If all the buzz about Artificial Intelligence did not get your attention you might want to sit down for this:

On Monday, Musk announced his newest venture to turn his proposed brain-computer interface into a reality. Musk confirmed his plan Tuesday via Twitter, saying more details about it are coming next week.

Musk recently told a crowd in Dubai, “Over time I think we will probably see a closer merger of biological intelligence and digital intelligence.” He added that “it’s mostly about the bandwidth, the speed of the connection between your brain and the digital version of yourself, particularly output.”

 

These types of brain-computer interfaces exist today only in science fiction. In the medical realm, electrode arrays and other implants have been used to help ameliorate the effects of Parkinson’s, epilepsy, and other neurodegenerative diseases.

 

However, very few people on the planet have complex implants placed inside their skulls, while the number of patients with very basic stimulating devices number only in the tens of thousands. This is partly because it is incredibly dangerous and invasive to operate on the human brain, and only those who have exhausted every other medical option choose to undergo such surgery as a last resort.

Musk isn’t the only one who sees the future of humanity as being one with machines:  Peter Diamandis, founder and chairman of the XPRIZE Foundation, had previously expressed his vision for meta-intelligent human beings. As our brains merge with machines, a new kind of intelligence would emerge.

 

Bryan Johnson, who co-founded Braintree has invested over $100 million of his own money into his startup named Kernel to enhance human cognition.

 

“We know if we put a chip in the brain and release electrical signals, that we can ameliorate symptoms of Parkinson’s,” Johnson told The Verge in an interview late last year. (Johnson also confirmed Musk’s involvement with Neuralink.) “This has been done for spinal cord pain, obesity, anorexia… what hasn’t been done is the reading and writing of neural code.” Johnson says Kernel’s goal is to “work with the brain the same way we work with other complex biological syst
ems like biology and genetics.”

“People are only going to be amenable to the idea [of an implant] if they have a very serious medical condition they might get help with,” Blake Richards, a neuroscientist and assistant professor at the University of Toronto, told The Verge in an interview earlier this year.

 

“Most healthy individuals are uncomfortable with the idea of having a doctor crack open their skull.”

 

As our brains merge with machines, a new kind of intelligence would emerge.

 

Efforts to realize this human-machine merger are also on the way — and not just with Neuralink. The U.S. Defense Department’s research arm, DARPA, is also working on similar technologies. “We are giving our physiology the opportunity to work with machines in a different way,” said Justin Sanchez, director of DARPA’s Biological Technologies Office.

Instead of being completely overrun by intelligent machines, why not let our intelligence be merged with machines? Armed with a whole new kind of intelligence, we may be capable of far more than avoiding an AI doomsday scenario. Though, that’s not a bad place to start.

“Such a massive interconnection will lead to the emergence of a new global consciousness, and a new organism I call the Meta-Intelligence.” — Peter Diamandis