Beyond the Mainstream
[ The bits they'd rather you didn't know ]
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transhumanism, noun /trænsˈhjuː.mə.nɪ.zəm/
Philosophical and scientific movement that advocates the use of current and emerging technologies—such as genetic engineering, cryonics, artificial intelligence (AI), and nanotechnology—to augment human capabilities and improve the human condition.
The Mission of Elon Musk's company, Neuralink:
Create a generalized brain interface to restore autonomy to those with unmet medical needs today and unlock human potential tomorrow.
Sounds quite good, doesn't it? According to their website, they're currently focused on giving people with quadriplegia the ability to control their computers and mobile devices with their thoughts. Smashing.
Their brain-computer interface is fully implantable, cosmetically invisible, and designed to let you control a computer or mobile device anywhere you go.
They state that, in the future, they hope to restore capabilities such as vision, motor function and speech, and eventually expand how we experience the world.
Hold on. Restoring capabilities that have failed people is one thing, but do we really want a brain-computer implant that changes how we experience the world? If it's messing with our brainwaves, that rather suggests some kind of virtual reality 'enhancement' and sounds a bit like Apple's Vision Pro - just without the goggles. No thanks.
And once they've got this interface in your brain, does that mean they can send messages or implant information whenever they fancy?
Well, they got the go-ahead from the FDA in May 2023 for human trials in the US, so we're about to find out.
ELON, X, AND THE EPITOME OF A FRONT MAN
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Elon has always been obsessed with ‘X’
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He got tens of thousands of dollars from his parents to launch his first business with his brother and another partner - a digital phone book called Zip2 - then hired outside coders to write the entire thing because he couldn’t code himself
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Zip2 went nowhere, but Elon managed to sell it and make $22m
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He bought the domain ‘X.com’ in 1999 and announced he would create an online bank, called ‘X’
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Partnered with banking experts, who all left the company, accusing Elon of lying to the media about the product
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He did not co-found PayPal: in 2000, he sold the failing X.com to Confinity (owners of PayPal) and when he was forced out, he got the owners to delete all references to PayPal’s founders on the company website
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When eBay bought PayPal in 2002, Elon got between $160m & $180m, after taxes – having contributed nothing to the company
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Elon founded SpaceX in 2002 and partnered with rocket engineer, Tom Mueller
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The real idea for commercial space transformation (COTS) came from NASA administrator, Michael Griffin, who Elon had met on a flight to Russia while Griffin was CIA director
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Griffin awarded SpaceX $278m in 2006, at which point the company had never even flown any rockets
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In early 2004, Elon bought into Tesla (which was founded in 2003) and became the chairman of the board of directors and its largest shareholder
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He forced original co-founder, Martin Eberhard, out of Tesla and when Tesla settled a lawsuit with Eberhard in 2009, the agreement was that Elon could be listed as a co-founder
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Plans to convert Twitter into an ‘everything’ app, including banking
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He has partnered Twitter with eToro for stock and crypto exchange
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His latest business venture is a new artificial intelligence company, named X.AI, which has launched as GROK, 'the most intelligent [AI] model in the world...
In 2015, the Los Angeles Times reported that Elon’s companies - Tesla Motors Inc., SolarCity Corp. and SpaceX – have received a total of around $4.9 billion in government support:
“The figure underscores a common theme running through his emerging empire: a public-private financing model underpinning long-shot start-ups. Musk and his companies’ investors enjoy most of the financial upside of the government support, while taxpayers shoulder the cost.”
"He owns the satellites of the internet; he owns the chip that connects to your brain; he owns the AI, and he owns the social media company that is powering the knowledge base of the AI.
No wonder you want freedom of speech because you want people to say everything of everything of everything, so that the AI learns everything of everything of everything of everything." - Luke Belmar