Rage against the machine: Americans warn Elon Musk to ‘stop creating cyborgs’ after he revealed the first human has had Neuralink’s brain chip

Elon Musk has terrified even his most ardent fans after revealing that his technology start-up Neuralink has become the first to successfully implant a microchip in a human brain.

The world’s richest man said the operation took place on Sunday and that “initial results show promising detection of neuron spikes.”

The device, called “Telepathy,” will “enable control of your phone or computer, and through them, virtually any device, just by thinking,” he said.

But many of his 170 million followers on X, formerly Twitter, accused him of ‘mind control’, creating ‘cyborgs’ and even ‘playing God’.

“The negative potential of this makes me very uncomfortable,” one person wrote in a reply to his announcement.

Musk announced on Monday that the first person had received a Neuralink brain implant

Many of the billionaire’s followers reacted with alarm to his latest groundbreaking innovation

“I’m getting terrified just thinking about it,” another added.

Musk said he hopes disabled users like Stephen Hawking can communicate “faster than an auctioneer.”

The first users are those who have lost the use of their limbs. Imagine if Stephen Hawking could communicate faster than a speed typist or auctioneer. That’s the goal.’

The company wants to implant microchips in the brains of paralyzed people so that they can move their bodies using their thoughts.

NEURALINK: ELON MUSK’S GAME FOR COMPUTER BRAIN INTERFACES

Elon Musk’s Neuralink is working to connect the human brain to a machine interface by creating micron-sized devices.

Neuralink was registered in California as a “medical research company” in July 2016, and Musk largely self-funded the company.

It’s working on what Musk calls “neural edge” technology, implanting tiny brain electrodes that could one day upload and download thoughts.

The technology is initially intended to be used to help people suffering from severe degenerative brain diseases such as ALS, but it could be used more widely in the coming years.

“I think the real problem here is that even your thoughts won’t be safe,” *TemplerTV tweeted.

“If they can decipher your thoughts for this, how long will it take for the FBI to get a search warrant for your thought crime?”

“What if someone else starts controlling you, and you can easily understand who I am talking about,” Sagar Pandey added, “scary.”

“Any technological progress must be based on bioethical principles, otherwise playing God always ends badly,” wrote Juan Manuel Gongora.

But others were more positive.

‘Well done Neuralink and Elon!! This could very well be an important moment in history,” one user wrote.

‘This is great news, we are expanding to the last two borders. Space and spirit, I can’t wait for the next company lecture. So excited!’ wrote another.

Neuralink announced in September that it would soon begin a human trial to evaluate the safety of its implant.

It comes less than a year after Neuralink received approval from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to operate on humans, a crucial milestone for the startup.

Musk wrote on X on Monday evening: ‘The first human received an implant from @Neuralink yesterday and is recovering well. The first results show promising detection of neuron spikes.’

No details about the patient were given, but Ashlee Vance, who wrote a 2015 biography, “Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future,” wrote in a Bloomberg report that the ideal candidate for Neuralink’s first human trial was “an adult under the age of 40 whose four limbs are paralyzed.”

Vance explained that it would take a “few hours” for a surgeon to perform a craniectomy and another 25 minutes for the chip to be inserted by a robot into the area of ​​the brain that controls the hands, wrists and forearms.

“The goal is to demonstrate that the device can safely collect useful data from that part of the patient’s brain, an important step in Neuralink’s efforts to convert a person’s thoughts into a series of commands that a computer can understand,” Vance added.

Vance said the implant would relay this information to a nearby laptop or tablet.

During the human trial, a robot developed by the company will surgically place the implants’ “ultra-fine” wires that help transmit signals in participants’ brains, the company said.

Vance, who said he had visited Neuralink’s facilities 10 times in three years, also revealed how Musk pushed his company to fend off the threat from similar brain-computer startups Synchron and Onward.

Both have already begun human trials, leading the billionaire to conclude last year that the two companies were “kicking our ass right now.”

In response, he allegedly told Neuralink to pick up the pace “as if the world was ending,” Vance said.

Reuters reported in June that the company was valued at as much as $5 billion based on private stock transactions.

However, Neuralink has been dogged by controversy in recent years, raising ethical concerns and skepticism among neuroscientists and other experts.

Safety concerns caused the company to struggle for a while to get the necessary approval for human trials, especially from the FDA.

Major issues involved the device’s lithium battery; the possibility of the implant wires migrating within the brain; and the challenge of safely removing the device without damaging brain tissue.

The FDA later granted its approval in May, but did not disclose how its initial concerns were resolved.

Despite the controversy, Musk, CEO of SpaceX and Tesla, has big ambitions for Neuralink. He says the company will facilitate rapid surgical insertions of its chip devices to treat conditions such as obesity, autism, depression and schizophrenia.

It would also enable web browsing and telepathy.

But even if the device proves safe for human use, it could still potentially take more than a decade before Neuralink is cleared to market it, experts warn.

Where it will go: The study will use a robot to surgically place a brain-computer interface (BCI) implant in a part of the brain that controls movement, Neuralink added. Pictured is a scan showing the implant in an animal’s brain

You see a monkey with the Neuralink chip in its brain playing a game

Experts say the brain implants will need to undergo extensive testing to overcome technical and ethical challenges if they are to become widely available.

Musk’s company – which was only founded in 2016 – has repeatedly overestimated the speed at which it is delivering on its promises.

Initially, Neuralink wanted to start inserting chips into people in 2020, and then push this back to 2022. The time will finally come in 2024.

There was also a word of caution from one of the company’s executives in response to Musk’s demands.

Referring to the fate of SpaceX’s first few rocket launches, Shivon Zilis, Neuralink special projects director and mother of two of Musk’s children, told Vance: “We can’t blow up the first three. That’s not an option here.’

NEURALINK ‘failed experiments’ on monkeys – former employee says

“Failed experiments” by Elon Musk’s Neuralink allegedly “kept suffering animals alive for no reason and malpractice caused hemorrhages in the brains of monkeys” during rushed tests of brain chips, a former Neuralink employee and internal lab notes previously revealed.

The billionaire startup is accused of violating the Animal Welfare Act with its experiments at the University of California, Davis, from 2017 to 2020, which “sacrificed all animals involved,” said a former Neuralink employee, who requested anonymity stay, to DailyMail. com.

One case stood out to them: a monkey that was sacrificed ahead of schedule due to mistakes allegedly made during the operation.

The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine filed a lawsuit against the University of California, Davis, where the experiments were held, claiming it must turn over video footage and photographs of the experiments under California’s Public Records Act. Pictured is an image of a monkey seen on the Neuralink website

DailyMail.com previously obtained Neuralink lab notes detailing how a sealant was applied to the surgical holes, causing the monkey’s brain to swell and bleed.

“There was no reason to use it,” the former employee, who worked as an autopsy technician, told DailyMail.com.

This incident is among a laundry list of cases exposed by former staff in recent months, leading to the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) opening a federal investigation into Nueralink for animal welfare violations.

Read more here.

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