Neural signals may be of much more value to human beings than the information currently stored on the servers of Internet companies, because it touches the "depths of the soul".
Data map: Elon Musk. Photo: Xinhua News Agency.
Text|Shin Hai Guang.
According to Xinhua News Agency, Elon Musk said on January 29 that his brain-computer interface company carried out the first human transplant of a brain-computer interface device on January 28, and the transplant recipient is currently recovering well.
Musk posted on the social platform X (formerly Twitter) that preliminary results show good prospects for implantable brain-computer interface devices to detect neuron-related potentials. According to him, the company's first brain-computer interface product is called "telepathy", and after the brain is implanted in the device, it can control mobile phones, computers, and almost all devices through them just by using their minds.
The news immediately caused a sensation on social platforms, which heralded another important step in the field of brain-computer interface related research.
Ethical risks that cannot be ignored.
The so-called brain-computer interface refers to the implantation of artificial devices to establish a direct connection pathway between the human or animal brain and external devices, so that they can interact with each other, and the goal is to realize the direct interaction between the brain and the outside world.
Brain-computer interfaces have always attracted the attention of the scientific community because of their ability to help human beings get rid of the limitations of the physical body and directly transform the world through their minds. It first appeared in science fiction**, like the later "The Matrix", which was actually built on brain-computer interfaces, and human research on brain-computer interfaces has lasted for more than 40 years.
With the continuous accumulation of technological exploration, brain-computer interface products are getting closer and closer to the lives of ordinary people, and the significance of "telepathy" announced by Musk lies in its "reality". Although it is still rudimentary compared to the brain-computer interface in the sci-fi scene, it is close to integrating into the real world.
At the same time, "telepathy" is also a product of regulatory breakthroughs. In May last year, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the company to conduct the first human implant trial, and only then did the related companies recruit paralyzed patients for human trials, and the current results.
However, as brain-computer imaging approaches reality, so does the new challenge it poses: ethical risks. For example, new issues such as human brain privacy protection, decision-making autonomy, responsibility attribution, personality identity and authenticity will all appear in reality. Clearly, scientists, engineers, ethicists and policymakers need to be proactive and work closely together to prevent this from happening.
It is a consensus that brain-computer technology can benefit mankind, it can restore the disabled to normal, can make normal people stronger, and can even turn people into "supermen" through access to artificial intelligence in the future. Elon Musk wants to provide everyone with brain chip products to make the human brain as powerful as AI, so as to curb the "crisis of human civilization" brought about by artificial intelligence.
However, it should also be noted that research on brain-computer interfaces has been accompanied by various ethical controversies. This has been strongly expressed in various science fiction works in the past, and in some science fiction movies, human beings are full of worries about the future world brought by brain-computer interfaces.
For example, the "Thought Seal" mentioned in "The Three-Body Problem" is to control the thinking of others through brain-computer connection; "The Matrix" uses brain-computer interfaces to imprison humans in virtual space.
Touching the question of "the depths of the soul".
Brain-computer interfaces are closer to reality than privacy issues. The acquisition and decoding of brain signals make brain privacy transparent, but are these neural signals such as thinking, memory, and health information about the brain obtained through brain-computer interfaces considered privacy in the legal sense? Who owns it? Can it be applied? How to be applied and so on are real problems.
And the value of these neural signals to human beings may be far greater than the information stored by the servers of Internet companies, because they touch the "depths of the soul".
In fact, the impact of human use of brain-computer grafting is far more than that. When the brain and artificial intelligence are deeply integrated, the digital divide between people will be further widened, and some people may form a crushing ability for others, leading to new social fairness and justice issues. And when human beings realize the mutual communication of brain signals, how should the traditional human culture such as language, writing, art, and sports be inherited?
Like new technologies such as AI, China is not lagging behind the world in research in the field of brain-computer interfaces. For example, there is a brain-computer interface sector in A-shares, involving more than a dozen listed companies, which collectively rose after Musk's news today, while there are more related technology innovation companies that are not listed.
At the ** level, according to the "Notice of the General Office of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology on Organizing and Carrying out the Unveiling of Future Industrial Innovation Tasks in 2023", brain-computer interfaces and metaverse, humanoid robots, and general artificial intelligence are jointly included in the four key directions of China's future industrial innovation.
There is a lot to be done in the field of brain-computer interfaces. However, it is precisely because of this that the industry and relevant people should face up to potential ethical risks as soon as possible, intervene in the research of relevant ethical issues in a timely manner, clarify the boundaries between ethics and law, protect the interests of the people, and reduce obstacles and shackles for technological progress in advance.
Written by Shin Haiguang (columnist).
Edited by Bruce Ma.
Proofreading by Li Lijun.