Monkey MindPong

1) The deliberately soothing British voice does not come off as soothing. It comes off as insidious, and threatening. This is in part influenced by our own cultural context with media like Black Mirror, but the effect is there nonetheless.

2) The comparison points to "pair with your iPhone" feel WILDLY misaligned with the rest of the message. The premise of Neuralink is that this is a world-changing cutting edge technology for the good of humanity. Then all of a sudden you have a situation where a living sentient being is paired to an iPhone like some sort of bluetooth speaker. It reeks of confused ethics.

Keyboards and mice will be phased out very quickly since you can just thought type, so the computer accessories industry will dry up as well.

If the device allows you to write to limbs, you will probably also be able to write to motors. Expect a lot of specialized vehicle related jobs (excavators, forklifts, cranes) to become remote-first with skilled operators working inside call centers or at home. This is already happening but the presence of Neuralink means contracting companies don't have to pay for expensive joysticks, knobs, switchboards, etc.

Of course this doesn't consider the impact on the entire world changing overnight, which will probably upend modern capitalism for the first time in a century.

The good thing about messy, human models of transactions and interaction is that it can take a long time and many different voices can be heard, allowing disuptes to occur and be resolved.

Many of these successful tech corporates work to eliminate the human discussion element, and replace it with digitized (and frequently proprietary, or at least gatekept) rules.

I think I've dealt with a few difficult dominant personality types in the past, and it would not surprise me at all to see them consider humans-as-pets as a desirable future. Match that with digitized 'asset ownership' and other non-repudiable mechanisms and there could be a very dystopian and authoritarian future in the mind of some of these people.

Now I'll make sure to sound like a complete nutter (as if I hadn't already) and mention that some of these individuals and companies are now so essential to the U.S., both domestically and internationally, that they are becoming untouchable.

Meanwhile our own tech industry is busy debating and trying to determine what the future of libre software will look like. It's a pivotal moment and I'm optimistic we'll figure it out to everyone's benefit, but there is a lot at stake.

People invading other people's minds, Borg-like clusters of minds outsmarting anyone who is not connected with others, forcing others to play along to stay competitive. Maybe entities that even never grew up as unaugmented, unconnected persons because they were already linked in young age - one mind with different bodies.

It is absurd to try to protect humankind against a perceived existential threat by AGI by developing a technology that would also destroy humanity if it works as advertised. Add to all that the cases in which it doesn't work properly. Developing inflammation around the implants, transmitter breaking, batteries running out, losing wireless connection, ... if you think dead zones while hiking are infuriating then wait until your cognitive capabilities depend on a network connection.

I am afraid that all the good that SpaceX or Tesla have achieved so far will be undone by the damage that NeuraLink's technology will do to humankind one day.