Slowly but surely, Elon Musk continues to change the world. From Tesla to SpaceX, he’s truly changing how humanity will charge into the future. Most recently, Elon showcased the next steps for Neuralink, his brain-computer interface technology. Neuralink has a lot of potential. For instance, thanks to the internet, it could possibly put humans in Minecraft.
Humans in Minecraft?
If you spend enough time on the internet, you come across some weird ideas. On occasion, these ideas embed themselves in art. Furthermore, satire is a popular and entertaining way to convey artistic ideas on the internet. I came across a particular satirical video while browsing YouTube titled Elon Musk Wants to Upload Humanity Into Minecraft: Here’s How.
The video is very obviously satirical. Within the video, Musks says that humans face an increasingly precarious situation with the environment. True so far. To remedy this, he develops Neuralink, which is also actually happening. Then, Musk says that the only solution is for humanity to upload itself into the abundance of Minecraft via Neuralink. Obviously not happening. But could it?
Minecraft is a block-built open world video game released in 2009. Since its inception ten years ago, it has made history as the number one best-selling game of all time. Because of this, I won’t go into too much detail about the game. Knowledge about Minecraft is pretty common at this point. But knowledge about Neuralink, on the other hand, is not widespread. Who even knows what Neuralink is at this point?
What is Neuralink?
When Elon Musk appeared as a guest on the Joe Rogan Experience, he identified a particular problem with the human ability to put knowledge into the world. Humans have an output problem, according to Elon. To take information out of the human mind and communicate it digitally requires we speak, type on a keyboard, or use our thumbs on a touch screen. According to Elon, there’s a bandwidth problem here.
To solve this issue, Elon Musk is developing Neuralink. The Neuralink chip is designed to detect electrical action potentials in the human brain called spikes. If all goes to plan, this means that humans will be able to control keyboards, computer mice, and touch screens with their minds via the small wires threaded throughout the brain.
Musk hopes to begin human trials by the end of 2020. So far, he’s successfully integrated Neuralink into the minds of 19 rats. Unless the FDA decides to stand in the way of scientific advancement, this is only the beginning.
Elon Musk Living Inside Minecraft
The video suggests that since Neuralink aims to make humans symbiotic with our soon-to-come AI overlords (who I welcome, by the way), we can just upload whole human entities into Minecraft’s digital system. While this could be theoretically possible at one point, considering the rapid rate of technological development, I don’t see this happening anytime soon. Elon Musk hasn’t announced any plans to put consciousness in computers. Rather, he simply aims to tie them together.
As I mentioned before, Neuralink will hopefully allow humans to use a keyboard and mouse with just their mind. Pair this with contemporary virtual reality technology, and one could have a 100% immersive Minecraft gaming experience. But this is still down the road.
So no, you won’t be able your consciousness into the blocky world in the near future. But if Neuralink becomes widespread, you’ll be a whole lot closer to living inside of Minecraft.
