Can privacy coexist with technology that reads and changes brain activity?

Gertrude the pig rooted around a straw-filled pen, oblivious to the cameras and onlookers -- and the 1,024 electrodes eavesdropping on her brain signals. Each time the pig's snout found a treat in a researcher's hand, a musical jingle sounded, indicating activity in her snout-controlling nerve cells. Those beeps were part of the big reveal on August 28 by Elon Musk's company Neuralink. "In a lot of ways, it's kind of like a Fitbit in your skull with tiny wires," said Musk, founder of Tesla and SpaceX, of the new technology. Neuroscientists have been recording nerve cell activity from animals for decades. But the ambitions of Musk and others to link humans with computers are shocking in their reach.