Neuralink: The Final Frontier of Slavery (or "How the Technological System Wants to Suck and F&#k Your Brain")

Article by Squalor

“Technique has penetrated the deepest recesses of the human being. The machine tends not only to create a new human environment, but also to modify man's very essence. The milieu in which he lives is no longer his. He must adapt himself, as though the world were new, to a universe for which he was not created."

            ―Jacques Ellul, The Technological Society[1]

Shortly after Elon Musk announced that the first Neuralink had been successfully implanted in a human-being, commentary on the brain implant cast it as something out of a far-fetched techno-dystopia.[2] Most responses oscillated between enthusiasm and terror. But above all, the general response was a flippant cynical apathy. But the dangers of Neuralink are very real. Neuralink is not just a risky medical experiment, it is an insane attempt at merging human beings with the technological system in ways that will inevitably erode freedom, dignity, and humanity itself.

What is Neuralink?

A possible explanation for the apathy is that the concept appears so absurd that it's hard to take seriously. For those unfamiliar: Neuralink is a brain implant intended to give humans the ability to communicate wirelessly with artificial devices, and with one another. Surgeons drill directly into the skull, implant the Neuralink device, and tether it directly to the brain, all to link the individual closer to machines. The invasive procedure is, quite understandably, unnerving to most people. The potential for complications is high and the purported benefits of such a technology, even dressed up in propaganda, are not desirable to those that value freedom, privacy, and security. 

Even now, animal trials on monkeys have had terrible results: An investigation conducted by Wired magazine uncovered “horrific accounts of the complications allegedly suffered by a dozen rhesus macaque test subjects… In addition to neurological, psychological, and physical issues stemming from the test implants, some implants reportedly malfunctioned purely due to the mechanical installation of titanium plates and bone screws… the cranial openings allegedly often grew infected and were immensely painful to the animals, and some implants became so loose they could be easily dislodged.”[3] A Reuters report cited sources indicating that about 1,500 animals had been killed as a result of Neuralink’s tests, with cases resulting in “needless suffering and deaths.”[4] Even when trials on animals did go right, the implications are unnerving. An experiment on a pig was able to use electrodes placed in the pig’s spinal cord to involuntarily move the pig’s legs, as demonstrated in a Neuralink “Show and Tell” event.[5]

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) rejected Neuralink’s application to begin conducting human clinical trials in 2022, citing concerns around the device’s lithium battery, its electrodes migrating to other parts of the brain, and complications in removing the device without brain damage.[6] However, the FDA greenlit human trials more recently, no doubt aided by the humanitarian appeal of helping individuals with paralysis. Neuralink conducted their first human trial earlier this year but has already admitted that the wires implanted in the brain had retracted from their original position just weeks after the surgery.[7]

The Sales Pitch

The Neuralink website boasts a seemingly commendable mission statement, aiming to: “Create a generalized brain interface to restore autonomy to those with unmet medical needs today and unlock human potential tomorrow.”[8] For the near term, the purported intention of this implant is to give individuals with paralysis the “ability to control their computers and mobile devices with their thoughts,”[9] and the first patient to have received the implant can apparently do just that.[10] However, the Neuralink website also teases to “eventually expand how we experience the world”—vague enough to allow people to fill in their own image of how such a device could "improve" their lives.

But what exactly does Neuralink mean when they hint at “unlocking human potential” and “expanding how people experience the world”? According to Musk, the vision is “to achieve a symbiosis with artificial intelligence,”[11] essentially merging humans with AI so that people won’t become “left behind” once AI becomes more advanced. This merging of humans and machines could, Musk claims, “enable us to do everything from enhancing our memory to uploading our minds and living forever.”[12] Put plainly, the goal is to adjust people to fit the needs of the technological system.

The (conveniently ignored) long-term implications

Even assuming that one day Neuralink technology can be perfected to work flawlessly in individuals—a big assumption given the brain's complexity—one must account for a hard rule of technological progress: Every technological advance inevitably comes with unintended side effects that cannot be predicted in advance. This is especially true for society and the biosphere at large. While the individual technology may work as intended on the level of the individual to achieve a specific objective at any given moment in time, how Neuralink will change society and the world at large over time as the technology is refined and continuously expanded upon is entirely unknown. However, a glimpse into our own technological society can give us a rough idea.

