The Neuralink tech is coming along in an astounding way and as it develops, opportunities open up that could truly change humanity.
As my colleague Nick Arama wrote in a piece on Monday, Elon Musk's brainwave technology has allowed for a man with ALS to regain the ability to speak to people through technology and even edit a video with his mind alone:
Brad Smith has ALS and can't move his arms or legs. He is non-verbal because of the illness. He also has a wife and children. But he was able to communicate on X because of a Neuralink brain implant, as he explains. He's one of three people who have received such an implant.
It utilizes his old voice, which was cloned from old recordings with AI. He types with his brain, and that's how he's able to communicate. He made the video using the Brain Computer Interface (BCI) to help control the mouse on his computer. It's both wild and truly inspirational.
(Amazing: Non-Verbal Man With ALS Communicates on X Because of Elon Musk and Neuralink)
Smith's story is an incredible one, and the Neuralink technology makes it all the more so. The things it's given back to him is proof positive of human ingenuity and its indomitable spirit.
The thing is, you can't talk about humanity's ability to overcome weaknesses and disease through science and technology without discussing what could come next. Pushing the envelope and seeing where else we can take something we created is a trait that comes stock with our species.
So, let's do something I love to do, and peer into the future about 50 years to see what Neuralink is up to around that time.
The year is 2075, and ALS... is likely a relic of the past. Thanks to CRISPR technology, ALS and other genetic diseases have largely been eradicated from hereditary lines via CRISPR-based gene editing. Not that it still can't exist through traumatic injury, but naturally occurring cases won't be an issue.
For more on that, read the article linked below.
Does that mean Neuralink is twiddling its thumbs, waiting for something to do? Probably not. In fact, I imagine it'll be busier than it's ever been.
It will still be helping people who have lost the use of parts of their body, but if their mind is intact, I imagine Nueralink will be helping them do more than edit videos and speak through an AI-generated voice. Thanks to improved technology in the way of exoskeletons and artificial limbs, they may be able to control mechanical arms down to minute movements like mechanical fingers. Picking up small objects, opening doors, or even writing with a pen is very possibly on the table.
Imagine a war veteran who had lost a limb effectively having an artificial limb like you would today, but instead of the immovable or barely moveable fingers, it literally acts as his arm normally would. He can drive with it, shoot a gun with it, and type with it, though I do think typing will also become something of a relic at this point.
In fact, I see communication being incredibly different by this juncture, and the first place you'll likely see this tech emerge is, as usual, the military.
The people watching Neuralink closer than anyone right now is likely the U.S. military, because if Neuralink can get to a point where it's less invasive to the human body, and more developed in terms of how it interacts with technology, the possibilities are endless.
Right now, Nueralink requires a complex surgical instillation, but the technology to read brainwaves without having to slice open your skull is already being worked on and is technically here already. Given, they're beyond clunky right now and are entire headsets, but in 50 years, the ability to read your brainwaves may evolve into a single small button behind the ear that you can take off whenever you feel like.
Imagine if this little button could allow you to send silent communications to your squad mate. No hand signals required, no whispers, no sound cues at all. Just a thought that could contain information or orders.
And not just messages. We're talking control of various technological devices. A drone could be controlled by thinking about it, an explosive could be set off remotely with a thought, and more. AI integration could feed real-time battle data to the brain, including FoF indication, medical reads, all (likely) through auditory cues, or possibly more depending on how far the tech gets at this point.
Realistically, this kind of technology could be around by 2030 if development is where we think it is. It would be relatively rough and experimental, but it's not impossible.
As usual, the military will have this tech for a while, but eventually it will become available in various ways to the public, and at this point, we'd see the birth of the common technopath.
To be very clear, they're already here. Smith is one of them, but at the 50-year point, it'd go far beyond simply speaking through AI and controlling a computer through a mouse.
Technopathy means that, through your Neuralink (or whatever the device is called at this point), you could open doors, start cars, turn on lights, send telepathic messages, offload memories, gain memories, and possibly experience incredible things such as augmented reality through your senses. Heads-up displays could become a common part of your vision, showing you anything from the state of your vitals to your daily schedule, and all without the use of glasses or screens. You could integrate directly with AI, expanding your intellectual capabilities and the speed with which you problem-solve.
The possibilities are many, and I can tell you now that many of these things are probable. My younger readers will likely see at least half, if not most, of these things, 50 years down the line.
Now, we can't talk about all this potential without talking about the dangers.
This kind of technology could open the door for brain hacking, which is an incredibly terrifying prospect, and one that could likely halt this kind of technology from seeing public use for well beyond 50 years if safety measures can't be put in place to stop it from happening.
These hackers could get access to everything, including your memories, codes, medical data, names, addresses, and more.
But possibly more horrifying than having things stolen from your brain is what these hackers could put in it. Imagine seeing memories that aren't yours. Horrifying images and experiences you never had fed directly into your brain. Or, if they really wanted to confuse you, they could be slightly realistic in tone in order to subtly change the way you think about something.
Imagine seeing things that aren't there because someone hacked your brain and fed that to your optic center. You could see horrors, people who aren't there, a green light when it's a red light, hear sounds that aren't real, or uncontrolled flashing that you can't close your eyes against.
What if they could access the pain centers of your brain? What if they could just shut off parts of your body, like your legs, your eyes, or your heart?
These hackers couldn't just kill you, they could possibly reprogram you, and that possibility is especially terrifying. If we were to adopt this technology publicly, it would need to be so ironclad that hacking someone wouldn't just be insanely difficult to do, it would need to come with punishments severe enough to scare people away from doing it at all.
Scary stuff, but the thing is, I see this technology as somewhat inevitable. It might not take the form I described above, but I do think it will be close to it. Common technopathy is around the corner, but we need to be very careful about how we utilize it. It could be the next step in human evolution or, if handled irresponsibly, one of the worst things that ever happened to it.
