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Hiện tại, chánh thanh tra thuộc Bộ Nông nghiệp Mỹ vừa thông báo rằng đang tiến hành điều tra về Neuralink, doanh nghiệp khởi nghiệp của Elon Musk, liên quan đến cách đối xử với động vật trong quá trình thí nghiệm hệ thống kết nối não bộ với máy tính.Theo thông tin từ Reuters, ngay cả nhân viên tại Neuralink cũng đưa ra những lo ngại về khả năng họ thực hiện những hành vi ngược đãi hoặc quá mức tàn ác đối với động vật thí nghiệm. Thử nghiệm với tốc độ nhanh chóng dẫn đến nhiều đối tượng thí nghiệm tử vong hoặc phải chịu đựng đau đớn không cần thiết. Reuters cho biết, từ năm 2018 đến nay, Neuralink đã gây tử vong cho khoảng 1.500 động vật thí nghiệm, bao gồm 280 con cừu, lợn và khỉ.
These figures do not indicate a violation of U.S. laws by Neuralink, and the startup itself has passed inspections by the U.S. agriculture department examining the research facility where animal experiments are conducted. The U.S. government's investigation is deployed to determine whether Elon Musk and Neuralink executives made decisions that accelerated the research pace, resulting in unjustifiable deaths of experimental animals.
After its establishment in 2016, there were moments when Elon Musk urged Neuralink staff to 'imagine a time bomb strapped to your head' to speed up the research for a brain-computer interface platform. Musk consistently used examples from other units to pressure his researchers, including the results of a study by Swiss experts, where a long-term paralyzed volunteer could stand up and walk again.
As mentioned, even Neuralink employees express concerns about human errors in the experiment process. Reuters reports that after investigating internal documents, 4 experiments involving 86 pigs and 2 monkeys had negative results due to human mistakes. Neuralink had to redo those experiments, resulting in even greater losses. Another employee angrily mentioned the rushed surgery process of implanting Neuralink chips into the animals' brains, conducted hastily by inexperienced and stressed individuals due to work pressure.
In an experiment, a surgical specialist mistakenly implanted a Neuralink chip into the wrong vertebrae on 2 pigs, an error that wouldn't have occurred if they bothered to... count the vertebrae. As a result, researchers had to euthanize these two pigs to spare them from suffering.
Not long ago, on November 30th, at the Neuralink Show and Tell Fall 2022 event, Elon Musk showcased the capabilities of the brain-machine interface system his engineers are developing. The livestream included a segment demonstrating monkeys connected to Neuralink writing text on a computer using thoughts, what Musk calls 'Telepathic Typing.'
Neuralink's goal is to create a platform connecting the human brain to machines, enabling people with disabilities to interact with others and the outside world through computers. Musk even envisions empowering humans to control technology devices more effectively than with their own hands. You can skip to the 27th minute in the livestream below to see the monkey typing text with thoughts:
Theo Engadget, Digital Trends