If the technological system—one that demands that people spend significant time slaving away for organizations under conditions that humans were never meant to be subjected to—can devise ways to make its working population more obedient, able to work longer hours without fatigue, more efficient, less willing to question authority, more loyal to the system, and so on, then why wouldn’t it? We’re already seeing a massive wave of children being prescribed stimulants[13] in order to adjust them to sitting in a chair for roughly 30 hours a week, when children have evolved to spend most of their time in active interaction with the natural world. Or teens and adults being given pills to dampen their depression so that they can tolerate the otherwise intolerable conditions born out of technological society.[14] Additionally, the U.S. military has been researching how to create super-soldiers that would be able to remotely control machines using their brain.[15]

The entire premise of making sure humans "keep up" with computer advances by merging them with machines is a pipe dream built on a faulty premise. In the long run, how much humanity remains in man-machine hybrids will be determined by what is most efficient for the individual as part of a technological system. Natural selection will compel the traditional biological elements of the man-machine hybrids that don't serve the needs of the technological system to be outcompeted and replaced by the more artificial elements. Once you start tinkering with the human brain on the basis of "efficiency," there is no logical place to stop. A long chain of modification, adaptation and evolution ensues. The future of this "merging" will be totally beyond the imaginations—let alone prediction and management—of the proponents of Neuralink. There is therefore no guarantee that by trying to let humanity "keep up" with machines, proponents of Neuralink won't ironically be hastening the replacement or complete erosion of humanity itself.[16]

This pattern—tinkering with the brain in order to mold people to fit the needs of technological society—has persisted for decades. And this process will only become more invasive, more dehumanizing, and more degrading of dignity as technological society continues to advance, requiring people to act in ways even further removed from conditions under which they have evolved over the course of millions of years to best thrive (psychologically and physically) as free and dignified individuals.[17]

The Erosion of Privacy

Even if Neuralink publicly disavows surveillance (for now), similar neurotechnology reveals where this type of tech can go. Researchers have already created “AI-powered brain decoders that can translate into text the unspoken thoughts swirling through our minds, without the need for surgery.”[18] If these technologies become commonplace they could erode any sense of privacy that people may have left and make authoritarian surveillance inescapable.

This type of surveillance may seem outlandish, but the early steps towards monitoring individuals’ brains in order to evaluate what they are thinking and feeling have already been taken. For example, the Chinese government is using brainwave-scanning caps to mine data from their workers and soldiers to increase productivity and profitability.[19] Police departments around the globe are beginning to experiment with “brain fingerprinting,”[20] in which automatic responses that occur in the brain when exposed to stimuli are analyzed. The possibilities for manipulation and control are endless when one no longer can safeguard their own thoughts from governments, large corporations, or even individual bad actors.

Not optional: Natural selection

“When a new item of technology is introduced as an option that an individual can accept or not as he chooses, it does not necessarily remain optional. In many cases the new technology changes society in such a way that people eventually find themselves forced to use it.”

―Ted Kaczynski, Industrial Society and Its Future[21]

Although the general public may find the idea of brain implants laughable now, in the future they could become commonplace, and they need not be imposed by some malevolent government. All that is needed is for society to continue to evolve—to drift into a position where most people grudgingly accept that this kind of brain interface is an unfortunate but rational choice, something necessary to adjust themselves in order to keep up with the fast-changing conditions of technological society. This phenomenon is part of a broader trend: civilization imposes increasingly unnatural pressures to adapt or be outcompeted, a trend that has ballooned since the industrial revolution. 

More contemporary examples can be seen everywhere: communities of "biohackers"[22] microdosing psychedelics for productivity, students abusing prescription stimulants to study longer hours, doping in sports. One could go on and on listing different examples. The overall point is clear: many people already have no qualms about altering their bodies and their minds in order to adjust themselves to the unnatural conditions imposed on them by the techno-system. When portions of the population adopt Neuralink technology in order to improve their performance in school or work, those that don’t have the implant will be at a disadvantage and forced to either get one in order to keep up, or stick to their morals and risk being outpaced and jobless. A technological advance that may seem optional initially does not always remain optional—consider the adoption of automobiles or smartphones globally.

