Most Americans don't mind implanting a chip in their brains.

 

Perhaps the appearance of the first superhumans is just around the corner. According to a new study, many are so good at interacting closely with technology that they are willing to live with a chip in their heads.

A survey conducted by the Pew Research Center in March 2022 showed the attitude of Americans to advanced technologies: brain chips, artificial intelligence technologies and unmanned vehicles.

One of the findings of a survey of 10,260 U.S. adults was that Americans tend to view technology more positively if they know they can control it on their own.

Survey data show that when it comes to chips to improve the cognitive abilities of the brain, 78% of respondents are against implantation. But if you give them the opportunity to disable such a chip, 59% of survey participants consider the technology more acceptable.

Interest in chips implanted in the brain has increased in recent years thanks to Elon Musk's Neuralink startup. The company is developing a special sensor that is implanted in the brain and is able to transmit brain signals to an electronic device via Bluetooth. It is believed that this will make it possible to control gadgets with the help of brain impulses. Elon Musk intends to conduct clinical trials of brain chip technology on humans in late 2022.

The startup's trials have been criticized. For example, in February 2022, doctors accused Neuralink specialists of cruelty to experimental macaques. According to doctors, the animals were used to test the chips, not giving them proper care.

Earlier, Musk said that Neuralink technology could eventually be used to enhance human abilities. It could potentially allow people to store and play back their memories, just like when watching videos on a computer. However, many scientists have previously argued that such technology may either not appear at all, or appear only in a few decades.

The main problem now is to decipher all the information that the human brain transmits.

Now brain chips are mainly used in clinical trials to restore lost functions and sensations in humans. For example, chips are implanted in patients with Parkinson's disease or spinal injuries. Potentially, the chips could stay inside the body for years like pacemakers. You can't disable them in most cases.

As for brain chips to improve human cognitive abilities, society fears about the safety of such technologies. According to a Pew Research Center survey, about 83% of Americans said that testing brain chips on humans should meet higher standards than testing existing medical devices implanted in the body.

Fear of drones

People are afraid of other modern technologies. Thus, 87% of respondents said that higher standards should be set for testing unmanned vehicles compared to testing conventional cars.

According to the survey, Americans are suspicious of the idea of a self-driving car: 44% of respondents said that the use of such cars is a "bad idea", while only 26% believe the opposite. Another 29% are not sure about the correct use of technology.

However, seven out of ten Americans would treat self-driving cars with greater confidence if they had visible markings or an identification function for human drivers who are also on the road.

In addition, 67% of Americans believe that self-driving cars would be more acceptable if they used dedicated lanes.

Overall, Americans' opinions about chips, self-driving cars, and other kinds of technologies that use artificial intelligence haven't changed much over the years. For example, according to the survey, Americans remain concerned that any AI-based invention would subsequently destroy jobs.

At the same time, society's perception of technology companies has changed. Despite the fact that the PRC survey did not mention companies like Google or Apple, some questions indirectly concerned IT giants.

It turned out that 57% of respondents are against the fact that social networks use facial recognition programs to identify people in photos. And 86% of respondents belonging to the US Republican Party believe that IT companies use artificial intelligence for censorship, and not to detect and remove disinformation.