FUTURE SHOCKS
A pig with a tiny computer implanted in its brain, 750 million genetically modified mosquities and an artificial intelligence Jesus
COMPUTER-OPERATED PIG
At a livestreamed event aimed at recruiting employees for Neuralink, his neuroscience startup, billionaire tech entrepreneur Elon Musk presented a pig, Gertrude, who has, he said, a small computer implanted in her brain. “We have a healthy and happy pig,” said Musk, “initially shy but obviously high energy and, you know, kind of loving life, and she’s had the implant for two months.” He described the coin-sized implant as “a Fitbit in your skull with tiny wires.”
Musk co-founded Neuralink in 2016, aiming to create a wireless brain-machine interface with the goal of helping cure neurological conditions and allowing people with paralysis to control a computer mouse. Neuralink employs around 100 people, but Musk hopes to expand the workforce to 10,000. The company has raised over $150m (£110m) in funding, including $100m (£75m) from Musk himself. In 2019, it showcased a procedure that implanted tiny electrode “threads” into the brain together with another device behind the ear. The latest development, as seen in Gertrude, is much smaller and does not require the ear device. The computer is implanted in the brain by a surgical robot under local anaesthesia, and is removable. Musk displayed another pig, Dorothy, who, he claimed, had had one of the devices implanted and later removed, saying: “What Dorothy illustrates is that you can put in the Neuralink, remove it, and be healthy, happy and indistinguishable from a normal pig.”
Although Musk said the new technology could be used to summon a Tesla (his high-end electric car), play video games, or allow a person with a severed spinal cord to walk again, he did not present any scientific evidence to support these claims. However, small devices that electronically stimulate nerves and brain areas have been implanted in humans for decades to treat hearing loss and Parkinson’s disease, and neuroscientists have conducted brain implant trials in a small number of people with loss of bodily function control due to spinal cord injury or stroke. The subjects were able to control robotic limbs and computer keyboards or mice. Although most practical applications of wireless brain-machine interfaces are medical, Musk has also suggested that these devices may assist human intelligence to compete with artificial intelligence, which he describes as an “existential threat” Guardian, 29 Aug 2020.
AI JESUS
A software designer has created an artificial intelligence Jesus Christ tasked with producing texts based on the King James Bible and mimicking its style and content. George Davila Durendal’s so-called ‘AIJesus’ has generated 60,000 words of verse, all on one of three themes: The Plague, Caesar, and The End of Days. It developed its vocabulary by scanning the King James Bible alone. While some verses are nonsensical, others have some semantic content. Thus, one passage reads:
The Plague shall be the fathers in the world; and the same is my people, that he may be more abundant in the mouth of the LORD of hosts. For the tabernacle of the LORD shall be known by the works of the LORD, which proclaimed against this city; according as he hath sent me to the marriage of the Spirit.
Another, on the End of Days:
And he that was dead, the servant of the LORD came unto me, saying, Son of man, speak unto you all that dwell in the wilderness and they shall be saved by the border of the LORD and his priests and his sons, and on the seven lambs, and of the seven places of the beast, and the other on the sabbath days.
A third section began:
The scribes and the children of Israel were gathered together with the Levites and the men of Bethshemesh, which was the son of Josiah king of Judah, and they hanged them through the head of the body of Christ, and hath sent me.
Mr Durendal said: “Whether or not God created Man or Man created God might be a topic of eternal debate. But what surely cannot be debated is Man’s creation of AI Jesus.” dailystar. co.uk, 28 Aug 2020.
GM MOSQUITOES
Local officials in Florida have approved the release of 750 million genetically modified mosquitoes designed to reduce local populations of the insects that may be carrying diseases like dengue or the Zika virus. Environmentalist groups warned of potential damage to ecosystems and condemned the plan as a “Jurassic Park experiment”. Another concern was the potential creation of hybrid, insecticide-resistant mosquitoes, but the Britishbased, US-operated company Oxitec responsible for the programme insisted it was safe, citing a number of governmentbacked studies, and claiming to have released “over a billion of our mosquitoes over the years,” adding “there is no potential for risk to the environment or humans.”
Oxitec’s GM mosquitoes, named OX5034, are to be released from 2021 over a twoyear period in the Florida Keys, where the Aedes aegypti mosquito population are known carriers of deadly diseases such as dengue, Zika, chikungunya and yellow fever. Only female mosquitoes bite humans, because they need blood to produce eggs. The modified mosquitoes are male and contain a protein designed to kill off females before they reach mature biting age. Oxitec hope their GM males will breed with wild females and eventually reduce the population and thus the spread of diseases to humans.
The scheme has attracted criticism, including nearly 240,000 signatures on a petition calling for an end to Oxitec’s plan to use US states “as a testing ground for these mutant bugs”. The company also intends to deploy OX5034 mosquitoes in Texas.
Aedes aegypti is an invasive addition to Florida, commonly found in urban areas and living in standing pools of water. In many areas, including the Florida Keys, they have developed a resistance to pesticides. BBC News, 20 Aug 2020.