Ten years ago, science communities around the world marveled at the progress of human brainwave innovation. The first telepathy between human minds—one in France and one in India—had just happened.
The ability to directly connect our minds to the web via the microchip was all the hype; I wrote and lectured about it frequently. Scientists and futurists believed by 2050, we'd be able to throw away our phones for tiny communications chips in our head (or wear miniature headsets) that accomplished the same. Those timelines still hold. RAND just released a report saying by 2050 we could have an "internet of brains"—minds directly online. And last month, brain device company Neuralink shared a video of a patient playing chess using just his mind and their brain implant.
These breakthroughs are falling flat to some in the public. The idea of trading Bitcoin in our minds, or having Google Maps as part of our sense of direction, or the ability to craft essays in seconds in our head has lost its luster. The reason: the specter of artificial intelligence (AI).
In the last 18 months, generative AI has shocked many scientists with how powerful it's quickly become. Recently, billionaire Elon Musk warned AI could be smarter than any human by next year, and smarter than all humans combined by 2029. Musk, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, and others think a super intelligent AI could eventually pose a threat to humans.
This all begs the question: Since AI will likely be embedded into nearly all tech by the next decade, including brainwave tech, will humans even want to use brain implants in the future? I think most humans without any urgent medical need will likely say "no" because they don't want a super intelligent AI knowing their every thought—or it possibly having the ability to hack and control their minds.
So where does that leave brainwave tech and the future of humanity?
Naturally, given the possible long-term dangers of super intelligent AI, it would make most sense to limit the development of AI until we have a chance to use brainwave technology to more safely merge with it—hopefully as something like equals, where we can preserve the best of our humanity in the gradual process of becoming transhuman. However, geopolitical issues like China or Russia developing super intelligent AI before democratic nations prohibits the AI arms race from ending. So for now, companies and militaries are moving ahead quickly with developing AI.
This leaves the brainwave industry in a pickle, because AI will also come to dominate that industry, as it likely will with practically all tech. But this doesn't mean there's nothing humanity can do to protect itself. Instead of building brainwave interfaces so we can use our minds on the net, we might consider building brainwave defense systems.
Historically, our greatest strength is our biological form, tested and evolved over millions of years. Instead of spending resources searching for ways to connect technology directly to our minds, we could find ways to use technology to protect our biological thoughts and proclivity. That might mean faraday cages around our brains that no super intelligent AIs signals could crack—as well as encryption where our code perpetually changes randomly.
Another way to protect against AI is for humans to become like bugs—a concept recently explored in the Netflix series 3 Body Problem. Companies are already working on trying to scan the brain—down to its atoms—in real time. Eventually, the hope is we'll be able to upload our consciousnesses into computers. There's open debate whether an upload is the real you. But for purposes of protecting ourselves against AI, another important question is how many uploads of you would there be? If AI was inundated with trillions upon trillions of uploaded human minds, it's possible, like bugs, AI would never win a battle to get rid all of us, even if it wanted to. There would simply be too many of us in the cloud, even if there was just one of us in the flesh.
Another way to outsmart AI might be to utilize brainwave technology so that human minds are interconnected. Some scientists call this the hive mind, and it could be possible in the future to obtain millions of minds in sync without the use of AI. AI might be able to corrupt the method of human hive mind communication, but it's still another way we could attempt to remain as intelligent as AI. After all, if you could harness a billion minds together, who knows how smart we could be?
It is unclear if any of these options are going to outsmart AI in the 100-year-future. But a mindset change in the age of AI is needed for brainwave tech. And that is not one of rushing to develop the latest tech out there, but rushing to innovate ways that brainwave tech can protect ourselves from AI.
Zoltan Istvan writes and speaks on transhumanism, artificial intelligence, and the future. He is the author of The Transhumanist Wager, and is the subject of the forthcoming biography by Dr. Ben Murnane and Changemakers Books titled, Transhuman Citizen: Zoltan Istvan's Hunt for Immortality.
The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.
Uncommon Knowledge
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
