Fear not, ANC will save us from robots

American regulators have given permission for Elon Musk’s Neuralink implantable brain-computer interface to start human testing, which means we might soon be able to fulfil the evolutionary potential of a million years and start arguing with strangers on the internet inside our own heads.

Some experts have urged caution, reminding us of our tech overlords’ tendency to oversell the capabilities of their new nightmare machines, whether self-driving cars or the plagiarism combine harvesters we’re being told to call artificial intelligence (AI).

Certainly, if Neuralink goes as well as Twitter has gone since Musk bought it, it may still prove cheaper and more effective simply to drill a hole in your skull with a medieval trepan and then carefully tap your cellphone into place using a mallet.

Nevertheless, given the therapeutic possibilities of digitalorganic interfaces, one can understand why some might get excited about a technology that could one day allow people trapped inside their bodies to swim effortlessly through an infinitely large and abundant digital ocean.

Where things get a tad dystopian, though, is the bit where the medical gives way to the metaphysical, with Musk describing the technology as a means of ultimately downloading human consciousness, with the Neuralink becoming “the backup drive for your nonphysical being, your digital soul”.

Now I’m all for the future, especially the part where nobody works and we’re all kept as pets by doting robots, but I’m not sure I’m ready to live — or at least be stored

— in a world in which my immortal soul gets deleted forever because I forgot to move R99 between accounts and my debit order bounced.

I’m certainly not ready to discover the budget options for those of us who can’t afford full immortality, where in return for big discounts you get telemarketing calls broadcast directly into your subconscious for six hours a day, or can only access memories of your wedding once you’ve listened to a podcast in which three angry young men explain to each other why people working two jobs for minimum wages have a duty to defend billionaires from the leftist mob.

No, it’s all getting very B-grade science-fiction-y, very more likely to involve pressing quickly.“Once, the afterlife involved trying to save your soul so you could go and play a harp on a cloud. Soon, it’s

Save Soul” on your phone so you can keep harping on in the cloud.

And this is to say nothing of the all new, all horrifying versions of existential dread we’re about to invent. After all, when death stops being nonnegotiable and starts being an inconvenience contingent on your bank balance and technology you neither own nor understand, that’s probably the moment the rich retreat en masse to safe rooms where they will spend the next 200 years yelling “Save Consciousness!” every 30 seconds while obsessing over all the ways their download might fritz out.

What a mercy, then, that I don’t have to worry about any of this stuff, thanks to an organisation dedicated to keeping South Africans safe from the onrushing technological ravages of the future: the ANC.

While the rest of the world has to worry about generative AI and whether the robots will turn on their creators, I can rest safe in the knowledge that killer computers such as HAL-9000 can only read your lips and push you out of the airlock if the electricity is on, and that isn’t going to happen until you’ve reached Jupiter and are halfway home.

The plot of something like Terminator, likewise, falls apart spectacularly the moment you set it in SA, and not just because a timetravelling robot would be flummoxed by arriving here, where the calendar says 2023, the national grid insists it’s 2002, and the governing party lives in 1968 and features members whose relationship with the poor is from the 1300s and whose approach to maintaining infrastructure is from 900AD.

Of course, a malevolent robot could always strike it lucky. For example, its belligerent, monosyllabic affect and general hatred for humanity might get it employed as an ANC municipal manager.

In reality, though, the most likely outcome is that it would be discovered by cable thieves who would reduce it in seconds to nothing but a single, angrily glaring red eye, gently rolling down a gutter.

No, the future had better stay the hell away from SA while the ANC is in charge. Still, there’s a part of me that can’t help wondering how our current crop in government would use something like Neuralink.

Not that they need any help with immortality: they cracked that code years ago, as evidenced by Shabir Shaik, whose continuing miraculous victory over imminent death is now in its 14th year.

Nevertheless, I suspect many in the ANC would beat a path to Musk’s door. Thabo Mbeki, for example, freed of constraints such as page lengths and the 80-year lifespan of his readers, could produce trillionword revisionist histories at the speed of thought.

Cyril Ramaphosa could simulate what it feels like to be a respected president. And Fikile Mbalula could finally stand in a simulated stadium, full of simulated fans, with a simulated Beyonce murmuring in his ear that the educated people are wrong and that he is, in fact, very wise and good at his job.

Hell, it might even convince them to generate some electricity. Brave new worlds, indeed.

THE FUTURE HAD BETTER STAY THE HELL AWAY FROM SA WHILE THE ANC IS IN CHARGE