If Elon Musk's brain implant performs harmful actions, will people or machines be responsible?

Since 1999, two Australian and British philosophers proposed a hypothetical brain experiment. In 2024, the hypothesis becomes reality .

Based on the writings of philosopher and AI ethics expert  Dvija Mehta . She is currently working at a facility affiliated with Cambridge University, the Leverhulme Center for Research on the Future of Intelligence.

Expert Dvija Mehta.

In March, a man named Noland Arbaugh demonstrated his ability to play chess using only his brain. Quadriplegic for the past eight years, he has regained his lost abilities thanks to a brain implant designed by Neuralink, the company founded by Elon Musk.

' Commanding the cursor seems to have become my new instinct ,' Mr. Arbaugh said during the livestream. ' I stare at a point on the screen and then the cursor moves there '.

The way Mr. Arbaugh describes it shows that he is the one directly using the mouse to control the chess pieces. But there is still a question: was this action done by him, or was it done by the chip implanted in his head?

As a philosopher of human thinking and an AI ethics expert, Ms. Dvija Mehta is interested in the above question. A brain-computer interface (BCI) similar to Neuralink opens a new era in which humans and computers become one; New technology raises questions surrounding the individual's identity, ego, and responsibility to the community.

In the near future, BCI technology provides an option for people with disabilities like Mr. Arbaugh, but its applications could go much further. Neuralink's long-term goal is to empower everyone who uses their products.

When a machine performs tasks that only the brain can do, can it be considered the action of the brain itself, or should it be considered the action of an entity separate from humans?

Brain, expanded edition

For many decades, philosophers have spent a lot of effort discussing the boundaries of an individual: where is the limit of the mind, and where is the boundary between the inner world and the real world? At a basic level, one might think that the mind resides in the brain, in one's body. However, some erudite philosophers have been proposing more complex concepts than that.

In 1998, philosophers Andy Clarke (British) and David Chalmers (Australian) published the  'extended mind' hypothesis, which essentially suggests that technology can become a part of us. Using philosophical language to express, Chalmers and Clarke propose something called 'active externalism' , roughly translated as 'active externalism' , arguing that people can delegate their line of thought. to a man-made object, and through that action incorporate the artifact into his own mind. The device acts according to human commands, so that human and machine operate as a unified whole.

This proposal came before the advent of smartphones, but describes the current context, where people entrust devices with many mental tasks such as storage and calculation.

Humans are using machines as their "extensions" - (Illustration).

If Mr. Arbaugh's brain chip is not believed to be part of his mind, then the thorny question that arises here is: is Mr. Arbaugh in control of his actions?

Along with proactive foreignism, Chalmers and Clark also presented a hypothetical situation in which a person uses a brain implant to manipulate objects on a computer screen. An example similar to what Mr. Arbaugh showed.

To play chess, Mr. Arbaugh visualizes what he wants, which is to move a knight or a pawn. And his brain implant, the N1 chip designed and manufactured by Neuralink, recognizes the signals emitted from his brain and begins to resolve, process and perform the action Arbaugh desires.

From a philosophical perspective to ask the question, what just happened here? Is that brain implant a part of Mr. Arbaugh's mind? If not, is Mr. Arbaugh in control of his behavior?

To understand why, consider the difference between two concepts: occurrence, and action. Things cover the entire processing process of the human mind such as thoughts, beliefs, desires, imaginations, considerations and intentions. Actions are things performed by the body, like clicking on this article.

Normally, there is no gap between facts and actions. Let's take a case where an individual named Tuan is playing chess. Without the help of a brain-computer interface, Tuan formed the intention to move the chess pieces in his brain, then directly performed that action with his hands. In this case, events and actions are a thorough and unified process; The action of moving the chess pieces comes from the events formed in the brain.

But in Mr. Arbaugh's case, he had to imagine his intention, and the brain implant performed the action that affected the outside world. Here, events and actions are separate.

Illustration.

This separation raises many concerns, for example that a person using a brain implant could have full control over the actions generated by the chip. The brain and body are inherently inconsistent in many actions, such as sneezing or dilating the pupils - actions that occur on their own without brain signals, so will the actions produced by an implanted chip be too different? special?

Will the foreign chip become a battery-powered parasite, gnawing away at an individual's free will?

Philosopher Mehta calls this ' entanglement of intention ' , literally ' contemplation conundrum '. In Arbaugh's case, he overlooked a crucial element in the long chain of consequences of the thought-action process: the active hand movement that performs the hovering behavior. What could have happened if Arbaugh had quickly changed his mind, right before the chip was about to make his move? And would Chip consider one of the hypothetical situations Arbaugh had in mind as a course of action to take?

In other words, factors like chip latency and the priority of a thought make it unclear to whom the given action actually belongs.

On an online chess board, the risk of mistakes due to chips is not very large, but when applying brain chips to environments that require high responsibility, who will be at fault? The brain chip created a wrong incision during a major surgery that caused the patient to die, whose fault is it?

Illustration.

This is not the only humanitarian issue surrounding brain-chip interface technology. In the famous fantasy novel Neuromancer by great writer William Gibson, devices implanted on the body can take away a person's identity, even manipulate their body and illegally access things that no one else has. touchable, is an individual's thoughts.

The problem of 'intentional entanglement' will become clearly thorny when a chip cannot clearly distinguish between 'things that only happen in the imagination', and between 'imaginary things that lead to action'. move'.

If we use the language of neuroscience, it is almost impossible to clearly distinguish between imagination and intention. A study conducted in 2012 by a group of neuroscientists showed that in the brain, there is no signal that determines 'intention leads to action'.

If it is impossible to distinguish which intentions should become actions, then a brain implant will also not be able to distinguish which actions should be performed. This makes the chip partly responsible for the actions given by the chip-implanted brain.

Philosopher Mehta believes that, when the hypothetical situation proposed by Chalmers and Clarke has become a reality, we should further study the ideas raised by the two philosophers, to link the two concepts of event and acting on an individual with a brain chip implanted. Applying the extended mind hypothesis will help people like Mr. Arbaugh take full responsibility for the actions they will take, instead of dividing responsibility with the chip.

Chalmers and Clarke argue that to experience as a single subject, an individual must think as a single subject. In other words, a person implanted with a chip must believe that the chip is a part of the ego, located within his or her inner world. Thanks to that, the feeling of domination, ownership and responsibility can be complete.

The technology of implanting brain-computer interfaces into humans opens a new door, not only for people who have lost the ability to act, but also for the field of philosophy that discusses the limits between mind and machines. As Chalmers and Clarke once commented: ' Once the leadership of the skin and brain is usurped, we can see more clearly our true nature, as creatures that belong to this world ' .