EXCLUSIVE: UN warns brain chips like Elon Musk's Neuralink could be used as 'personality-altering' weapons - as FDA approves tech for human trials

A United Nations panel has warned that brain chip technology being pioneered by Elon Musk could be abused for'neurosurveillance' violating'mental privacy,' or'even to implement forms of forced re-education,' threatening human rights worldwide. The UN's agency for science and culture (UNESCO) said neurotechnology like Musk's Neuralink, if left unregulated, will lead to'new possibilities of monitoring and manipulating the human mind through neuroimaging' and'personality-altering' tech. UNESCO is now strategizing on a worldwide'ethical framework' to protect humanity from the potential abuses of the technology -- which they fear will be accelerated by advances in AI. 'We are on a path to a world in which algorithms will enable us to decode people's mental processes,' said UNESCO's assistant director-general for social and human sciences, Gabriela Ramos. The implications are'far-reaching and potentially harmful,' Ramos said, given breakthroughs in neurotechnology that could'directly manipulate the brain mechanisms' in humans, 'underlying their intentions, emotions and decisions.' The committee's warnings come less than two months after the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) gave Elon Musk's brain-chip implant company Neuralink federal approval to conduct trials on humans.