On January 29, Elon Musk announced that the first patient had received an implant from Neuralink, the billionaire brain chip startup that promises to detect neuronal spikes ("spikes" refers to the activity of neurons that use electrical and chemical signals to send information around the brain and on to the body ). The US Food and Drug Administration last year approved the company to test the implant on humans, justifying its decision by saying the technology could help patients overcome paralysis and other neurological conditions.
But when it comes to implantable brain-computer interfaces (brain-computer interfaces, BCI) and the radical changes in our way of life that their existence implies - there are many more reasons for doubt.
Underlying it is the idea of a direct communication channel, first between a networked brain and an external device, such as a computer, and then between the brains themselves (brain-to-brain interfacing). This would bypass the development of communication from the spoken word, with different layers of mediation between interlocutors - writing, telegraph, telephone, Internet. The possibility of a direct link that bypasses these additional layers is based not only on higher speed but also on accuracy: when I think about something, I don't have to translate my thought into linguistic signs that brutally simplify the meaning - my interlocutor understands directly what I mean.
As Musk said in 2017, not long after he founded Neuralink: “If I want to communicate a concept to you, you would essentially be participating in voluntary telepathy. You wouldn't have to verbalize, unless you wanted to add a little charm to the exchange or something, but the conversation would be conceptual interaction on a level that's hard to imagine right now.” Extend this idea to the realm of sex, for example: you can save great sexual experience on the cloud* to enjoy again later - or, if you're not too shy, you can send it to a friend to experience.
Even if we accept the feasibility of shared experiences, a number of questions arise. The first concerns the role of language in the formation of our thoughts and our "inner life". Mask assumes that our thoughts are present in our mind independently of their expression in language, so if I connect my brain directly to the brain of another, the other will directly experience my thoughts in all their richness and nuance, undistorted by linguistic clumsiness.
But what if language, in all its clumsiness and simplification, generates the elusive richness of our thoughts? The true content of thought is actualized only through its linguistic expression - before that expression, thought is nothing concrete, just a confused inner intention. I find out what I wanted to say just by the act of saying it. We think in words: even when we see and experience events and processes, their perception is already structured through our symbolic network. When I see a gun in front of me, all the meanings associated with it are symbolically determined in multiple ways - I perceive a gun, but a specific angle of perception gives the word "gun" that resonates in it, and words always refer to universal concepts. Therein lies the paradox of symbolic multiple determinacy: when I notice a real gun in front of me, the word "gun" sets in motion a rich texture of meaning associated with the gun.
What BCI promises, however, is not only the abolition of language but also the abolition of human sexuality. What constitutes human sexuality is an unnecessary complication that prevents direct access to the goal: here, failure (measured by the standards of simple instinctive mating) is cultivated as a source of new sexual pleasures. Can we imagine anything more stupid (from the point of view of successful reproduction), for example, than the tradition of chivalrous love in which sex is endlessly postponed? So how could knightly love become a model of high eroticism? And what about our perverse games, in which some object or gesture, limited to a subordinate moment of erotic foreplay, turns into a central feature, a focus of libidinal intensity, which overshadows the great procreative Act? Isn't this dimension of erotic mediation threatened by the threat of a direct link between two brains?
Musk's first line of defense is that, in his version of BCI, the networked person is not completely immersed in the flow of others' thoughts: she maintains a minimal distance from this flow, so if she wanted to allow a machine (or, through a machine, another person) to register and/ or share her thoughts and feelings, she must actively consent to it. "People won't be able to read your mind," Musk said in 2017, "you have to want to first. If you don't, it won't happen. Just like your mouth won't speak if you won't speak.” How does Mask know that an individual maintains this minimal distance? Let's remember that BCI works "objectively": our brain is networked, connected to a machine that, strictly speaking, does not "read our thoughts" but the processes in our brain that are the neural correlate of our thoughts; therefore, since I am not aware of the neural processes in my brain while I am thinking, how do I know whether I am connected or not? Isn't it much more reasonable to assume that when I'm plugged into a BCI, I won't even be aware when my inner life is transparent to others? Isn't BCI offered as an ideal medium of (political) control of the inner life of individuals? Most of those thinking about Neuralink focus on the individuality of the experience - will I lose it when I'm immersed in the singularity? But there is also the opposite option: what if I keep my individuality in the experience, and yet I don't know if the other is controlling me?
Perhaps cynical opportunism is the saddest aspect of Neuralink: humans have spawned a higher form of intelligence that, if allowed to use its powers, would reduce us to gorillas in a zoo. The only way to escape this fate is to join the victor, to abandon our humanity and plunge into the Singularity.**
The sublime flip side of this cynical vision ("let's try to catch up with the machines so we don't become monkeys in the zoo") is the Gnostic New Age reading of the Singularity not just as the next phase of posthumanity, but as a key cosmic event, the realization of divine self-actualization. In the Singularity, not only humans become divine, but God himself becomes fully divine. Inasmuch as the Singularity implies a kind of synchronicity of minds, it is no wonder that it attracts spiritual-philosophical speculations: The Singularity is perceived as nothing less than our redemption from the Fall. That is, from our existence as mortal and sexualized beings, as described in Genesis.
This brings us back to the question of power: what regulatory mechanism will decide what experiences I will share with others, and who will control that mechanism? One thing is certain: the idea that I will be able to connect/disconnect my brain should be rejected as utopian. And it should be fully accepted that the broad all-encompassing connection between minds cannot take place at the level of subjective experience, but only at the objective level, as a complex network of machines that "read" my mental states - the vast "synchronous" collective experience is a dangerous myth. Additionally, since our brains will be connected without us even realizing it, a new form of freedom and power will emerge: to be able to isolate ourselves from the Singularity. To return to the book of Genesis, the voice of the Singularity is another address of the serpent; it promises the annulment of the Fall and the realization of immortality and superior knowledge, if we eat the fruit; that is, if we immerse ourselves in it. As in Genesis, we should be aware that this choice is forced: we cannot help but agree - withdrawal is not possible.
What will happen then? Definitely not what Singularity advocates expect. Like the serpent, they do not lie; the threat lies precisely in their non-lying.
Adapted excerpt from the book "Hegel in a Wired Brain" / Hegel in a Wired Brain (Bloomsbury, 2020).
(The New Statesman; Peščanik.net; translation: M. Jovanović)
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* Type of networked data storage; prim.trans.
** (Technological) singularity, an assumed moment in the future in which technological development irreversibly escapes human control and enters a cycle of continuous self-improvement; prim.trans.
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