Investors' dumb transhumanist ideas setting back neurotech progress, say experts (www.theguardian.com)

This year brought real neurotech wins — tiny implants that decoded the “inner speech” of paralyzed patients and an eye implant that restored vision — but experts warn that headline-grabbing transhumanist narratives from high‑profile backers are distorting progress. Tech magnates such as Elon Musk and Sam Altman promote ideas like telepathy, memory “uploading” and human-machine merging, which researchers say are scientifically speculative or implausible in the foreseeable future. That hype risks skewing public understanding, investor priorities and regulatory responses away from near‑term clinical benefits. Researchers outline three practical categories: medical implants (promising but tightly regulated and still early-stage), consumer wearables (EEG earbuds, wristbands with noisy, low‑replication signals) and science‑fiction efforts (brain‑upload startups, invasive mass‑use implants). Experts caution wearables’ neural signals are noisy and unreliable for individual surveillance, yet workplace misuse and privacy/legal fallout remain plausible. The key implication for AI/ML: focus funding and public debate on validated, therapeutic neurointerfaces and robust signal‑processing, rather than speculative mind‑reading fantasies — otherwise regulation driven by fear or hype could hinder technologies that actually help patients.