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As most people know at this time, connecting our brains with machines is no longer theoretical science fiction.

In fact, it may be changing the way we communicate as a species. It may even usher in the age of telepathy: the latest development of brain-computer interfaces highlights its benefits, from treating mental health conditions to controlling objects with ideas, such as wheelchairs and robotic prostheses.

With the aid of devices equipped with artificial intelligence and potential quantum computer computing capabilities, technology can cognitively liberate millions or even billions of people around the world.

Artificial intelligence-driven brain interface technology can help people make better decisions, improve working memory, and process more information more efficiently, thereby making people smarter.

The brain injected with AI will truly completely change the way and speed of our learning, allowing us to directly upload knowledge in many fields to our brains, including high-skilled fields such as engineering, law, medicine, and science.

It can combine human creativity with the processing power of artificial intelligence, thereby bringing cognitive superpowers to everyone on the planet and opening a new era of human productivity.

But what happens when everyone is as smart as everyone else? How do we evaluate the skilled workforce that may be available at any time by anyone and anywhere?

According to the market theory of wages, how much someone gets paid depends in part on the number of workers available and the number of workers required for the job. This means that artificial intelligence-driven brain interfaces may subvert the fundamentals of the market economy.

Due to the relatively short supply of lawyers and doctors, the salaries of lawyers and doctors are usually higher than those of manual workers, partly because of the number of years of training required to enter these industries and the corresponding value that society assigns to these skills. However, once the market faces a large number of skilled labor, what will happen to their wages? If someone can upload legal or medical knowledge to their brains and understand the same as professionals in these fields, why pay a higher salary?

Of course, certain skills, such as strategic judgment and background understanding, are difficult, if not impossible, to digitize. But even chess and Go, two complex games that require strategic decision-making and foresight, are now conquered by artificial intelligence, which teaches itself how to play chess and defeat some of the best human chess players.

The potential of this technology in terms of liberation and human progress is huge. But we — entrepreneurs, researchers, professionals, policy makers, and industry — cannot ignore social risks.

The biggest issues facing the emerging brain interface industry are security, surveillance, and privacy. How to protect the brain from corruption, viruses and remote control will redefine the entire network security as it evolves into the robot security needed to protect the brain from external intrusions.

Malicious actors will not invade our computer hosts, but can manipulate people to gain economic, political and even romantic advantages. False thoughts or false memories may cause people to act in ways they would not otherwise.

The brain, as the last line of defense for personal privacy, will undoubtedly be attacked. Psychological data collection—or methods of collecting data from a person’s mind—will be able to tap into our inner desires, whether consciously or unconsciously. Therefore, monitoring of access, quality, and safety will play a central role in how we develop, deploy, and protect these technologies without stifling innovation.

Transparency will be another major issue. It seems logical when people should use these artificial intelligence-driven brain interfaces for disclosure. You may need to ask your doctor whether her advice is based on her human knowledge and experience, or a mixture of some type of human and artificial intelligence. The question that reappears is how to ensure supervision without review. As technology accelerates to penetrate human thoughts, where to delimit and how to separate humans from humans may become increasingly difficult to determine.

Cultivating a futuristic know-it-all will also influence our perceptions of social status and power. If you can do any job you like and know nothing about everything in your temple, then our views on job hierarchy and social status, especially in the field of knowledge, may be more decisive from knowing Turn to do it with this knowledge.

Education and educational institutions need to make corresponding adjustments. If knowledge can be uploaded overnight, what will future students do in school? How will universities respond to the influx of already knowledgeable students? How will they be tested?

A knowledge-based economy may give way to an economy that values ​​creativity and interpersonal skills above all else, enabling people to freely establish new connections and discoveries to solve human, social, scientific, and business problems, and discover current new ones. The field of research is invisible to our biological minds.

Biased data that directly enters the minds of thousands of people may also magnify the structural inequality of the entire society by creating psychological bubbles, thereby strengthening or exacerbating existing prejudices or creating new prejudices. Who will be the gatekeeper and curator of these spiritual feeds—cognitive publishers and knowledge providers? How will trust be promoted?

This can easily lead to new social obstacles, unless a strong legislative and ethical framework can be implemented to prevent these risks.

As with any new technology, the cost of cutting-edge artificial intelligence products can be prohibitively high.

This runs the risk of creating a new superclass who can change the structure of elite society forever.

To prevent this from happening, industry leaders need to find a way to provide affordable and easily accessible technology so that cost becomes a discriminatory barrier.

As the technology we use—and how we use it—changes, entrepreneurs need to predict some of these problems by proposing innovative solutions to actively lead the debate. At the very least, industry, government, and civil society should develop an ethical framework to guide the development and use of artificial intelligence-driven brain-computer interfaces.

Ultimately, these new technologies force us to think more deeply about the nature of the human condition. They may mark the evolution of species that have survived due to technological innovation and adaptation. Or, they may mark a more sinister turning point, in which social and cultural norms are destroyed and social equality is undermined.

As with all technologies, the problem is that we-humans-decide how to use it.

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