The advent of human technological hybridization is upon us – we have entered the dawn of a new age.
Neuralink, an American neurotechnology company founded by Elon Musk and others in 2016, is preparing to launch clinical human trials by next year of an implant that will hook the user up directly to artificial intelligence.
In other words, rather than downloading apps to your phone, Neuralink predicts that eventually you will download them to the neurological synapses in your brain. In the next few decades, you may also be able to upload all your memories to an internet cloud and thereby live forever. You may even be able to download those memories into another human, embryo-like host—one grown just for you—as your natural body decays and dies.
Part of Elon Musk’s inspiration for the creation of Neuralink was a science-fiction concept called Neural Lace that is part of the fictional universe in Iain M. Banks’ series of novels The Culture, a futuristic interstellar utopian, post-scarcity space society of humanoids, aliens, and very advanced artificial intelligence living in socialist habitats spread across the Milky Way galaxy. According to Musk, without the creation of the Neural Lace technology, humans will be unable to keep pace with the rapid advances in Artificial Intelligence. He says that there is a good chance that humans may become the intellectual equivalent of the house cat.
In order to successful merge the human brain with machine, a tiny needle containing the rolled up Neural Lace mesh is placed inside the skull. In theory, the mesh will integrate itself with the human brain and create a perfect symbiosis between human and machine ultimately resulting in technological Singularity.
The masters of these marvels promise only their benefits: being able to know everything, to cure all diseases, and to live forever. However, upon closer examination, their promise of near-deification looks more like that oldest deceit: “and you will be like God.” Like Satan in the Garden of Eden, they make these claims without revealing the cost.
What, you ask, could we possibly lose by jumping into this latest technological trend? We are created in the image of God and it is this image, this stamp from God that we’re being asked to give up.
As we become more and more of something else, something machine, we become less and less of what we were created to be— human. Even the experts can’t imagine what artificial intelligence in its fullest extent (singularity) will look like because it will surpass anything mankind has ever seen before. And afterwards, we’ll never need to imagine anything again—if we’re even capable of imagining.
Our greatest power is our imagination—the meeting-place of our intellect, will, and desires. It’s the place where all of our thoughts first emerge and where they can be changed into action. It’s the place where all our new experiences go to rest; from these new experiences, new ideas emerge.
It is also a meeting-place of memories where the present intersects with the past, where we build the ideas that shape our future. In a small human way imagination gives us power over time itself—our time—which we must use wisely.
We dull this vital power already with current technology – computers, cell phones, etc. And, if we dull the imagination simply by using current technology, don’t we risk destroying it altogether when we start implanting the internet directly into our minds? Everyone with an implant will share directly in the same online experiences in an identical way.
Already we see the rise of deplatforming, a method that the left uses to take away the voice of people on social media that they disagree with. If they have that power now, what kind of intimidation will they exercise when people are literally plugged into them? Singularization of thought seems inevitable, be it through coercion or direct mind control.
Machines are a product of humans, not a replacement, nor will they ever be. And to imply that we will create machines to reason as humans or interface with the human mind must have God rolling in the isles. Machines will never surpass their creators just as mankind will never surpass God. To believe otherwise is sheer arrogance.
“Unless we learn how to prepare for, and avoid, the potential risks, AI could be the worst event in the history of our civilization. It brings dangers, like powerful autonomous weapons, or new ways for the few to oppress the many. It could bring great disruption to our economy.” Stephen Hawkins
Source: Neuralink: How the Human Brain Will Download Directly From a Computer, by Interesting Engineering; Made in the Image of Man: How Big Tech Threatens our Humanity by Andrew Beebe, Crisis Mag
