The First Human "Brain-Computer Interface" Experiment: Opening the Door to "Consciousness Immortality"?

On January 30, 2024, Elon Musk, the founder of Neuralink, announced: Yesterday (29th), humans received the first brain-computer interface (Neuralink) chip implantation, and the implanters are recovering well, and the preliminary results show that neuronal spike detection is promising.

The project, called PRIME (Precision Robotic Implantation of Brain-Computer Interface), is a trial of a fully implantable wireless brain-computer interface medical device designed to evaluate the safety of implants and surgical robots, as well as to evaluate the initial function of a "brain-computer interface" that helps paralyzed people use their brain minds to control external devices.

In this human trial, the surgeon takes several hours to perform a craniotomy. The robot then inserts a device into the brain for 25 minutes, fills the removed skull with a computer chip the size of a coin, and then sutures the surgical wound to restore the appearance of the head. The implanted chip then collects, reads, and encodes the bioelectric waves of the volunteer subjects' brain activity, and transmits the information to a computer.

Neuralink's first commercial product, which will be named Telepathy, aims to use the mind to control external devices, such as mobile phones and computers, through a "brain-computer interface".

In 2019, Musk's R&D team released the first "sewing machine-like" surgical device: a laser is used to drill holes in the skull, then avoid the blood vessels in the brain, implant a very thin (4-6 microns wide) data circuit composed of thousands of electrodes into the brain, and transcode the brain's bioelectric signals into digital electrical signals that can be read by external electronic devices.

In August 2020, the R&D team livestreamed to the public the real-time transmission of brain activity from the device implanted in the three pigs. A system for reading information from the brain of a laboratory rat through a line of 1,500 electrodes is also demonstrated. Neuralink collaborated with the University of California, Davis, on monkey experiments. Billions of people around the world witnessed and marveled at the video game of "monkeys can control computers with their brains".

Musk claimed that the purpose of Neuralink's research and development is to first focus on two applications: one is to restore the vision of people with visual impairments, and the other is to help people who cannot move their muscles control smartphones and other devices, and even restore the whole body function of people with spinal cord injuries. The PRIME trial consulted volunteers aged 22 and older who were paralyzed by ALS (spinal cord injury or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis) and did not improve for at least one year after the injury

If the initial trial is successful, Neuralink's technological prospects are almost infinitely broad: the recovery or replacement of functional disabilities such as motor, language, and vision, and the treatment of disability caused by brain and spine injuries, ALS, depression, autism, addiction, dementia, and other diseases related to brain causes or nerve conduction will lead to great epoch-making progress.

Ashlee Vance, one of Musk's biographers, said Neuralink plans to perform experimental surgeries on 11 people in 2024 and more than 22,000 people by 2030.

Founded in 2016 and headquartered in San Francisco, Neuralink is currently valued at about $5 billion. If the above experiments are successful and the company realizes its vision of "creating whole-brain interfaces that connect biology and artificial intelligence more closely", then it is not a dream to increase its market capitalization by orders of magnitude to more than one trillion. As a result, large capitals such as Sequoia Capital, OrbiMed, and CDH Investments have pursued the concept of "brain-computer interface", and similar scientific research projects have received high financing in the past two years.

The concept of capital enrichment will inevitably attract many gold diggers. The "brain-computer interface" is by no means exclusive to Musk's Neuralink. Although Musk claimed on Twitter that "the first human ......", in fact, the experiment of drilling holes in human heads and connecting wires began months before Neuralink.

In July 2023, the Feinstein Institute for Medical Research, a Northwell healthcare company in the United States, announced that a special device was implanted in the brain of a man whose spinal cord was damaged due to an accident, which successfully restored the sense of touch to his skin and allowed his upper limbs to move again. At the beginning of September 2023, the Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, Switzerland, and other institutions successfully restored the ability to walk independently by implanting a brain signal reading device in the human body. A hospital in Shanghai has also announced that it will conduct a trial of treatment-resistant depression through a "brain-computer interface".

