The Future of Brain Computer Interfaces
Imagine a world where people who could afford brain chips could use it to enhance anything they wanted about themselves, like how fast they could run or how smart they could be in math. Now imagine the number of people who couldn’t afford these brain chips, imagine more than half of the world’s population having a complete disadvantage in living a good life because the top 1% of the population who could afford these brain chips completely changed the world at a competitive advantage that would only benefit them. This dystopian could be the future for humanity.
Pop culture has always introduced the idea of a world where brain chips would be fully accessible and normalized, but how close are we to it? Already there’s been companies like Elon Musk’s Neuralink that are starting to develop implantable brain machine interfaces for the public. Although open for the public, these tiny pieces of technology have so many ethical setbacks. For once, not a lot of people know what brain machine interfaces (BMI) and brain computer interfaces (BCI) are. BMI’s are a direct communication pathway between an enhanced brain (already wired) to a device. BCI’s are the same thing but their uses are aided for human research, mapping the brain, and assisting people who have underdeveloped motor and cognitive skills. As I mentioned before, it would make the top 1% of the population that could afford these brain chips at a much higher level than normal people. It completely changes our society and introduces an unfair and unattainable competitive advantage that would only benefit their margin. There’s endless possibilities of uses for these brain chips meaning that there’s going to be a lot of ethical dilemmas in terms of mandating the technology overall.
Management
There are so many ideas with the future uses of brain chips that would benefit humanity. BMI’s are being tested as an alternative treatment for people with paralysis with little to no cognitive motor based skills, and those who have spinal cord injuries. However, because these two types of brain chips are new technologies, you can’t expect much at the moment. Most people believe that at this time, brain chips are so advanced that they can help cure patients from paralysis and other neurological conditions. Unfortunately this isn’t the case and when patients find out they often harm themselves psychologically with the unattainable expectations of these brain chips to help them in some sort of degree. If and when brain chips are on the market for healthcare alternatives, patients need to be informed about the invasiveness and potential positive effects and limits of BCI’s. There’s so much risk when it comes to the patient, invasive BCI’s require a complex surgery to be put literally on the brain and the after care. People who would fit this category of problem would be people with neurological and cognitive conditions that affect their cognitive-motor skills, invasive systems impose the possibility of hemorrhoids and infections. After care and the way their body reacts to the BCI depends on how strong their brain is. Patients could suffer physically in terms of infections and psychologically, being depressed is one effect as most patients don’t realize that these BCI’s at the moment won’t completely cure them. Decision making can apply for any user as both the BCI and BMI require the user’ s thought to perform an action. However for patients with neurological conditions, especially those who are completely locked in cannot perform actions and informed decisions.
Endless Possibilities
These brain chips offer so much use in the market, probably why they’re so expensive. I’ve already talked about one being for neurological rehabilitation but there’s two other main uses that introduces the ethical setbacks for these chips. Imagine you worked with the military and it was required for you and the others to get a brain chip inserted onto your brain. This brain chip would enhance your emotional skills by creating smarter decisions which would introduce the skill of sensing people’s intentions, and a decreased empathy for opposing members. Not only that but you would have the ability to communicate with your teammates on the battlefield through thoughts. This is the concept of the Super Soldier, when brain chips were introduced people had the idea of creating a “super natural” human. In this case, brain chips would be used for assessments. Already this introduces a lot of social concerns for the person and the people around him, how would you live normally in society after being discharged? And since these brain chips are influenced by the user’s decision, how would you distinguish your moral beliefs from your programmed chip? What if you were to commit a crime in the real world? Would it count as an autonomous crime or premeditated? There’s so many more questions.
Have you ever wanted to fix something about yourself whether that would be your personality or a set of skills you wished to have? Imagine a time period where brain chips were so accessible in the market that you decided to purchase one that would make you better at math. We all wish to be the best at everything but what would we consider “the best” if everyone was great at literally everything? The possibility of enhancing certain skills introduces a competitive advantage amongst the population, but for people who aren’t on the same terms because they can’t afford these brain chips, what would happen to them? They’d be put at a disadvantage in almost everything through education, jobs, their socioeconomic background, and so much more. Some things to also consider is the authenticity of people, how would we define true talent and the true qualities of each individual without marginalizing them all into one category of sameness or perfect.
Enhancement possibility also introduces the possible crime of brain jacking. Imagine you are a person with diagnosed ADHD and you have trouble focusing and taking in information. It affects your daily life to the point where you consent for an implanted brain chip that could enhance the way you process information and higher attention span. Soon, a third party hacks into your brain chip and forces you to perform malicious acts without you realizing. Who would be blamed in this situation, the user? The third party? Or the BCI?.
Solution
There’s so many things that could go wrong with brain chips but I believe that it’s something that us humans can come to terms with and overcome, brain chips have endless possibilities that don’t include ethical setbacks, or at least in the final cut. We have a hard time creating decisions because we don’t know the outcome and whether that presents more problems or fixes pre existing ones. I realized that most people create final decisions by conversing with others to find out different outcomes of the situation and comparing the best outcome, this is basically a hurdle that most ethicists and normal people find hard when debating about the emerging technologies of our societies and the problems that might be introduced later on. The BCI Conversational Chatbot is a concept derived from a conversational chart where users are educated on BCI’s and BMI’s, the conversation dives into the three different uses of brain chips and the user can select the questions they are most interested in. It gives users the choice of choosing their interested branch of brain chip use where they can dive deeper with the topics and questions that the BCI bot introduces to them. It enables the conversation to go as deep as possible where the user will develop their own morals and thoughts about brain chips after they choose to finish the conversation. Obviously us humans have different morals and thoughts about the same topic, everything is subjective because the main purpose of the BCI bot is to let users think about the ethical consequences that brain chips could entail on our society in the future. This concept of conversational charts (bots) should also be introduced in educational settings in classes like moral education and IT as it broadens people’s views and thoughts on the future of society with these emerging technologies.
So What?
I know that two out of the three uses of BMIs and BCIs that I talked about were only introduced as the possibilities of brain chips overall, but these are just some of the predicted ethical setbacks that humanity will face in the very future. According to Moore’s Law, our technology doubles in advancement every 18 months, for a visual the percentage doubles by the power of itself each cycle. In ten years we’re predicted by Moore’s Law to have advanced AI, wearable devices, driverless cars, and augmented virtual realities. So the possibilities I mentioned are most likely to be around in our lifetime. It’s something big for us humans to think about considering the fact that when brain chips get introduced, we’re looking at a next wave of human evolution that will either put us in a future that will better humanity more than affect it, or a complete dystopian novel.