Social Media Doesn't Have High Hopes For Elon Musk's Experimental Brain Chip Technology

Elon Musk, an entrepreneur who has struggled to solve traffic, exploded several rockets and put self-driving cars on the road that are "almost" as safe as cars driven by actual people, is reportedly looking for human volunteers to get one of his Neuralink "brain chips" implanted into their brain.

Elon Musk’s brain-machine interface company Neuralink is currently looking for their clinical trial director to start testing brain chip on humans.

“You will be able to save and replay memories. You could potentially download them into a new body or into a robot body.” pic.twitter.com/F8mhJel0un

— Pop Crave (@PopCrave) January 22, 2022

Neuralink, which is owned by Musk, recently posted a job opening for a "Clinical Trial Coordinator," which most believe is for the first human clinical trial studies on brain chips. Neuralink says the brain chips will be designed to help people power electronics with the power of their minds. In April 2021, the company showed the project off by demonstrating how a macaque with their brain chip could play Pong by simply looking at the screen — later spawning the Neuralink Monkey meme.

The technology could be a tremendous benefit for those without the use of their limbs, and Musk has promised some grand ambitions for human memory. "In the future, you'll be able to save and replay memories," Musk said in a Neuralink presentation. "You could potentially download them into a new body or into a robot body."

The news generated two types of predominant reactions on social media. The first was that, at least in cinema, brain chips tend not to go well. Comparisons to Black Mirror episodes that center around the ethical implications of brain chips flooded Twitter after the news started going viral.

we can't get a new season of black mirror because we're LIVING it im finna cry https://t.co/3rEAj7Jiqt

— zae (@ItsZaeOk) January 22, 2022

there is literally a 90 minute black mirror episode explaining why this is a bad idea https://t.co/ryZ0ufC98b

— nat (@CH0S4NGWOO) January 23, 2022

I watched too much Black Mirror to fall for this old trick https://t.co/Np28JuGdQq

— BASED SAVAGE (@crackcobain__) January 23, 2022

Elon Musk, the guy who watches Black Mirror and says, "Yeah! Let's do that!" https://t.co/l15cOKRDjU

— Dan Slott (@DanSlott) January 23, 2022

The second major type of reaction was anticipation that the brain chips, much like some of Musk's other projects, are likely to underdeliver.

brb letting the guy who reinvented subways but way worse fuck up my brain https://t.co/htWy6riJtO

— 🐢 bob 📼 (@bobvids) January 24, 2022

It's going to be messed up--but also very funny--when a bunch of tech bros intentionally give themselves brain damage by implanting untested, half-assed Elon Musk tech into their skulls, then insist that the brain damage is actually good and it's supposed to work like that

— Rob (@robrousseau) January 23, 2022

In 2 years this project will just be like "so it's a thing you can put in your ear and you can listen to music on it from your phone" https://t.co/kG3STcL7Oi

— jung yo biden (@bambooney) January 23, 2022

I sure want the guy whose cars are getting mass recalled implanting chips in my brain https://t.co/XXo9Y3HnFr

— Jordan (@JordanChariton) January 23, 2022

elon musk announced the hyperloop w/ great fanfare and it turned out to be a single-lane car subway that's a major safety hazard. the brain-chip thing will just be a shittier version of bluetooth earbuds that repeat your daily tasks to you

— ☀️👀 (@zei_squirrel) January 24, 2022

The idea that anyone would be a guinea pig for Elon Musk to do brain implant experiments, a man who forgot that freezing temps exist when designing a car, whose cars have killed people on autopilot and have spontaneously caught fire, is something I cannot get my head around.

— Read The Dispossessed by Ursula K. LeGuin (@JoshuaPotash) January 23, 2022

It looks like Neuralink aims to get its chips into brains by year's end, but the company does have a history of overpromising. In 2019, Musk said he believed he would get chips into brains by the end of 2020.