Recipient of Tesla Brain Chip Cautiously Optimistic About Inevitable Disaster
Guinea pig strangely calm under the circumstances
The Poolish is a comedy news and current affairs newsletter by S Peter Davis. My main newsletter Plato Was a Dick is free to read.
Noland Arbaugh, the first human recipient of Elon Musk’s Neuralink brain chip, has opened up about what it’s like to have a experimental brand new piece of technology lodged in his frontal cortex by the designer of a polygon-shaped car that breaks if you breathe on it.
For reasons that, come to think of it, are probably also explained by the brain chip, Arbaugh is oddly calm about the fact that he’s the first non-monkey primate to test a device that has already killed a hell of a lot of simian predecessors. He also revealed that it would be technically possible for somebody to hack into and obtain control over his body now, which seems like one hell of an example of lede-burying by a man who may or may not himself now be classified as a Tesla.
Though the risk of being insidiously puppeteered by a black hat villain are relatively low in Arbaugh’s specific case, as he’s still a quadriplegic, he could theoretically be made to say some really silly things, like that you should invest in Tesla shares. Nevertheless, tests on a number of ill-fated animals have apparently proven that an able-bodied human would theoretically be able to be piloted remotely by someone with the skills and knowledge of the technology.
Somebody, for example, who works for Neuralink, has an obsession with control, and an insatiable ambition.
Arbaugh, with an optimism that’s as laudible as it is baffling, trusts that some kind of regulations will be put in place to reduce the likelihood of human-puppet-related crimes before the technology is in widespread use.
We can perhaps rest assured that such concerns are being taken seriously as evidenced by Mr Musk’s repeated requests for private one on one meetings with the President of the United States behind closed doors with strictly no cameras.