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Elon Musk Launches Neuralink To Connect Brains With Computers (businessinsider.com)
At Recode's conference last year, Elon Musk said he would love to see someone do something about linking human brains with computers. With no other human being volunteering, Mr. Musk -- who founded PayPal and OpenAI, thought of Hyperloop, is working on a boring company, and runs SpaceX, TeslaX, SolarCity -- is now working on it. From a report on WSJ: Internal sources tell the WSJ that the company, called Neuralink, is developing "neural lace" technology that would allow people to communicate directly with machines without going through a physical interface. Neural lace involves implanting electrodes in the brain so people could upload or download their thoughts to or from a computer, according to the WSJ report. The product could allow humans to achieve higher levels of cognitive function. From WSJ's report (paywalled): The founder and chief executive of Tesla and Space Exploration Technologies Corp.has launched another company called Neuralink Corp., according to people familiar with the matter. Neuralink is pursuing what Mr. Musk calls "neural lace" technology, implanting tiny brain electrodes that may one day upload and download thoughts. Mr. Musk didn't respond to a request for comment. Max Hodak, who said he is a "member of the founding team," confirmed the company's existence and Mr. Musk's involvement.
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You wouldn't get your brain hacked, that's silly. It would just be a better version of the currently existing human interface (keyboard input, VGA output).
If your desktop gets hacked, you don't worry about someone hacking your fingers or eyeballs, do you? Well with this brain interface if your computer gets hacked, the worst thing would happen is that the hacker would beam annoying images directly to your brain (instead of displaying it on your VGA monitor) and maybe fuck around with your keyboard mappings so your brainwave commands to the computer don't work properly.
Solution to a hacked PC would be to disconnect it from your brain electrode and de-hack your PC manually, or get another PC.
Hopefully the connection from PC to your brain would be wireless, so a hacker can't actually zap your brain with electrical voltage. But even if it's wired, you could put a good mechanical fuse or circuit breaker in between the PC and your brain so only tolerable voltages are ever transmitted.
I'm saying that DARPA is more shadow than substance, they take ideas from people like Musk (who publishes them willingly in press releases) as well as people like academics seeking grant money. They repackage the ideas that interest them, then float them back on the market fishing for people who will write deeper proposals along those lines. For every 10 proposals directly targeted at DARPA RFPs, delivered by people with legitimate ability to deliver, DARPA might fund one - and I think they do it as often to stimulate further thinking in the field (incentivising those who did not get the grant) as they expect actual genuine progress out of their regular cadre of grant recipients.
DARPA is not a giant skunkworks of advanced research prototypes that have cartoon-like powers, it's a bunch of paper-pushers seeking other peoples' ideas, rarely developing them beyond tiny pilot programs. Like the corporate world, they'll get one solid hit every rare interval, but most of the time it's just a finger on the pulse of what's percolating at the edge of tech development.
A "lace" brain-machine interface is just a bunch of electrical potential pickups, with all the same drawbacks as any other implanted electrode. Real science isn't bullshit, and it's not a cartoon-world either, bio-material interfaces are messy, problematic, and prone to all sorts of failures.