Elon Musk và Sam Altman lao vào cuộc chiến kiểm soát tư tưởng nhân loại bằng công nghệ đọc sóng não

• Elon Musk và Sam Altman – từng là đồng sáng lập OpenAI năm 2015 – hiện đang đối đầu gay gắt không chỉ về AI, mà còn trong lĩnh vực giao diện não-máy tính (BCI).

• Mối quan hệ rạn nứt từ năm 2018 khi Musk rời OpenAI, cáo buộc công ty này đã phản bội mục tiêu phi lợi nhuận ban đầu và “bán mình” cho Microsoft.

• Musk thành lập xAI vào năm 2023, trong khi Altman dẫn dắt OpenAI ra mắt GPT-5 năm 2025. Hai người liên tục công kích nhau trên truyền thông và mạng xã hội.

• Cuộc cạnh tranh giờ mở rộng sang công nghệ điều khiển thiết bị bằng suy nghĩ, với Musk dẫn đầu qua Neuralink, công ty đã bắt đầu tuyển tình nguyện viên cấy chip tại Anh và có định giá 9 tỷ USD.

• Altman được cho là đang hậu thuẫn đối thủ mới của Neuralink – Merge Labs, có thể nhận tới 250 triệu USD tài trợ từ OpenAI và các nhà đầu tư khác.

• Công nghệ BCI có tiềm năng giúp người bại liệt điều khiển máy tính, chơi game, điều khiển cánh tay robot... nhưng vẫn còn cách xa khả năng ứng dụng đại trà.

• Theo chuyên gia đạo đức số Catherine Flick, cuộc đua này mang tính biểu tượng hơn là phục vụ cộng đồng. Nó phản ánh “tâm lý cứu thế” của giới tỷ phú công nghệ muốn điều hướng tương lai nhân loại.

• Flick cảnh báo đây có thể là cuộc chơi "đầy tham vọng của những người da trắng siêu giàu", gây nguy cơ chia rẽ xã hội giữa người có khả năng chi trả công nghệ và người bị bỏ lại phía sau.

• Rủi ro tiềm ẩn bao gồm việc đọc và khai thác suy nghĩ người dùng, đặc biệt khi kết hợp với AI có thể gây "loạn thần AI", theo Mustafa Suleyman (Microsoft).

• Flick còn chỉ ra rằng một phần động cơ của Altman có thể là muốn phá thế độc quyền của Musk hơn là vì sự phát triển lâu dài của BCI.

📌 Elon Musk và Sam Altman đang biến công nghệ giao diện não-máy tính (BCI) thành đấu trường mới, nơi lợi ích y học bị lu mờ bởi tham vọng kiểm soát tương lai và tư tưởng con người. Neuralink trị giá 9 tỷ USD đối đầu Merge Labs với khoản đầu tư tiềm năng 250 triệu USD từ OpenAI. Dư luận lo ngại công nghệ này sẽ phục vụ giới giàu, bỏ lại phần còn lại của nhân loại trong kỷ nguyên kiểm soát bằng sóng não.

