Telepathic Twitter-Borgs of our grim future!

Look, I totally accept and support the idea that one day technology that can interface directly with the human brain will not only exist, but improve the lives of people, particularly those with mobility issues, and that's super. But a couple of things give me pause. Well, ok, one thing gives me pause. Elon Musk. Like, I just, what would make anyone comfortable with him plugging anything into their brain? 

Do you want Borg? Because this is how you get Borg.

Above: the money.

Anyway, yesterday in a...press conference? I guess? It was called a show-and-tell, but it was kind of more like an investor's meeting with media press coverage. So a commercial. A commercial where he discussed brain interface technology being developed by his company, Neuralink--which, he's not a neuroscientist. He's the face of these technologies and often presented as the genius behind them, but he's just the money, right?

Remind me again, how is he the richest
guy on--oh, right, inherited wealth.

"I've often said that prototypes are easy, production is hard...It's a hundred times harder to go from a prototype to a device that's safe, reliable, works under a wide range of circumstances..."

-Elon Musk, noted double bachelor's 

degree holder, and richest guy on earth

Which is a very science-y/engineer-y thing to say, but when does he say that exactly? 

"That'll do, cyber-pig, that'll do."

-a real scientist

In board meetings? At GOP-fundraisers? Because actual scientists and engineers do all the work, right? But, back to the brain chip. According to the presentation, the company is planing to put the chip into an actual human--up until now they've just been borg-ing monkeys and pigs, and that, I suppose, is a whole other conversation--within the next six months and--huh? No, Elon's not getting the chip, not yet anyway. Remember what he often says about prototypes? He's far too valuable, somehow. But someone, probably a poor, will test it out for Neuralink. Good luck to them. So Musk went on to show us a troupe of six monkeys demonstrating the technology and ok, it's quite a thing. 

If only if Neuralink could just figure out how
to install empathy chips in MAGA people...

He calls it "telepathic typing" and basically the animals are using their brains to move a cursor to select letters to spell things out, the idea being that this technology might allow humans with paralysis communicate. From there, it could be used in a wide range of applications including helping people walk or even, according to Musk, correcting blindness, with a long term goal of interfacing with "artificial general intelligence" whatever that means...wait, it's Borg isn't it? We're back to the Borg, ok, well, those first applications though, wow.  

And fine, actually I welcome the inevitable cold, silicon-based rule of our machine overlords, that's not my issue. My issue is with the idea that this future of technological marvels that will help millions is all Neuralink-branded. I don't know, call me a socialist, quarter-Canadian, nanny-state liberal but I just wish that something like this wasn't being developed by a for-profit company. Particularly a for-profit company owned by a guy who bought Twitter because he thought their policies where unfair to Nazis. 

I foresee grim future here where this idiot need only think up a bunch of racist
 conspiracy tweets in all caps, and they just appear in everybody's Neuralink™ HUD.