Step by Step
New technologies for restoring sight to the brain -- but are preceding slowly because regulators are concerned about broader applications down the road, particularly relating with AI, which is a huge concern right now.
Are we headed to the world of Phoenix Dreams and Phoenix in the Machine, or away from it? Regulators' hesitancy about approving more aggressive experimentation does seem to be at least partly from an awareness of the possibility of such applications -- but will putting barricades in the path of developing an adaptive technology actually prevent more cyberpunk spin-offs, or actually make such a future more likely by leading experimenters to go abroad to countries with less restrictive regulatory regimes, and thus less oversight of spinoffs that ordinary people are apt to find unsettling and objectionable?
Are we headed to the world of Phoenix Dreams and Phoenix in the Machine, or away from it? Regulators' hesitancy about approving more aggressive experimentation does seem to be at least partly from an awareness of the possibility of such applications -- but will putting barricades in the path of developing an adaptive technology actually prevent more cyberpunk spin-offs, or actually make such a future more likely by leading experimenters to go abroad to countries with less restrictive regulatory regimes, and thus less oversight of spinoffs that ordinary people are apt to find unsettling and objectionable?