Vinay Menon: Elon Musk’s brain chips could be a medical game-changer — so why are they so terrifying?

Love him or hate him, Elon Musk is a workaholic.

And his work is shaping our future. This maniac who apparently neither sleeps nor eats has more companies than I have trousers. Musk is digging tunnels under cities. He’s firing rocket ships into space. He’s an EV pioneer. He now owns Twitter. I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s currently spitballing ways to transmogrify clouds into wormholes so we can export carbon dioxide to Andromeda while discovering vacation hot spots in the multiverse.

I just found a luxury Airbnb owned by a different me!

On Wednesday, Mr. Musk turned his attention to brain chips.

If he’s right, if his Neuralink company can forge a “brain-computer interface” with an implantable device the size of a quarter that’s drilled into a skull by a robot surgeon, this would indeed be a medical game-changer.

Musk believes he can restore vision and reverse paralysis. The brain chips in test monkeys have already spawned “telepathic typing.” Think about that. I can’t get my kids to take dirty dishes to the sink and Musk’s monkeys are already playing Pong with their minds?

The big news this week was the projected timeline for this noggin revolution.

Musk said human trials for brain chips could begin in six months.

Again, I salute the world’s richest man as he aspires toward health innovator. But his past timeline estimates, from fully autonomous cars to touching down on Mars, suggest six months might be more wishful thinking in a tight T-shirt. Based on the neurology courses I took in university, I am also skeptical of claims that rewiring grey matter with micron-scale threads connected to a “Link” can override congenital blindness or a severed spinal cord.

But I’m a moron. Musk is not. This could be his greatest achievement.

Neuralink’s possible therapeutic benefits are sublime in the abstract.

It’s what comes next that scares the living daylights out of me.

There are experts who say it’s only a matter of time until brain chips are like wrist watches — anyone can get one for any reason. There are experts who say “mind-reading” is no longer an if, but a when. There are experts who foresee a cyborg future in which the gossamer connective tissue between man and machine becomes indelible and reaches critical mass, and now your know-it-all pub pals truly are know-it-alls with Google Brain.

As Musk noted: “The progress at first, particularly as it applies to humans, will seem perhaps agonizingly slow. But we are doing all of the things to bring it to scale in parallel. So, in theory, progress should be exponential.”

That’s pretty much what Alexander Graham Bell said about the phone.

Now we get 10 telemarketing calls a day.

Call me a neo-Luddite, but I do not want a brain chip. I don’t want to telepathically communicate with passersby. I don’t want to read minds. Keep your wacky thoughts to yourself. I like that I occasionally can’t remember things. I like that I need to dig up the instruction manual to change the microwave clock after a power outage.

Not all info needs to live in my head.

If we’ve learned anything from social media, it’s that technological progress can be gloomy for society at large. The bad can start to outweigh the good. We just don’t see the downside of tech until we are buried under it. I know many people who were way happier before they got eaten alive by the impulse to tweet.

You think Uncle Ted is insufferable now as he blitzes out partisan fake news from Facebook? Just wait until the algorithm in the fifth generation Neuralink N1 chip has him screaming misinformation directly into your sleeping psyche.

Our taxes are insanely high because Justin Trudeau eats babies!

And, Elon, what happens if my wife hacks my brain chip? Suddenly I’m eating cauliflower and feather-dusting for 10 hours a day while offering her foot massages? Sir, are you out of your mind? Yes, Neuralink’s medical promise is amazing.

But do you not see where this is headed for everyone else?

In our quest for omniscience, we are forgetting the joys of being human.

Personally, I think Musk is in dire need of a long vacation. The man needs to decompress. He’s clearly spread too thin or Twitter would not currently be a dumpster fire in which toxic embers of his self-authoring chaos are spewing into the ether.

A brain chip can’t fix bad judgment.

When is the last time Musk saw his many children? When is the last time he went to Vegas or took a relaxing fishing trip? Has he ever curled up in a hammock with a great book?

When will he stop to smell the roses not generated by AI?

We are already slaves to the gadgets we have. Our phones are appendages. Our digital assistants are shepherds. Our smart homes are making us dumb.

In the future, must we really remember to charge our brains?

Musk said he will get a chip as soon as it’s ready for humans.

How can anyone so smart be such a fool?

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