This is the same program that had a near 60% fatality rate among its test animals because they were using glue (medical grade but NOT brain safe) to hold the fucking chips in place.
Test animals died horrifically after having GLUE POURED IN THEIR BRAINS. Some died of infection in the head wound. Some killed themselves by ripping off their own body parts. Some died when the glue failed and the chip started causing hemorrhages. In one fucked case, they gust put the wrong chips entirely into dozens of animals by mistake, killing them.
If even a single test chimp dies in a normal program, it's halted immediately.
He killed DOZENS and now he's moving on to humans.
He does not perceive anything outside himself as alive.
This will kill almost everyone who tries it. Do not sign up for it. Do not let your loved ones sign up for it.
This is a rich man tricking the poor into suicide for his amusement.
I desperately want to be a cyborg. I want to see a future with all sorts of cool and useful cybernetic implants.
But not like this.
Not with this man in charge.
Genuinely there is no benefit to having this done anyway. What are you hoping to accomplish by buying this. Google with your mind? Unskippable ads in your brain? Neurological hacks? I mean really even if it were safe (it isn’t, he just has enough money to bribe the FDA I guess) this wouldn’t be a benefit to you at all.
But yes, definitely do not sign up for the clinical study. I don’t care how much he offers to pay you. Money means little in the coffin.
Neural interfaces could have many, MANY useful applications. From being able to control sensory signals to reduce overload or pain according to a person's needs, to allowing for a person to regain motor control after nerve damage, etc. or even to simulate certain sensory signals to allow for sensations from certain synthetic materials so that a person could gain certain sensation (such as heat, or pressure) in synthetic limbs?
Yes, I have been informed this has been marketed towards disabled people.
Which is significantly more concerning.
Because if you ask yourself why the rich white man who grew up benefitting from apartheid and slave labor would be interested in implanting chips into the brains of the disabled, and you see how many trial animals died or were permanently mentally disturbed, the answer you come up with isn’t usually simple philanthropy.
I don’t trust that this is just incompetence and delusions of grandeur at this point. It feels purposeful when the victims are a severely marginalized group of people rather than his rabid fans.
We are not scientifically at a point where brain implants can be used to benefit the disabled, and even if the chips didn’t kill patients and worked as the manufacturer intended, it would open the door to far less ethical uses for that sort of technology.
Specifically, if your brain can send signals to a chip to do something for you, that won’t be a one-way street. Perhaps on the first day it will be used to give new freedoms to disabled people. By the third it will reach its natural conclusion as certain people realize you can use it to try to “cure” autism, or perhaps “cure” queerness. Not to mention how easy an interrogation would be if a person’s thoughts could be admissible in court, or if they can simply type a line of code to make a suspect feel the sensation of being on fire for twenty minutes if they don’t comply. Workers not productive enough? Just press the button that blocks all thoughts and memories irrelevant to work until their shift ends. Inhibit parts of the brain related to bond forming and rest, inhibit pain processing while you’re in there so if a worker is injured they only notice when they’re off the clock and don’t have to slow down.
I’m aware this sounds cartoonishly evil, but the USA is cartoonishly evil already. Any positive implication for this is strongly outweighed by the negatives.
And I go right to thinking of things like this:
...which is *not* the only medical device company in the US that has done this.
Literally people’s eyes and ears have been tendered obsolete and turned off as companies paywall advances or go out of business.
Now think about how Every. Single. Musk endeavor -none of which he invented himself - is currently under recall, investigation, or both.
Think about Musk’s lack of business sense and maturity in how he runs Twitter. How he rewarded even the people who tried to please him with 90% layoffs.
Now ask yourself if a brain that thinks computations are currency, sends poop emojis as conversation, and named his car models S-3-X-Y should be in charge of him, much less you.
