'Neuralink is doing legitimate technology development for neuroscience, and then Elon Musk comes along and starts talking about telepathy and stuff.' 'Neuralink is doing legitimate technology development for neuroscience, and then Elon Musk comes along and starts talking about telepathy and stuff.' Investors' 'dumb transhumanist ideas' setting back neurotech progress, say experts I t has been an excellent year for neurotech, if you ignore the people funding it. In August, a tiny brain implant successfully decoded the inner speech of paralysis patients. In October, an eye restored sight to patients who had lost their vision. It would just be better, say experts, if the most famous investors in the space - tech magnates such as Elon Musk and OpenAI's Sam Altman - were less interested in uploading their brains to computers or merging with AI. "It's distorting the debate a lot," said Marcello Ienca, a professor of neuroethics at the Technical University of Munich.

Gizmodo is 20 years old! To celebrate the anniversary, we're looking back at some of the most significant ways our lives have been thrown for a loop by our digital tools. Like so many others after 9/11, I felt spiritually and existentially lost. It's hard to believe now, but I was a regular churchgoer at the time. Watching those planes smash into the World Trade Center woke me from my extended cerebral slumber and I haven't set foot in a church since, aside from the occasional wedding or baptism. I didn't realize it at the time, but that godawful day triggered an intrapersonal renaissance in which my passion for science and philosophy was resuscitated. My marriage didn't survive this mental reboot and return to form, but it did lead me to some very positive places, resulting in my adoption of secular Buddhism, meditation, and a decade-long stint with vegetarianism.