Elon Musk’s company Neuralink was something that I had written off as ridiculous the moment someone told me about it. An old coworker told me that Elon Musk was developing ‘brain chips’ that would help humans with … well… everything. Seriously. Just do a quick search and you can find dozens of supposed applications for this ‘Link’, the most lofty of which is probably restoring the use of limbs to quadriplegic individuals. Needless to say, it’s a concept that’s pulled straight out of a movie or video game. It’s ridiculous. And apparently, as the image above shows, you don’t need any experience in neuroscience to work at this company.
I’m sorry, what? …… WHAT?
‘What the fuck?’ was my genuine and honest reaction to reading that on the Neuralink site. I’m floored. If the idea of Neuralink wasn’t already fantastical enough, now I have to comprehend the fact that such a delicately complex task is being left up to people who have no experience in the field.
I guess it makes sense, though, since Musk’s entire public image is predicated on being a spokesperson for things he knows fuck-all about.
But seriously, this is just ridiculous. Ridiculous and terribly irresponsible; at least one person who would benefit from the existence of Neuralink has probably caught wind of the concept and is excited for it to come to life. It’s nothing short of evil for a billionaire to patent his ridiculous, sci-fi fetish pet project as a life-saving technology. It’s not going to help anyone because it isn’t real. If such a technology existed, I’m not sure why the movie-addled brains of tech entrepreneurs think that it would be in a ‘brain chip’ form. It’s such a ridiculously cartoony idea.
The only thing to come out of Musk’s Neuralink project so far was the viral video of a monkey ‘playing Pong with its mind’. Many people gawked over it, regardless of the fact that the demonstration showed NOTHING REMOTELY CLOSE to what is being promised. Seriously. He is such a farce, and no one holds him to task for it. It doesn’t matter if he produces results because his name and myth are already too powerful. I should also mention that there’s a renowned Brazilian neuroscientist named Miguel Nicolelis who had already pioneered a similar study regarding monkeys and brain interfacing. In fact, Nicolelis had monkeys doing similar tasks over a decade ago.
It’s also pretty scary that the entire Neuralink.com ‘careers’ section is bogged with positions for veterinary/general animal care. Why would so much care be needed on-site unless animals were being routinely injured? It doesn’t look good considering we just heard about the loads of monkey deaths and reports of abuse. Why is so much animal testing being done to begin with?
I just have so many questions and so many feelings. But overall, I’m just not surprised at the sheer audacity of Musk’s claims. Because his ridiculous ideas are clearly reflected in some of his companies’ hiring practices too.
