Is Elon Musk Siding with AI?

Elon Musk started Neuralink with the ultimate goal of creating a high bandwidth brain-machine interface that will enable humans to merge with AI and leech on the ride to ruling civilization. Elon Musk has spoken about the current AI trend ending in two ways: firstly, the neutral way in which we get left behind by the peaceful advancement of computers and secondly, the negative way in which computers again surpass our level of development but this time enslave or destroy us. A high bandwidth brain-machine interface would allow us to keep on pace with AI and it would serve to augment our human intelligence. Elon Musk is positioning Neuralink to be at the front of this revolution.

For all the discussion on technology in the recent public launch of Neuralink, there was no mention of security! If AI may take over the world – then presenting it with ready made and implanted brain-machine interfaces is not a great way to defend ourselves! This problem may be further exasperated as the adoption of brain-machine interfaces for intellectual augmentation might be driven by social and financial pressures to compete in the market place. Just as how a non-automated farm can no longer be profitable in the United States on scale, one day a non-augmented human being might not be sufficient for many jobs.

If Neuralink is indeed on a mission to preserve human civilization, they might want to consider hardware level security implementations and encryption to secure their brain-machine interfaces from malicious AI early on in their R&D work.