The race to implant smartphone technology directly into your brain stem heated up when Neuralink implanted a chip into its first human brain last year. To rival this new step in technology, China set a timeline to develop its own “brain-computer interface” with products arriving as early as 2025.
The Race With Neuralink
A Chinese state-backed company on Thursday unveiled a brain chip similar to the technology developed by Elon Musk’s startup Neuralink.
The company, Beijing Xinzhida Neurotechnology, developed a brain-computer interface (BCI) implant, called Neucyber, that has been tested on a monkey, allowing it control a robotic arm with only its thoughts, according to the state-run Xinhua news agency, which added that the technology was “independently developed” and China’s first “high-performance invasive BCI”.
While neither the scientists or Xinhua mentioned Musk’s brain-chip startup, the unveiling of this new product at the annual tech-focused Zhongguancun Forum in Beijing highlights China’s aim to catch up with Neuralink.
This comes after the country’s ministry of industry and information technology at last year’s Zhongguancun Forum classified BCI technology as an important “cutting-edge emerging technology”.
Neuralink has already implanted its brain chips in humans, while China has yet to begin human trials.
These early announcements offer a glimpse into, potentially, the greatest international technology battle of the next decade. When someone figures out how to put your smartphone straight into your head, you won’t need to move a muscle to scroll through TikTok, and your body can just become mushy and soft as tech companies steal up your thought data. Instead of working from home, you can work from your brain; it’s a dystopian reality that both China and Elon Musk have been working on for years.
The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology says it would like to develop several easy-to-use brain-interface products. The ministry notes brain technology could be used in driverless driving, virtual reality, and medical rehabilitation. “Brain-inspired intelligence,” also known as generative AI, is cited several times as potentially being compatible with these new technologies.
Last year, the Chinese government opened a 60-person laboratory focused entirely on brain-machine interfaces. The lab is primarily focused on turning its research into practical applications that could compete with Musk’s Neuralink, according to the South China Morning Post.
Researchers in China also developed a computer device that connects to your brain via the inner ear. This device does not require a chip implant, like Neuralink, but can still provide “full-bandwidth data streaming” to the brain, reports The Independent.
Ultimate Aim Of Neuralink And Many Other Brain-Computer Interfaces
Neuralink’s development of inserting a chip into a human brain is a significant one, but the technology is still in its infancy. Musk’s company believes that brain-computer interfaces could help people with disabilities. Neuralink asked people with paralysis, deafness, or vision loss to be the first to participate in its study on brain chip implants.
Your brain is the data center that tech companies have been after for the last two decades. With social media algorithms and internet tracking, such as cookies, tech has slowly been gaining an understanding of everything that motivates you, excites you, and riles you up.
With brain-computer interfaces, the biological barrier between you and Big Tech would be ultimately erased. Tech would have unfettered access to your thoughts, and could potentially learn everything there is about you. It’s nice to know that some of the most trusted names in tech, Elon Musk and China, are pioneering the latest terrifying wave of technology.
This raises some serious concerns, such as whether a person using a brain implant to augment their abilities can gain executive control over their BCI-integrated actions. While human brains and bodies already produce plenty of involuntary actions, from sneezes to clumsiness to pupil dilation, could implant-controlled actions feel alien? Might the implant seem like a parasitic intruder gnawing away at the sanctity of a person’s volition?
