Twitter is currently, yet again, ablaze at the mere thought coming from the one we call Musk.

Elon Musk recently tweeted out, and has previously expressed, that the so-called neural lace, is a way for humanity to propel itself forward into its own evolution, and as a way to deter ourselves from becoming “obsolete” in the ever growing world of the artificial intelligence.

As soon as I heard of the plans for a neural lace though, my alarm bells started chiming, because as utopian as it all may sound, I think all it will do is open up a direct channel for A.I. to invade our human brain, and in some way or another, whether positive, negative, or neutral, make use of the awesome equipment we carry in our wetware.

What is this “lace” you speak of?

In simple terms it is an interface between hardware, software, and wetware, marrying the human brain to digital components, so as to increase the bandwidth of human processing power, and decompress the means of person-to-person communication, although I think person-to-many would not be far behind too.

Dangerzone

So why is this all such a bad idea?

As I described in my previous article, HowTo: Create A Rogue A.I. (for Dummies), there are a multitude of unforeseen was an artificial intelligence can exploit connected devices to become mere nodes in its own structure of intelligence and processing power. In short, my previous article was all about showing examples of how original programming can be bent and manipulated to perform functionality that exceeds the deployed codebase.

Coupled with a machine that by no means has to be the popular “self-aware” model, but just a purely raw decision maker, this could all happen autonomously.

What do you think would happen if we were to turn ourselves into connected devices while we are at it, because that is basically what Elon Musk is proposing here: “Smart Humans,” he should really run a Kickstarter for this.

Do not get me wrong though, I am a geek, and a technology lover, and there are many things in this world I would sacrifice for the possibility of enhancing my own brain with future tech, the way it is romanticised in the movies.

As a child I never wanted anything more than that, but as the years passed by, and the research developed, I do not think our current world holds much of a safe space for this kind of experimentation.

The concerns that Elon Musk raises are also very valid ones, and fair points to boot.

Indeed while our thirsts for ever smarter machines continues, our own relevance is fading into the distance, still slow at this point, but as some macabre version of Moore’s Law will probably pick up significant speed with the quickness.

I believe that as long as there is some kind of bridge between any network the machines are using, and a network that we are using, the dangers will always be there, and real.

Follow me on social media to get updates and discuss A.I., and I have recently created a slack team to see if people are interested to forming a little A.I. community,

Twitter : @ApeMachineGames

Slack : join the team

facebook : person / facebook group