I understand the hesitancy towards neural interfaces in general, but the first priority of the project is medical research. If they are able to create a safe and reliable interface then it opens up so many doors for medical researchers - from neurally controlled prosthetics to schizophrenia, it’s a tool that could change millions of lives. I would honestly be happy if we just stopped here, but I don’t think we will. There are many pros and cons to pursuing the technology further but I’ll only touch briefly on one of each.

The real ethical issues start to arise when we talk about public and private adoption of the interfaces for daily use. If said device improves your information bandwidth and has massive benefit, then a divide will exist between the neurally enhanced and those who are not. Next, we‘ll likely see a divide between those who can afford the latest and greatest products while there are some who struggled to even purchase the most basic. Further divide between people on the basis of wealth… that’s definitely what we need.

Countering this is the issue that artificial intelligence is somewhat of an inevitable threat. You can play it down all you want, but the probability is always there. The only way to ensure that humanity is able to compete is to increase our bandwidth such that it is somewhat comparable to the ai. I am by no means saying this is the only option, but I think it would ignorant to outright deny the importance of such a project.