Humans aren’t electronics
| Source: MIT Technology Review AI
Tags: neural prosthetics, brain-computer interfaces, AI governance, cybersecurity, Neuralink
An MIT master's thesis finalist argues that existing legal and engineering frameworks designed for consumer electronics are categorically insufficient for neural prosthetics—and that governance must be redesigned before brain-computer interfaces reach clinical scale.
Details
Strahinja Janjušević, a US Naval Academy computer science and cybersecurity graduate who completed his MIT SM in 2026, placed among three finalists in MIT's Envisioning the Future of Computing Prize with an essay titled 'Guaranteeing Agency in the Age of Neural Prosthetics.'\n\nThe core argument: humans, unlike electronics, have inalienable interests in cognitive autonomy. As brain-computer interfaces advance toward broader clinical deployment—driven by companies like Neuralink and prosthetics research programs—the consent models, cybersecurity standards, and device frameworks designed for separable consumer electronics fail to account for the non-separability and non-reversibility of neural interfaces. A compromised BCI could mean involuntary motor control; a consent model that assumes reversibility doesn't hold when an interface is implanted.\n\nThe essay makes a normative governance argument rather than presenting new empirical research. Its military cybersecurity framing—reflecting the author's Naval Academy background—gives it a national-security angle distinct from most medical ethics discussions of BCIs. The piece is academic, not a technical paper, and does not propose specific legislation or engineering standards.