'We will beg to have AI brain chips implanted in our babies,' expert warns
AI BRAIN chips will one day be so common that we will beg for them to be inserted into our children.
This is according to a cybersecurity expert who believes that the devices will be popular, but will entail major risks.
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“One day the healthcare industry or government will deliver some fantastic new capabilities that consumers will beg for and we will all beg to have them implanted in our babies and children,” computer security authority Roger Grimes told The US Sun.
Grimes should know. He has been in the industry for 35 years, has written more than a dozen books on data and computer security, and works as a consultant to major companies on their cyber defense.
“Maybe they'll say it makes it easier to track if your child is kidnapped. Or to better monitor your child's health. Whatever the killer service, one day most of us will probably beg to have one,” Grimes said.
“And by then, I hope we understand how best to defend ourselves against unwanted, malicious manipulation. Because right now, we're terrible at it.”
The data-driven defense evangelist fears that brain chip technology like Elon Musk's Neuralink could easily become a target for hackers.
It is known that today's medical devices can be hacked, often with devastating consequences.
“Anything can be hacked; brain chips are no different. And if we have thousands and thousands of them, that's likely,” Grimes said.
“But I don't think we have to worry until we have a lot of them.”
The expert says that because Musk's brain chip is not yet connected to the internet, the risk of hacking is, as far as we know, significantly smaller.
“The chip is unlikely to run a widely popular operating system and application,” he added.
“This means it will be significantly harder for those who don't have the internal specs to figure out how to hack it, and none of the traditional hacking tools would work against that.
“We're not even sure if the chip uses updatable code, which is necessary for most hacking.”
Grimes emphasized that while it would be very difficult to hack a brain chip right now, it could be possible in the future.
In 2017, approximately 500,000 pacemakers were recalled by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) over concerns that they were too easy to hack.
“History has shown that most, if not all, implantable medical devices and chips of the past are hackable,” Grimes said.
“Why would this one be any different?”
The impact of a hacked AI brain chip is currently unknown.
Grimes is concerned that the user's health will be negatively affected.
“Previous hacks of medical devices have shown that hackers were able to maliciously manipulate operations in ways that harmed the wearer's life,” he said.
“My biggest concern at this stage with the brain chip, if there were even a hacker motivated enough to try to hack the chip, would be some sort of remote denial-of-service attack, or wiping the code of the chip, so the device stopped functioning.”
The possibility of a brain chip being completely erased is concerning because of Musk's plans for Neuralink.
Musk went into detail about these brain chip plans during a question and answer session on the Clubhouse app in 2021.
“You could probably save the state in the brain. So if you were to die, your state could come back in the form of another human body or a robot body,” he said.
The billionaire compared this saving process to backing up a video game.
If this plan were to come to fruition, the risks associated with hacking and erasing a brain chip would be extremely high and could even result in death.
However, Grimes doesn't think this is something we need to worry about right now, as the technology is still in its infancy.
He reassured The US Sun: “This device is new and its novelty and isolation for a solo patient makes it unlikely to be hacked even if someone had the capability.”
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