I’ve tested out of both high school and college, although I had to actually do time in a law school. Since early childhood, it has been my dream to just upload the necessary knowledge into my brain by clicking some buttons instead of wasting time in schools. Well, in this day and age, why not? Smart bionic limbs are already a reality, so smart brains using same technology are a very real possibility in the near future.
The PayPal founder and CEO of Tesla, billionaire Elon Musk, has told the Wall Street Journal that his startup company Neuralink is working on a “neural lace” to wirelessly connect human brain to computer in order to compete with artificial intelligence which could otherwise render human race obsolete by making humans unemployed and otherwise irrelevant. One of the goals of the neural lace is to bring human brain capacity/intelligence to the same level as that of an advanced artificial intelligence.
The neural lace concept first started appearing in the 80’s science fiction novels as a brain-computer interface that allows neurons to be programmed. Neural lace technology actually exists now. E.g., prosthetics, or to restore motor control and enable communication for paralyzed patients. There are over 80bn neurons in the brain. With prosthetics, only about 100 neurons are connected. So, it is feasible that a higher bandwidth interface will connect more. This can revolutionize medicine.
Neuralink is a Delaware-registered company operating in California as a “medical research” firm privately funded by Musk. According to WSJ, leading neuroscientists have been brought in to work on developing the neural lace. The goal is to improve natural intelligence by downloading or uploading thoughts to or from a computer.
Musk believes artificial intelligence poses a risk to humans. At the 2016 Code Conference, Musk stated that humans risk being treated like house pets by artificial intelligence unless neural lace technology exists to compete by adding another human layer to an AI, thus merging biological and digital intelligence.