Seminar report on "Brain Chips"

Computer scientists predict that within the next twenty years neural interfaces will be designed that will not only increase the dynamic range of senses, but will also enhance memory and enable "cyberthink" — invisible communication with others. This technology will facilitate consistent and constant access to information when and where it is needed.
               The ethical evaluation in this paper focuses on issues of safety and informed consent, issues of manufacturing and scientific responsibility, anxieties about the psychological impacts of enhancing human nature, worries about possible usage in children, and most troubling, issues of privacy and autonomy.
            In as much as this technology is fraught with perilous implications for radically changing human nature, for invasions of privacy and for governmental control of individuals, public discussion of its benefits and burdens should be initiated, and policy decisions should be made as to whether its development should be proscribed or regulated, rather than left to happenstance, experts and the vagaries of the commercial market.
             Brain chips are made with a view to enhance the memory of human beings, to help paralyzed patients, and are also intended to serve military purposes. It is likely that implantable computer chips acting as sensors, or actuators, may soon assist not only failing memory, but even bestow fluency in a new language, or enable "recognition" of previously unmet individuals. The progress already made in therapeutic devices, in prosthetics and in computer science indicates that it may well be feasible to develop direct interfaces between the brain and computers.
          This technology is only under developmental phase, although many implants have already been made on the human brain for experimental purposes. Let’s take a look at this developing technology. 

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