Plans for brain implants blur lines between humans and machines

It sounds far-fetched: with a computer chip implanted in their brain, humans could boost their intelligence with instant access to the Internet, write articles like this one by thinking rather than typing, and communicate with each other without saying a thing—what entrepreneur Elon Musk calls “consensual telepathy.”

Of course, it’s not really telepathy. It’s radio waves transmitting data from one chip to another. And it’s still futuristic. But it raises important ethical questions, as academic researchers and computer industry scientists pursue a path that could lead to the merging of human thought with artificial intelligence through the routine use of brain implants.

Doctors, academic researchers, and  scientists have radically different reasons for planting increasingly sophisticated technology into the brain.