Do implanted brain-computer interfaces get put in anyone for reasons other than a medical treatment by 2026?
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8
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2026
28%
chance

Okay, so humanity now has brain-computer interface tech. Humanity also has a huge problem adopting anything weird except in the case where the weird thing is a treatment for some medical condition.

So, do any BCIs get put in people's heads for reasons other than treating a disability/medical condition before the end of 2025?

It doesn't have to be a use-case which wouldn't be more useful for someone with a medical condition - it just needs to be implanted in someone who doesn't have a condition like that. "Moving a mouse on a computer screen" would still pay out YES if it is implanted in someone who wouldn't have any difficulty moving that mouse with their hands.

This does pay out YES if a prospective BCI adopter had to do something whack like how people get medical marijuana cards - where you can get a BCI if you go to a doctor who asks you if you have trouble sleeping sometimes and then writes you a prescription for a BCI if you say "yeah, sometimes." This ambiguity will be resolved if you can get a BCI through a prescription after submitting a questionnaire online - no necessity for a prior diagnosis for which BCIs are the approved/only/best treatment option.

YES if BCIs are an actual elective surgery done on at least one person who just wants a BCI without any specific medical necessity.

Still YES if the receiver of the BCI expected having a BCI to improve their overall life satisfaction/make them more efficient/solve some problem that almost anyone would have in their general life position. Y'know, breast implants treat the dire medical condition of not looking the way you want to in a bikini, but they still are an elective procedure. Ditto for BCIs that solve the dire medical condition of needing to check your watch to know what time it is down to the second.

I am not expecting a lot of ambiguity in this outcome. My basic impression is either BCIs shortly become available as an elective surgery and first one and then a bunch of typical healthy people get a BCI - or it's literally impossible to get a BCI even if it would be really valuable for you to have one unless you first go and dive headfirst into the shallowest part of a swimming pool.

Also resolves YES if Elon asks for forgiveness instead of permission and puts it in a healthy person - leading to a bunch of laws getting passed that mean that one person is now the only person who's likely to have a BCI which wasn't a treatment indicated for by a medical condition.

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https://www.wired.com/story/china-brain-computer-interfaces-neuralink-neucyber-neurotech/

Paywall on this one, I think you get 1 free article a month or something. No idea if shenanigans with cookies/browsers/VPNs work to bypass it. The article seems to claim that China or some Chinese company intend to go for hardware that does cognitive enhancement.

It can be hard to figure out whether markets like this should resolve YES re: events out of China. I have been pondering that conundrum with my multiplex gene editing question as well.

My impression is that China is more willing to do this kind of stuff - but it's way harder to tell if they're actually doing it, or if they're just lying about it for propaganda.

As these type of stories develop and towards the end of 2025, I will make a serious attempt to do some OSINT and actually figure out what is happening in China re: BCIs and gene editing.

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