A little over three years ago, some brilliant seer gazed into the future and reported back:
Nowadays, I’m sure there are brilliant minds working hard to figure out how we can implant SIM cards in our frontal lobes so that we can keep up with the Kardashians without having to go to all the exhausting labor of manipulating our pocket computers with our fingers, like savages.
Well…
The brain chip’s initial aim is to help people with neurological disorders such as OCD, depression and anxietyhttps://t.co/bWXbmifCTt
— Mixmag (@Mixmag) July 27, 2020
Yes, yes, the “initial aim” is always something unobjectionable and beneficial. What’s actually interesting is trying to imagine all the ways in which humans will inevitably harness new technologies to serve the same old ends of hedonism, power struggles, and violence. Musk seems to believe that the best defense against the possibility of hostile AI is for humans to become cyborgs by means of wires implanted in our brains, allowing us to interface with technology at the speed of thought. Did I say interesting? I meant horrifying.