Should we fear or encourage mind control?
While there has been excitement over the Food and Drug Administration’s recent approval of Elon Musk’s Neuralink to conduct human trials on brain implants, there has also been concern about the company’s aim to build a brain chip.
Neuralink has said it hopes that a chip can be implanted in the skull and potentially allow those with disabilities to walk, see, and communicate. Still, some worry that mind control imposed by malicious governments could rob us of free will. Others talk nervously about memory erasure with a loss of personal identity. Still others fear the ability of third parties to hack into and read our minds.
Of course people will wrestle with scenarios about mind control. Indeed, prior advances in brain modification — from psychosurgery to hallucinogenic drugs to Skinnerian conditioning — triggered similar eruptions of existential handwringing. But despite the hype surrounding Musk’s announcements of potential mind/brain interfaces, the actual science of brain modification or neuromodulation is far from being ready to support sharing our thoughts in the cloud much less transmitting them to an omniscient AI Chatbot intent on eliminating human life.
It is worth noting that brain-computer interfaces aren’t new and haven’t undermined our autonomy. Quite the contrary. For over two decades, increasingly sophisticated software has been used to alter brain physiology to treat diseases. Deep brain stimulation that overrides abnormal signaling to improve symptoms of Parkinson’s disease and sensing electrodes that detect incipient seizure activity and trigger a corrective response are but two examples that have made considerable difference to hundreds of thousands of people.
Trials using implantable devices and subject to rigorous scientific and ethical review have been ongoing for years in hopes of treating intractable disorders, ranging from spinal cord injury to severe depression to Alzheimer’s. This is not to say that there are not concerns; indeed, the checkered history of psychosurgery offers many a cautionary tale regarding the potential pitfalls inherent in even well-intentioned interventions in the brain.
There will be many ethical challenges to consider as the field of neuromodulation advances. Who gets implantable devices and who doesn’t, what are the thresholds and risks, what are the longterm ramifications and costs? Still, the theoretical risk of “brain control” should not blind us to the risks of
“brain erasure” — horrific diseases that occur in millions of people suffering from various forms of dementia and other progressive degenerative diseases with no known cures.
So while it is imperative that governments and regulators continue to be vigilant and question the limits and role of human brain-computer interfaces, we must also remain open to the possibilities of a new field and its potential to treat many maladies for which few or no efficacious interventions now exist. It will require constant re-examination and reflection — and not just by the critics of Neuralink and the entrepreneurial neuroscientists but by all of us who now live with the misery of watching a loved one succumb to a brain disease. The neuromodulatory baby ought not be thrown out in the futuristic bathwater of those promising the melding of our minds with computers.
Arthur Caplan is a professor at the New York University Grossman School of Medicine. Michael Pourfar is codirector of Center for Neuromodulation at NYU Langone and assistant professor of neurosurgery at NYU Langone Health. Dr. Alon Y. Mogilner is professor of neurosurgery and anesthesiology and director of the Center for Neuromodulation at NYU Langone.