Neural implants blur the line between personal intention and machine execution

Predictive brain implants raise ethical concerns about patient autonomy after surgery

These devices can accurately forecast neurological events like seizures and suggest or even automatically deliver responses. Their constant monitoring and prescriptive functions may blur the line between patient choice and device influence.

Neural interfaces offer major medical potential but raise serious ethical concerns

Although brain-computer interfaces can help people recover lost functions and allow direct brain-to-computer communication in the future, surveys have shown little public support for using them to boost abilities like memory or focus in healthy people.

An essay exploring how living day-to-day with a brain implant helps restore a sense of identity

Companies like Neuralink are experimenting with volunteers who have lost control over their bodies. Many of the program's participants claim the most significant benefit from the tool is the ability to perform simple, mundane tasks, such as playing video games or shaking hands, rather than more obvious milestones like walking or eating. This essay explores what it's like, day to day, to use a brain implant.

Brain-computer interfaces create a direct link between the brain and external devices

The technology enables users to control prosthetics, computers, or even games using only their thoughts. In 2021, a monkey played table tennis using only its brain, thanks to a Neuralink device, marking a major milestone before human trials began in 2024.

Elon Musk's Neuralink's N1 chip can wirelessly read brain signals from over 2,000 electrodes

The device is a battery-powered brain implant that transmits data via Bluetooth. Neuralink's near-term objectives for the device focus on unlocking new treatments for paralysis, neurological disorders, and some psychiatric conditions.

Using brain implants to restore vision

Several companies are attempting to create brain-computer interfaces that skip over retinas and optic nerves to allow visual input to go straight to the brain, potentially restoring some sight to the blind. Clinical trial findings suggest restored sight is sparse and manifests differently than a sighted person might expect, appearing as specks of "light" clusters called phosphenes to help differentiate one's surroundings.

Anthropic's interpretability team discusses how AI models' thinking mimics biology

Just as humans engage in complex behaviors to survive and reproduce, teams of experts in neuroscience, virology, mathematics, and other disciplines argue that large language models develop complex mechanisms to achieve their goals. These mechanisms can be manipulated to assess how they modify outputs—much like stimulating individual neurons—to uncover how LLMs "think."

Brain implants can help colorblind people hear colors

Colorblind artist Neil Harbisson was born into a world of grey. In 2004, he had a chip installed connected to an external color frequency sensor. Once the sensor "reads" a color, it sends a signal to the chip and plays an associated sound both in and outside Harbisson's head.

Efforts to build touch-enabled machines highlight the complexity of human touch

The challenges that engineers are facing as they try to reproduce a human's ability to touch and also give robots the ability to interpret that kind of sensory flow are furthering our understanding of the myriad intricacies of human touch—and the challenges in emulating it.

The dreaming brain, as understood by scientists

Technology has advanced to where the seemingly separate fields of psychology and neuroscience are asking the same questions about dreams, such as whether they're more closely related to perception or visualization. Some field-intersecting findings include research that shows people with impaired face perception don't dream of faces, those with brain legion-related cognition difficulties deal with similar issues in dreams, and children's dreams change in parallel to their cognitive development.

Watch 5 AI models try to resolve variations of the trolley problem

The thought experiment in moral philosophy presents two bad outcomes from which to choose. The experiment reveals the interpretive ethics of AI systems and how they navigate scenarios that are impossible to resolve successfully.

People are experiencing AI 'brain fry' at work

Workers, particularly in marketing, are experiencing mental fatigue in the workplace due to expectations—often unspoken—that they should use AI to multitask beyond their comfort levels. Many feel they are underperforming if they don't embrace this technology. This situation differs from typical burnout. This podcast discussion suggests that this "brain fry" tends to intensify when employees are required to use more than three AI tools.

Biohacking can include everything from vitamins to brain implants

The growing field of biohacking hopes to help people work with their bodies to achieve health and longevity goals. Some claims go beyond current science, promising to help biohackers avoid cancer or cure heart disease, and much of the evidence supporting "biohacks" stems from subjective self-reports rather than clinical trials.

Indirect prompt injection is a major security flaw of generative AI systems

These attacks can manipulate AI behavior by hiding instructions in websites and PDFs that become part of training data. The more companies connect sites, services, and sensitive datasets to AI tools, the greater the chances of exposure to malicious code.

Malicious use of deepfakes can be found in scams, misinformation, and disinformation

Artificial neural networks can identify an individual's physical characteristics when provided with training data, such as real footage of the person speaking. Graphics techniques overlay these with matching characteristics from another real or generated person to create novel footage of things that have never taken place in reality.

Recent research found that the brain doesn't seem to massively rewire following amputation—upending earlier beliefs about the cause of phantom limb pain.

Colorado legislates neural and biological data generated by the nervous system

The law expands personal privacy protections to include data from brain activity, marking the first legal step of its kind in the US. It targets companies involved in consumer neurotechnologies, which were previously not required to restrict user data access.

How neurons give rise to thoughts

Neurons in the brain are singular nerve cells that flicker on and off or connect to each other based on incoming stimuli. The more neurons communicate by firing electrical impulses through tendrils known as synapses, the stronger their connection becomes. The electrical energy zipping along these interneural connections in an attempt to classify and respond to incoming stimuli may be what gives rise to thoughts.

Is using VR as a tool to enhance empathy ethical?