It may not even be competition among people that drives adoption of Neuralink-like devices, AI may compel it. Figures are already estimating that soon nearly 60% of jobs in “advanced” economies will be impacted by AI,[23] and surveys have shown that 37% of businesses have replaced workers with AI in 2023.[24] The direction is clear: merge yourself with machines and gradually erode your own humanity, or end up an utterly powerless and disposable burden on a Brave New World that no longer needs you.

“The individual is in a dilemma: either he decides to safeguard his freedom of choice, chooses to use traditional, personal, moral, or empirical means, thereby entering into competition with a power against which there is no efficacious defense and before which he must suffer defeat; or he decides to accept technical necessity, in which case he will himself be the victor, but only by submitting irreparably to technical slavery. In effect he has no freedom of choice.”

―Jacques Ellul, The Technological Society[25]

Additionally, people may adopt this technology without feeling overwhelming societal pressure to do so simply because the positives initially eclipse the negatives. This is especially true when governments and corporations can deploy positive-promoting propaganda with colossal reach. If Neuralink promises less sleep without fatigue, anxiety relief, or an end to depression (conditions the techno-system itself helped create), many will trade freedom and dignity for relief.

“[T]echnological control over human behavior will probably not be introduced with a totalitarian intention.... Each new step in the assertion of control over the human mind will be taken as a rational response to a problem that faces society.... Thus control over human behavior will be introduced not by a calculated decision of the authorities but through a process of social evolution (rapid evolution, however)."

―Ted Kaczynski, Industrial Society and Its Future[26]

Conclusion: Reject Neuralink and the technological mindset it represents

With each high-tech advance, it becomes harder to ignore that we live under a system increasingly hostile to human freedom and well-being. Each advance assimilates us further into the larger technological system—with technologies such as Neuralink promising to blur the lines between humans and machines altogether. Companies like Neuralink and the scientists behind them do not have the best interests of the general public in mind. When not after power, wealth or prestige, or compelled by a cynical and ruthless cycle of economic competition, the scientists, engineers, and corporate and government executives that fund this kind of research are pursuing their own psychological needs. And they will use whatever utopian notions or propaganda gimmicks to delude themselves and the public so they can continue experimenting on society. If the system demands that we become machines to survive, then survival itself will have lost its meaning and worth. Something needs to be done about the technological problem, and fast, before we lose what makes us human altogether.

___________

NOTES:

[1] Ellul, Jacques, The Technological Society, Vintage Books, New York, NY, 1964, p. 325.

[2] One viral Tweet stated that Musk’s announcement read like “the audio log you find in a trashed office in a sci-fi horror game,” while others poked fun at the thought of people getting their Neuralink hacked to give them gender dysphoria or blast obnoxious music into their brains 24/7.

[3] Paul, Andrew, "Neuralink's human trials volunteers 'should have serious concerns,' say medical experts," Popular Science, September 21, 2023, https://www.popsci.com/technology/neuralink-monkey-abuse/

[4]https://www.newscientist.com/article/2414852-neuralink-what-do-brain-implants-do-and-why-is-elon-musk-making-them/

[5] https://youtu.be/Ek4OlRNBeEM See also: Shankland, Stephen, "Neuralink's Upgraded Brain Chip Hopes to Help the Blind See and the Paralyzed Walk," CNET, Dec. 4, 2022, https://www.cnet.com/science/neuralink-upgraded-brain-chip-hopes-to-help-the-blind-see-and-the-paralyzed-walk/

[6] Levy, Rachael and Marisa Taylor, "U.S. regulators rejected Elon Musk’s bid to test brain chips in humans, citing safety risks," Reuters, March 2, 2023, https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/neuralink-musk-fda/

[7] Gibson, Kate, "Neuralink brain-chip implant encounters issues in first human patient," CBS News, May 9, 2024, https://www.cbsnews.com/news/elon-musk-neuralink-first-implant-problem/

[8] https://neuralink.com/

[9] See Neuralink website, above.

