Have you ever dreamed of having an experimental micro-chip implanted in your brain as part of a human testing protocol?
No?
That sounds like a dystopian sci-fi horror movie?
Fair enough, but if you know anyone who *does* have a hankering for in-brain electronics, now's their chance. Elon Musk's Neuralink brain chip has officially been approved by the Food and Drug Administration for its first trials in human subjects.
Exciting, isn't it? What could possibly go wrong?
Just look at the Tesla's performance track record.
Spoiler alert, it's terrifyingly terrible, which is why Musk's big Neuralink announcement inspired a lot more mockery than celebration online.
\u201c@disclosetv\u201d— Disclose.tv (@Disclose.tv) 1685053375
Truly, Musk's big invention sounds like a horror-show in the making, at least if you're more toward the luddite side of things.
Musk touted Neuralink as a possible treatment for brain-related medical conditions like paralysis and blindness. But the product's track record so far isn't exactly comforting.
Neuralink was previously rejected for trials by the FDA because of the difficulty of removing the chip without damaging the brain and the possibility of the chip's wires migrating into people's brain tissue, which is basically the opening scene of a David Cronenberg film.
Musk has also been accused of having eugenics-related goals with Neuralink after he said the product could "solve a lot of brain-related diseases" and named autism and schizophrenia as two such "diseases" his chip could "solve." Musk has been accused of being pro-eugenics for other reasons, like his obsession with upping the birth rate.
Musk has also become synonymous with technical mishaps, after several deadly incidents involving his Tesla electric vehicles were followed by the "rapid, unscheduled disassembly"—Musk-speak for "explosion"—of his SpaceX company's Starship rocket.
And then, of course, there's Musk's tenure as CEO of Twitter, which has been nothing short of tyrannical to hear employees tell it.
Roll it all together, and Musk's track record and management style hasn't exactly inspired confidence in the idea of him implanting microchips into people's brains.
Twitter had a field day trolling him for the idea.
\u201cel*n watching my entire brain explode after I make a single negative tweet about him\u201d— Hurt CoPain (@Hurt CoPain) 1685114333
\u201cwhen i jailbreak my neuralink chip\u201d— Spac\ud835\udc52 (@Spac\ud835\udc52) 1685056014
\u201cobsessed with people being like \u201cTHE VACCINES HAVE MICROCHIPS THE GOVERNMENT IS CHIPPING US\u201d and then being like omg elon made a brain chip that\u2019s so cool wow\u201d— sophia (@sophia) 1685128079
\u201cNeuralink users when they have the most fleeting thought about a car that isn't a Tesla\u201d— Chris Voiceman (@Chris Voiceman) 1685231949
\u201cElon fans after they forget to renew their Neuralink Blue subscription:\u201d— Andr\u00e9 D\u00edaz (@Andr\u00e9 D\u00edaz) 1685114572
\u201cShould Elon Musk be the first volunteer to have a Neuralink chip implanted in his brain?\u201d— McHimbo\u2122\ufe0f (@McHimbo\u2122\ufe0f) 1685156179
\u201cNeuralink clinical trial footage (real)\u201d— jordan (@jordan) 1685063495
\u201cThe most beautiful illustration of how unprincipled right-wing weirdos are is that after decades of (continuing!) conspiracy theories about a billionaire elite putting microchips in your brain they are now all rallied around a billionaire who wants to put microchips in your brain\u201d— Ewan (@Ewan) 1685097222
Further adding to the profound creepiness of Musk's Neuralink--it's track record with animal testing, which has resulted in the killing of roughly 1,500 animals and sparked a federal investigation into Musk's potential violations of the Animal Welfare Act.
\u201cJust googled it real quick. They used 17 monkeys for the animal trials and 15 of them died\u201d— Regular Untitled Joey (@Regular Untitled Joey) 1685074064
This is surely all fine.
Nothing to worry about.