The biggest advantage of Musk's Neuralink trial is that it is fully implanted, wirelessly controlled, and the postoperative rehabilitation of the experimenter looks no different from ordinary people from the outside. In other R&D institutions, the project is connected to an external electronic device through the scalp through a device similar to a "plug". FOR EXAMPLE, IN THE "SWISS TRIAL" PHOTO PUBLISHED BY BBC NEWS IN 2023, A PARALYZED MAN FROM THE NETHERLANDS STILL NEEDS TO WEAR A READING DEVICE CAP, CONNECT A DATA CABLE, PUSH A ROLLATOR, AND THE COMPUTER CONTROL UNIT AND POWER SUPPLY IN THE CAR ARE THE SIZE OF A BRIEFCASE. It looks quite scary, and there is a sense of "Frankenstein" disobedience.

Neuralink, which has the highest level of research and development and is closest to application, is under siege by the Western left-wing forces. Many American neuroscientists and media outlets continue to criticize Musk, with MIT Technology Review describing him as "highly speculative" and a "neuroscience theater." In February 2022, the "American Physician Medical Responsibility Association (PCRM)" announced that it would file a complaint with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which regulates laboratory animals, alleging that Musk's Neuralink and UC Davis violated the Federal Animal Welfare Act and violated "monkey rights" by conducting invasive and lethal brain experiments on 23 monkeys between 2018 and 2020. In its complaint, the PCR alleged that the developers of Neuralink and UC Davis failed to provide adequate veterinary care to the dying monkeys, and that they did not provide adequate psychological care to the monkeys during the experiments.

Despite the criticism of animal rights protection, Musk still fully promoted the development of Neuralink. And brazenly declared: He himself will receive "brain-computer interface" implantation in the future, leaving the protesters speechless. This attitude is quite similar to the "Forward, Forward, Advance by Any Means!" in "The Three-Body Problem" by PIA (Strategic Intelligence Agency of the Planetary Defense Council) Director Thomas Wade.

Even more powerful than the animal rights protection group is the FDA (Food and Drug Administration), which represents that the US government can really stop Musk's progress. The FDA has twice rejected Neuralink's application for human testing on safety risks, such as the possibility that the implant may shift or even break in the subject's brain, the chip may overheat, whether it will have potential and long-term effects on the implanter's health, how biologically safe, and whether the procedure will cause side effects and complications such as infection. In addition, regulations and policies regarding "brain-computer interfaces" have not yet been formed, including but not limited to the technical approval process, data privacy protection, medical ethics, etc. It wasn't until May 2023 that the FDA approved Neuralink to initiate a first-in-human brain implant device clinical trial.

In addition to the above-mentioned concerns of researchers and science and technology management departments, Musk's thinking is wild and unbeatable, advanced to a place that everyone can barely see, to the metaphysical and philosophical level. In July 2019, BBC NEWS published Musk's "Brain-hacking Plans", which envisioned a future of "superhuman cognition".

Previously, Musk had said that "AI could destroy humanity" because "even in a benign AI scenario, we will be left behind". How can human flesh and blood life, which has a finite beginning and an end, and will eventually be different, be the opponent of an AI that is almost infinite in time, boundless in terms of quantity and energy, and almost eternal, and non-life iteratively evolved?

Therefore, on a philosophical level, humanity will eventually pursue and be allowed to "live in symbiosis with artificial intelligence". "It's not like all of a sudden we're going to have this incredible neural lace and take over people's brains", Musk said in his speech "it's going to take a long time".

But "with high-bandwidth brain-computer interfaces, we can go with the flow and effectively choose to fuse with artificial intelligence", connecting the brain to an interface that will create a new layer of "superintelligence" in the human brain, which is what people "already have through their phones".

Eventually, the physical body of an individual person will eventually pass away, but its consciousness will be uploaded to the AI carrier through a "brain-computer interface" to achieve "consciousness immortality". From this point of view, Neuralink's human "brain-computer interface" experiment is indeed a huge project that will surely touch every individual in the future of all mankind.

• (This article is the author's personal opinion and does not represent the position of this newspaper)

Mei Yijun

Editor-in-charge: Chen Bin