
He also believes that in these virtual worlds, you may have a completely non-human body or alter your personality with BCIs if you so desire.
“I’m feeling unmotivated today, I’ll turn up my focus right now. My mood should be this.”
Then, when talking about using BCIs to power synthetic hands, Newell imagined a different possibility. “As soon as you do that, you say, ‘Oh, can you give people a tentacle?’ Then you think, ‘Oh, brains were never designed to have tentacles.’ But it turns out, brains are really flexible.”
If all of this makes you nervous, you aren’t the only one. The Neurorights Foundation is an advocacy organisation that works to advance neurotechnology legislation and advocates for universal neurorights, guaranteeing that BCIs do not compromise on mental privacy, personal identity, or free will while providing everyone with equal access to neurotechnology. In 2021, Chile became the first nation to enact a Neurorights law.
Ray Kurzweil, a futurist, projected that the singularity would occur in 2025. That is, the juncture at which artificial intelligence, nanotechnology, and robotics have progressed to the point where machine learning is unfathomably more developed than human intelligence, resulting in the merging of human and machine intelligence, at which stage we will all propagate out into the cosmos together.
Today, that seems implausible; 2025 is right around the corner. But, if nothing else, the future appears strange with quirky millionaires like Musk, Newell, and Zuckerberg.
In Russia, Meta and Facebook have been blocked due to terrorist activities.
- Source : GreatGameIndia