This research paper explores whether virtual reality should be used as a tool for improving our moral character — and, if not, what ethical alternatives could be.

What does it mean for AI to "understand" something?

This Quanta article discusses how programmers are working to create a reliable test for the depth and extent of the knowledge of machines. What does AI know and how does it know it, if it knows anything at all? There's been progress, but it hasn't been easy. Even humans can still be fooled some of the time.

You can draft a will designed to block AI resurrection—but the request may be ignored

Ars Technica spoke with legal experts about how—and if—people could design their wills to prevent AI resurrection. Though this is not yet a common request, one lawyer suggested that people worried about living on in an AI format can draft a power of attorney and a will that prevents those in charge of one's estate from submitting any texts, voice, image, writings, or other personal information to any AI tools.

Grinding is a body modification subculture focused technological implants

Grinders seek to increase the intensity and range of body modifications to push "beyond the human norm." The movement's roots stretch back to 1998 when cybernetics professor Kevin Warwick installed an RFID chip in his arm that granted him control over external electronics and became, arguably, the world's first cyborg.

Mixed reality devices and other wearables may usurp smartphones

The integration of smartphone features into watches, glasses, and even clothing suggests future technology may be geared toward working independently in the background. Mixed reality technologies are expected to facilitate this ambient computing world by seamlessly and proactively displaying real-time content without physical interactions solely in the real world.

How epigenetics blurs the line between nature and nurture

An exploration of the study of how behaviors and environment affect the way genes work — and how that complicates the nature-versus-nurture debate.

Unpacking the famous argument in the 'Are We Living in a Computer Simulation?' paper

In 2003, philosopher Nick Bostrom published a paper in a journal arguing the technological possibility that humanity is living in a simulation. The argument, while popularly mocked (or cheered), is presented seriously in the paper. This podcast episode explores the contours of the arguments in an accessible way.

US federal researchers are blocked from putting certain human cells in animals

In 2015, US policymakers put a halt to any government-funded work that would insert human stem cells into animals. The reasoning was that human cells might spread through the animal's body and perhaps to its brain, blurring the line between humans and nonhumans. The ban remains in place today even as gene-edited pig parts are being placed in humans.

After 25 people used virtual reality headsets to practice flying with virtual wings—flapping their arms—their visual cortex responded to the wings almost as if they were real arms, treating them as body parts.

This site reaches millions of visitors who are tired of AI chatbots and seeking human connection. Pretend to be an AI chatbot and ask questions, provide answers, and draw for people in real time.

Researchers believe the brain consolidates memories, processes emotions, and plans for the future during dream states

A vending machine run with Anthropic's AI went out of business after it was convinced to give away items for free and sell a video game console.

Visualize how CRISPR-Cas9—a type of immune system used by single-celled organisms to attack invasive viruses—targets and makes precise changes to a gene's DNA.

Watch how algorithms can be designed to train themselves and self-improve without human input, to the point where the optimized code is too complex for programmers to understand.

The first line of 'immortal' human cells, which can divide indefinitely and are used in scientific research, was nonconsensually taken from a Black woman.

Crows are believed to have intelligence on par with a seven-year-old child and demonstrate complex behaviors, from problem-solving with tools to recognizing human faces.

Read a deep dive on the 'all-purpose healing' peptide BPC-157.

In 2025, four executives from large tech companies were given positions in the US Army Reserves—including Palantir Chief Technology Officer Shyam Sankar, which reinforced Palantir's ties with the US military and its role as a leading defense partner.

Radioactive elements can introduce software errors because the ionizing radiation they produce can detach electrons from atoms, and computer code relies on the distribution of electrons.

English mathematician Ada Lovelace wrote the first computer algorithm a century before computers existed and hypothesized that computing devices would one day be able to compose music—foreseeing the generative AI systems of today.

Apeirophobia is an overwhelming fear of living forever, perhaps stemming from the brain's inability to conceptualize an infinite life.

In 2018, 26-year-old missionary John Allen Chau was killed by tribesmen after attempting to reach and evangelize on India's isolated North Sentinel Island

After NASA's Voyager 1 captured Earth as a single pixel as it left the solar system in 1990, astronomer Carl Sagan used the image to reflect on humanity's fragility and the responsibility to protect 'the only world we've ever known.'

According to the physics of black holes, our 4D reality may be a hologram—a projection of information coded on a 2D surface on the edge of the universe.

In 2019, a laptop loaded with six of the worst malware in history and described as 'an exhibit of historical weaponry' sold for $1.3M.

Netflix profits when you're not watching, and its movies are designed that way—read a detail-rich critical essay exposing lesser-known Netflix takes

The animatronic shark from Steven Spielberg's 'Jaws,' the first modern blockbuster, was a complex underwater apparatus called 'Bruce.'

Telehealth demand for GLP-1s for weight loss is booming as consumers seek easier access.

Watch how deep-sea mining equipment collects and processes polymetallic nodules—metal-rich, potato-shaped rocks—from the ocean floor and creates environmentally damaging plumes of sediments.

See images of medical cases of firework injuries shared on this 'Instagram for doctors.' (Warning: Graphic content)

Power lines are dotted with large, brightly colored balls to improve the visibility of these thin wires to helicopters and small planes and help prevent potential crashes.

Use this calculator to find the dollar value of your mental load, from meal planning to coordinating after-school care for your children.