Fascination of investors such as Elon Musk with uploading their brains to computers is hindering progress in curing disease, say scientists
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t has been an excellent year for neurotech, if you ignore the people funding it. In August, a tiny brain implant successfully decoded the inner speech of paralysis patients. In October, an eye restored sight to patients who had lost their vision.
It would just be better, say experts, if the most famous investors in the space – tech magnates such as Elon Musk and OpenAI’s Sam Altman – were less interested in uploading their brains to computers or merging with AI.
“It’s distorting the debate a lot,” said Marcello Ienca, a professor of neuroethics at the Technical University of Munich. “There is this long-term concern regarding the narratives they use.”
