Pulse
01 Dec 2025

In January last year, Scientific American reported that the billionaire technologist Elon Musk claimed that his company Neuralink had implanted its brain-computer interface (BCI) into a human for the first time. Musk wrote on his social media platform X (formerly Twitter) that the recipient was recovering well.

Neuralink’s intention to develop BCIs that can be widely available commercially to the general public is openly stated on its website:

We’re aiming to design a fully implantable, cosmetically invisible brain-computer interface to let you control a computer or mobile device anywhere you go. Micro-scale threads would be inserted into areas of the brain that control movement. Each thread contains many electrodes and connects them to an implant called the ‘Link’.

We expect that as out devices continue to scale, and as we learn to communicate with more areas of the brain, we will discover new, non-medical applications for our BCIs. Neuralink’s long term vision is to create BCIs that are sufficiently safe and powerful that the general population would want to have them.

Elon Musk and Neuralink are not the only ones pursuing the development of non-medical BCIs. For example, the entrepreneur Bryan Johnson has invested USD100 million to launch a corporation named Kernel. ‘In building Kernel,’ says Johnson, ‘my objective is to radically improve humans in every imaginable and unimaginable way.’

There are many current and potential medical applications of BCIs.

BCIs such as the BrainGate system can help individuals with severe paralysis communicate through brain-controlled typing or speech synthesis devices. Brain-controlled prosthetics, developed by research institutions such as USA’S Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA) and Johns Hopkins, have enabled amputees to control robotic limbs.

BCIs such as the Argus II Retinal Prosthesis System provide artificial vision to blind individuals by converting camera images into electrical signals processed by the brain.

Other potential applications include memory restoration, mental health treatment, and pain management, making BCI research an important and worthwhile enterprise.

However, BCIs also have numerous non-medical applications, such as in gaming and entertainment, military and defense, and human augmentation.

These new technologies are seen as part of what Klaus Schwab of the World Economic Forum (WEF) has called the Fourth Industrial Revolution, which many are eager to welcome and embrace.

However, as writers such as Patricia Engler have pointed out, the tantalising potentials of BCIs and enhancement BCIs (eBCIs) have often led scientists and stakeholders to ignore their darker implications.

What are some of the concerns that the development of BCIs have raised for ethicists and theologians?

An obvious concern has to do with privacy. Several international law frameworks exist today which protect an individual’s right to keep one’s thoughts and opinions private.

The introduction of BCIs to the general population raises the risks of violating this fundamental human right. Emma Gordon and Anil Seth cite the example of ‘brainjacking’:

… the threat of ‘brainjacking’ – where bad actors attempt to gain unauthorised (at least indirect) access to what you are thinking by gaining access to neural data and data pertaining to which thought commands are implemented by the eBCI, or to your neural data more generally.

They further point out:

Such data could evidently be used for all kinds of nefarious purposes: knowledge of your emotional state could be used to exploit marketing opportunities, or—more dramatically – knowledge of intentions could lead to blackmail.

Such data could also be exploited for coercion and manipulation.

Gordon and Seth also raised an interesting issue about how the widespread use of BCIs in society may result in the artificial homogenising of culture. This is how they present the potential problem:

As users become used to thinking in a particular way in order to effectively utilise eBCI technology (and they may well be forced to do so, in order to not fall behind economically …), then these patterns of thinking may become habitual and present more pervasively in users’ mental lives. The upshot would be less cognitive diversity over time – and at worst a kind of mental monoculture.

This could, in turn, stifle creativity and innovation in culture and society.

A simultaneous and quite opposite phenomenon that may emerge as an outcome of the pervasive use of BCIs is inequality in society. This is especially true if certain BCIs are prohibitively expensive and out of reach for the majority of the population that needs them.

BCIs may also contribute to societal segregation and inequality if they are used for enhancement and not for therapeutic or medical purposes. They could give rise to a class of ‘augmented’ humans, an elite group with superior abilities. This would exacerbate the already serious problem of discrimination in society and the social problems it spawns.

These issues are not the concerns of Christian ethicists only. They should also be questions that scientists, entrepreneurs, stakeholders and the general public should discuss.

However, there is another question that should be addressed – perhaps the most fundamental question of all. It has to do with how the pervasive use of BCIs would not only alter our humanity but also change the way in which we understand ourselves. Put differently, it has to do with how BCIs change the way in which we understand what it means to be human.

The integration of BCIs into human cognition and bodily functions may compromise the integrity of the human person. This is especially because BCIs are connected to other machines such as the robotic arm, and not just a computer.

The cyborgization of the human being presents some pressing concerns such as the erosion of human identity. When more and more technology is integrated into the human being – whether in the form of neural implants or artificial limbs – the distinction between humans and machines becomes blurred.

As alluded to above, the use of BCIs may also compromise responsibility and freewill, which are so integral to being human. In addition, there is also a possibility that BCIs would cheapen human achievements, that is, make the individual’s performance less valuable and meaningful because it requires less effort.

These are important considerations. While the developments of the medical use of BCIs must be indeed be celebrated, society must never lose sight of these broader questions and concerns.

As with many other aspects of science and technology, the Christian position regarding BCIs is not outright prohibition, but careful and responsible stewardship.

Dr Roland Chia is Chew Hock Hin Professor at Trinity Theological College (Singapore) and Theological and Research Advisor of the Ethos Institute for Public Christianity.