China unveils guidelines for brain chip research

Aiming to keep pace with what American entrepreneur Elon Musk’s Neuralink has achieved, China has recently unveiled a set of ethical guidelines for companies wishing to do invasive brain chip research on humans,.

For example, the Artificial Intelligence Ethics Subcommittee of the National Science and Technology Ethics Committee, a unit of China’s State Council, says in the guidelines that technology firms must have written consent, either from those who plan to receive implanted brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) in their heads or from their guardians.

The guidelines came after Neuralink successfully implanted a brain chip to a person for the first time in January.

Musk said on Monday that the human patient seems to have made a full recovery from the surgery and is able to move a mouse around the screen just by thinking.

Last September, Neuralink said it had received approval from US regulators to recruit human beings for the trial of its brain chip experiments. The patient, whose identity has not been released, is believed to be a person with quadriplegia due to cervical spinal cord injury or to amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), also known as Lou Gehrig’s Disease.

Chinese President Xi Jinping said earlier this month that the country should build “new productive forces” to upgrade its manufacturing sectors. According to the plan, China will nurture its own technology firms and research institutions that are engaged in work on artificial intelligence, the next iteration of the internet (termed the “metaverse”) and the making of humanoid robots and BCIs.

China’s Neuralink

There are three types of BCIs in the markets. Non-invasive BCIs refer to headbands that detect brainwave signals. Invasive BCIs require brain surgery