This prospect always struck me as super dystopian. What’s in it for them? If a company is doing this, it’s got a for-profit motive, so what are they gaining? Presumably they’re using you to perform some function some percentage of the time - using your brainpower to solve some problem somewhere. But what laws govern this? It’d be a new thing, especially if you were beta testing it. Do you count as a human anymore, for the purpose of laws dictating what they can and can’t do with you? Even if you do, who’s going to go to court and fight for you? What if the funding on the project gets cut? What if they decide they’re done with keeping you hooked up to VR, and decide to just make you perform whatever service they’re using your brain for, 24/7, in perpetuity? What if you’re in pain, all the time, or arguably worse, what if they can make you experience pain if you don’t do what they tell you to do?
It’s fun to think about the utopian idea of being a brain in a jar with no responsibilities or physical maladies, existing in cyberspace forever, but the sad reality is, that isn’t the world we live in.
This prospect always struck me as super dystopian. What’s in it for them? If a company is doing this, it’s got a for-profit motive, so what are they gaining? Presumably they’re using you to perform some function some percentage of the time - using your brainpower to solve some problem somewhere. But what laws govern this? It’d be a new thing, especially if you were beta testing it. Do you count as a human anymore, for the purpose of laws dictating what they can and can’t do with you? Even if you do, who’s going to go to court and fight for you? What if the funding on the project gets cut? What if they decide they’re done with keeping you hooked up to VR, and decide to just make you perform whatever service they’re using your brain for, 24/7, in perpetuity? What if you’re in pain, all the time, or arguably worse, what if they can make you experience pain if you don’t do what they tell you to do?
It’s fun to think about the utopian idea of being a brain in a jar with no responsibilities or physical maladies, existing in cyberspace forever, but the sad reality is, that isn’t the world we live in.