[10] "Neuralink's first human patient able to control mouse through thinking," Reuters, Feb. 20, 2024, https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/neuralinks-first-human-patient-able-control-mouse-through-thinking-musk-says-2024-02-20/

[11] Lopatto, Elizabeth, "Elon Musk unveils Neuralink’s plans for brain-reading ‘threads’ and a robot to insert them," The Verge, July 16, 2019, https://www.theverge.com/2019/7/16/20697123/elon-musk-neuralink-brain-reading-thread-robot

[12] Conveniently glossing over how such technological immorality, assuming it would even be desirable to cheat death, would certainly only be available for a select elite--Musk and his fellow technocrats. See Theodore Kaczynski’s essay “The Techies’ Wet Dreams”.

[13] “In 2019, nearly 10% of United States (U.S.) children had a diagnosis of ADHD. Approximately 3.3 million children, or roughly 5 out of every 100 children in the U.S., are currently prescribed medication for ADHD.” (https://www.nationwidechildrens.org/newsroom/news-releases/2023/09/adhd-medication-errors-study). (Another statistic on how stimulant prescriptions among children have doubled since 2008: https://www.hcplive.com/view/annual-stimulant-prescriptions-doubled-adolescents-2008)

[14] Something that isn’t even strictly relegated to people. “A notable case of Zoochosis was demonstrated by a polar bear in the Central Park Zoo. After swimming figure eights in his enclosure, sometimes for 12 hours a day, Gus, was put on Prozac (an antidepressant) and was treated with roughly $25,000 worth of behavioral therapy. Unfortunately, not all get a happy ending like him.”

[15]https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/11/the-pentagon-wants-to-weaponize-the-brain-what-could-go-wrong/570841/

[16] See Kaczynski, Theodore John, Anti-Tech Revolution: Why and How, Fitch & Madison Publishers, Scottsdale, AZ, 2019, pp. 80-82, 201.

[17] That being a life close to nature, in which one is able to exercise autonomy and grapple directly with their own life-and-death choices.

[18]Samuel, Sigal, "Your brain’s privacy is at risk. The US just took its first big step toward protecting it," Vox, April 18, 2024, https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/24078512/brain-tech-privacy-rights-neurorights-colorado-yuste

[19]Chen, Stephen, "‘Forget the Facebook leak’: China is mining data directly from workers’ brains on an industrial scale," South China Morning Post, April 29, 2018, https://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/2143899/forget-facebook-leak-china-mining-data-directly-workers-brains

“The technology works by placing wireless sensors in employees’ caps or hats which, combined with artificial intelligence algorithms, spot incidents of workplace rage, anxiety, or sadness. Employers use this “emotional surveillance technology” by then tweaking workflows, including employee placement and breaks, to increase productivity and profits. The sensors, built in the brim of the driver’s hat, could measure various types of brain activities, including fatigue and attention loss with an accuracy of more than 90 per cent, according to the company’s website.” From: Uppal, Rajesh, "China emotional surveillance technology monitoring employees, people’s loyalty and soldiers using AI based brain waves and facial expression analysis," IDST, Jan. 18, 2023, https://idstch.com/technology/ict/china-emotional-surveillance-technology-monitoring-employees-peoples-loyality-and-soldiers-using-ai-based-brain-waves-and-facial-expression-analysis/#:~:text=South%20China%20Morning%20Post%20reported,or%20even%20send%20them%20home.

[20] Cox, David. “Can Your Brain Reveal You Are a Liar?” BBC, January 25, 2016. https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20160125-is-it-wise-that-the-police-have-started-scanning-brains.

[21] Paragraph 127

[22] Subreddits like r/biohackers, a community with 165K subscribers as of this article's publication, commonly discuss various methods for “self-improvement”, from microdosing psychedelics for productivity to taking Ashwagandha for depression.

[23] Georgieva, Kristalina, "AI Will Transform the Global Economy. Let’s Make Sure It Benefits Humanity," IMF Blog, Jan. 14, 2024, https://www.imf.org/en/Blogs/Articles/2024/01/14/ai-will-transform-the-global-economy-lets-make-sure-it-benefits-humanity

[24] Curry, Rachel, "Recent data shows AI job losses are rising, but the numbers don’t tell the full story," CNBC, Dec. 16, 2023, https://www.cnbc.com/2023/12/16/ai-job-losses-are-rising-but-the-numbers-dont-tell-the-full-story.html

[25] Ellul, p. 84.

[26] Paragraphs 152-153.

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