Elon Musk recently announced his intention to develop a neural lace – a kind of interface that could be implanted in the brain that would allow humans to download and upload their thoughts and help us keep abreast of AI development.
Now another silicon valley entrepreneur, Bryan Johnson, has also joined the techno-utopian race to develop technology that will allow us to ‘read and write the underlying functions of the brain’.
Like with any new technologies, there is a lot of fear surrounding these announcements. These fears are not new and have accompanied every technological advancement since time immemorial, from Socrates warning against writing because it would “create forgetfulness in the learners” to Conrad Gessner, a well-respected Swiss scientist berating the printing press as it could unleash unprecedented information overload.
But what if these technologies could help us bridge the gap between the current dire environmental, social and political issues and truly innovative solutions?
Albert Einstein once famously said ‘We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.’
Elon Musk and Bryan Johnson’s bold vision may just be the kind of ticket we need to emerge from the current apocalyptic landscape.
Let’s just hope that the final chapter is a little less bleak than Elon Musk’s favourite book, the humorous sci-fi novel The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy.