BEGINNING OF END

This is the beginning and the end. In such a short time since January, when a neuro-link was attached to Noland Arbaugh, who was paralysed below the shoulders, he seems to be doing well. He can now play chess from his brain and has a robot he can control to help him out. Added to this, he now wants Tesla to provide a self-driving car with a link to his brain so that he can get around on his own. On the downside, if your brain is linked to all available chess moves online, you would win every game against yourself, and that would not be much fun.

This neuro-link technology is getting near the frightening legendary Hal computer which we saw could have taken over the world. On the other side we could now hypothesize how if Hal were linked to his master’s brain, the human would rule. But there are bad humans…

Ok, this poor guy Noland hasn’t shown great personal ambition except to start a business to help his family and we don’t yet know if this technology has a limited time stamp. But just imagine such links when with further developed it could be attached to those controlling the world. Perhaps that could be for the good but it is unlikely that such advantages would be available to the poor, so we get back to that major coming problem raised by Yuval Harari of his ‘’Useless People’’ who no longer having jobs, would be deemed not to require a brain implant. No one has yet come up with an attractive solution.

So far there has only been hype on the new technology good parts – and no one wants to take away any credit for the advancement - but it gets back to the speed at which such technology is advancing, what are checks and balances and who gets to use it? If a neuro-link can eventually connect to access, say all available information, it would change the entirety of humanity not being replaced by robots but what would amount to creating robotised humans. Would you need to put in blockages on what information could be assessed and what about mis-information?

While there can always be problems with new technology, in this case, the link to Noland malfunctioned when some wires came loose, although they were quickly fixed. One would hope that in the future, a loose wire in a President would not press the atomic bomb button without a conscious decision..

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