Bryan Johnson, an entrepreneur who in 2013 made a bundle by selling his company, Braintree, to Paypal for $800 million. Last year, he used $100 million of that to start Kernel, a company that is exploring how to build and implant chips into the skulls of those with some form of neurological disease and dysfunction, to reprogram their neural networks to restore some of their lost abilities.
When asked why humans have to manipulate their brains, Jonhnson replies:
Humans currently reign supreme on planet Earth, because we are the most powerful form of intelligence. So therefore, we decide who we eat, who we have as pets, who we allow to go extinct, who is saved, who is neutered, who can reproduce. We are currently developing a new form of intelligence in the form of AI that is increasingly capable, whether it’s conscious or not. For humans to be relevant in a matter of decades there is no choice other than to unlock our brains and intervene in our cognitive evolution. If you try to imagine a world where we are happy 30, 40, 50 years from now, there is no version of that future where we have not been able to figure out how to read and write our neural code.