A new nationwide poll conducted on likely voters in America revealed that there is widespread worry about future technology that fuses tech with the human body resulting in a biomedical upgrade that would supposedly improve people's way of life but place them at risk for totalitarian control due to data gathering.
The poll revealed that people are worried about the technology being developed by the likes of the World Economic Forum, led by Klaus Schwab, Tesla and Space X led by Elon Musk, and Facebook and Meta's Mark Zuckerberg.
According to CBN News, the Zogby poll asked respondents the question "Is it the next level of human evolution/life-improving or do you worry it will bring humanity under totalitarian control?" with regards to Musk's prediction about having a microchip embedded on the human brain. Up to 77% said they worry "microchip implants will be used to usher in a never-before-seen level of totalitarian control." Only 10% said they believed it would improve the lives of people.
The poll also asked about Schwab's prediction that humans will merge with Artificial Intelligence or AI in the future. When asked if respondents were interested in merging with AI or if they believed it would improve their lives, about 7 out of 10 or 67% said they prefer to remain human and "not merge with AI," while about one-fifth or 18% said the merger would bring humanity to "new heights of prosperity."
According to Zogby Managing Director Jeremy Zogby, the age group that showed the most support for a human to AI merger was the 18 to 25 group. He posited, "Does this signal a rift in our species down the road? When young adults mature, will as many still be willing to take a leap of faith towards tech-driven evolution? It is likely to become the top issue of the day in the near future."
This is not the first time people have considered microchips being embedded into one's body. In 2018, Yahoo! News reported that in Sweden, some citizens had a tiny microchip the size of a grain of rice embedded in their skin to replace the need to carry train tickets, credit cards, and more. The project were first used in Sweden as early as 2015, "initially confidentially," the report said. Up to 3,000 Swedes agreed to have the microchip injected at the time.
More recently, Swedes used microchips, containing their COVID vaccination information, embedded on their hands. Conservatives and religious advocates called it the beginning of the mark of the beast.
In the U.S., medical researchers confirmed in Spring 2021 that they have successfully created a sci-fi inspired microchip that is capable of detecting COVID-19 when inserted underneath the skin. The Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) was responsible for the tech that could detect diseases such as COVID in the human body. The microchip was specifically designed to monitor a person's health.
Last week, Musk's brain chip startup company Neuralink, which was established in 2016, began recruiting for a "clinical trial director" to facilitate human testing, The Guardian reported. The job description said that the "clinical trial director" will be tasked to "work closely with some of the most innovative doctors and top engineers, as well as [work] with Neuralink's first clinical trial participants."
