'In an interview with the Big Issue published last week, the notorious David Icke took a break from claiming shape-shifting lizards ruled the world to make an astonishing warning about brain implants. "What this has all been heading towards is'implantables', where the devices are inserted under your skin and start to affect human consciousness from a central grid," he suggested. "The people in charge have always been massively outnumbered and their greatest fear is the human race waking up, but once they're able to alter our thought processes from a central computer it's game over. Read more: Rich Americans seek black market brain implants in bid to plug into artificial intelligence'matrix'

A pair of super-rich American technology gurus are planning to undergo surgery to install experimental implants directly into their brains. The two men are currently trying to find a doctor willing to perform this untested and highly risky procedure, The Mirror has learned. If they survive the operation, the men hope to be able to directly communicate with the primitive forms of artificial intelligence currently being developed in labs across the world. But critics and conspiracy theorists fear these pioneering implants are the first step towards creating a society where every human is plugged into "the matrix". Zoltan Istvan, a U.S. Presidential candidate, personally knows both of these would-be bionic men.

A pair of super-rich American technology gurus are planning to undergo surgery to install experimental implants directly into their brains. The two men are currently trying to find a doctor willing to perform this untested and highly risky procedure, The Mirror has learned. If they survive the operation, the men hope to be able to directly communicate with the primitive forms of artificial intelligence currently being developed in labs across the world. But critics and conspiracy theorists fear these pioneering implants are the first step towards creating a society where every human is plugged into "the matrix". Zoltan Istvan, a U.S. Presidential candidate, personally knows both of these would-be bionic men.