https://www.independent.co.uk/tech/elon-musk-sam-altman-ai-b2814340.html

Elon Musk and Sam Altman are fighting for one thing – the power to control our thoughts
Since falling out with each other, the two tech egos have clashed constantly, and now they’ve turned that rivalry into harnessing our very own brainwaves. The results could be terrifying, says Chris Stokel-Walker
Tuesday 26 August 2025 13:55 EDT
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OpenAI launches GPT-5, its first flagship update to ChatGPT model in years
Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, and Elon Musk, the owner of X, used to be close to one another. The two operated in the same Silicon Valley social circles and even came together to found a company. But their dispute has since turned sour and – given their interests in a new brain-harnessing technology – it could affect us all.
The enmity between Altman and Musk dates back a decade, to their co-founding of OpenAI, the AI lab now best known for being behind ChatGPT, at an academic conference in 2015. The founding principle of the company was to develop AI to benefit humanity – something Musk believes that the firm went back on, thus his departure in 2018. In the years since, and particularly since the release of ChatGPT in November 2022, Musk has looked on with suspicion.
As ChatGPT became more popular, Musk felt the need to compete. He launched xAI the following July with the stated aim “to understand the true nature of the universe”. Less than a year later, Musk filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, alleging it had strayed from its original non-profit mission and had been “transformed into a closed-source de facto subsidiary of the largest technology company: Microsoft”.
Since then, the two tech egos have clashed constantly, including earlier this month, when the pair battled over claims of bias and manipulation by Apple towards their respective AI platforms. Musk claimed Apple was showing preferential treatment for OpenAI’s ChatGPT in the App Store, allegedly making it impossible for any other AI company – including his own xAI and its chatbot Grok – to reach the top of the App Store rankings.
It was a claim quickly proven false, including by Musk’s own Grok chatbot fact-checker. In response, Altman hit back, alleging that Musk manipulates the algorithms and features of X (formerly Twitter) to benefit his companies. Among all the arguments were a fair few personal shots, too.
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Now the competition has moved beyond AI towards BCI – brain-computer interface technology. The technology involves implanting a chip in the brain that then uses tiny threads to interpret brain signals and control external devices. People in the US who have been paralysed and given such chips have been able to control computer cursors, play video games and edit YouTube videos solely with their thoughts.
It's an exciting new world, but it’s harnessing a longstanding technology. “Reading brain waves has been done for a long time with EEG [machines] in a medical setting, wiring people up to a machine and then measuring that,” says Allan Ponniah, a consultant plastic surgeon at the Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust and CEO of Cogitat, a company developing the technology that can decode brain signals. “But the problem was always that the signal was very noisy, and to get a clear signal usually takes several hours with an individual having to identify which signal pertains to what.”
To counter that, a more invasive technology was needed. However, that more invasive route, which is the type proposed by Neuralink, a BCI company founded by Musk in 2016, is seen as being more complicated to implement and having a longer lead time for bringing products to market.
Last month, Neuralink sought to register patients in Great Britain who would volunteer to have devices implanted. While Ponniah insists that “it is quite far into the future in terms of how far away it is from reality,” Neuralink has gone from strength to strength in under a decade, and is currently valued at $9bn, after raising $650m in June.
Sam Altman is reportedly poised to back a Neuralink competitor called Merge Labs
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Sam Altman is reportedly poised to back a Neuralink competitor called Merge Labs (Getty)
But Neuralink could soon have competition. OpenAI’s Altman is reportedly poised to back a Neuralink competitor called Merge Labs, which could also receive up to $250m of funding from OpenAI and other investors. It would be a significant shift for Altman, who had previously invested in Neuralink.
The two billionaires investing their time, effort and money into BCI tech is good news, says Ponniah. “There's a huge gap [between hope and reality], and that huge gap can’t even be investigated without a huge investment.”
Even then, Ponniah believes it’s unlikely to come to fruition in the way the tech titans want. To go beyond the noble goal of bringing some control of their body back to paraplegics, which Neuralink has already done in part, would require more mainstream use – turning people into bionic men and women.
“It would have to be able to pull a robot arm or control something like that, or control an exoskeleton,” says Ponniah. “It would have to get to that level, and I don't think we’re anywhere near that.”
So why are Musk and Altman stumping up the cash regardless? “Musk wants to go to Mars as well,” says Ponniah, pointing to other apparently outlandish goals.
Elon Musk pictured in the White House in May this year
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Elon Musk pictured in the White House in May this year (AFP/Getty)
But for Catherine Flick, a professor of digital ethics at the University of Staffordshire, there’s more at stake than simply “can it be done”. “It’s one of the next spaces this whole hype machine, hype-industrial complex can head towards,” she says.
Flick points out that the current crop of large language model-powered AI tools are not making the sorts of massive gains that would justify the cash being ploughed into them. “They’ve got to keep investors throwing money at them, and shareholders thinking that they’re worth something,” she explains. “So they need to pivot. And I think this is one of the spaces they’re pivoting into.”
She also thinks that a sense of wanting control is behind the move towards BCI. “It’s the next step for this weird kind of cult-like religious experience that these men are having, where they feel like they're the saviours,” she says. “They’re the prophets of where humanity is going to be, and they want to use technology, they want to steer the technology, and they want to be in control of that.”
In the future, adherents of BCI imagine it could push beyond its current medical applications, where it helps restore function to people who are paralysed, and BCI could find its way into mainstream consumer products and reshape daily life. In practical terms, this could mean controlling everyday devices such as smartphones, computers and even vehicles purely by thought.
Musk has been taking aim at ChatGPT since its launch in 2022
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Musk has been taking aim at ChatGPT since its launch in 2022 (AP)
Of course, that comes with potential downsides: if brain signals can be tracked, some users may worry their inner neuroses could be, too. Mustafa Suleyman, the head of Microsoft’s AI division, has warned of the risks of “AI psychosis” as people become addicted to interacting with AI chatbots. BCI could, in theory, take this a step further. That’s if you can afford it, of course, and if the tech ever leaves the medical labs, it’s likely to be costly, and could split society between people who can afford it and those who can’t.
Yet beyond that, there is also the personal prodding and probing that has typified the interactions between Altman and Musk. “I think he just likes to poke Elon,” says Flick. “I think that Sam maybe is trying to hasten his downfall in some ways by putting some competition into the space so that it’s more obvious how badly this is going,” she says.
The fear Catherine Flick has is that these are not primary motivators to develop BCI technology that benefits everyone who would need it, or even the average, everyday user. If one party in the BCI race is simply doing so to spite a longstanding enemy, it doesn’t bode well for the future development of the technology.
“There’s a lot of white billionaire class superiority built into it,” says Flick. “It's very much dividing the haves from the have-nots.”