Meta AI chief Alexandr Wang said that he is willing to wait to have kids till Elon Musk’s Neuralink ...

Alexandr Wang, Meta’s AI chief and highest paid employee, has said he is willing to wait to have children until brain-computer interfaces such as Elon Musk’s Neuralink become more advanced. Wang made the comments during an appearance on the Shawn Ryan Show last year while discussing the future of AI, human development and brain-computer interfaces. He said he wants to wait until Neuralink or similar technology “start working” before having kids. “I want to wait to have kids until we figure out how Neuralink or other … start working,” Alexandr Wang said during the podcast.Why Alexandr Wang wants to wait for Neuralink before having kidsWang’s reason is linked to how he believes children’s brains could adapt to the technology. During the podcast, he explained that the first several years of a child’s life are an important period for brain development. He argued that the high level of neuroplasticity during childhood could allow children who grow up with brain-computer interfaces to use the technology in ways that adults may not be able to.“In your first like seven years of life, your brain is more neuroplastic than at any other point in your life, like by an order of magnitude,” Wang said. He then compared the idea with how children develop their ability to process information from their senses.Alexandr Wang described a case involving children born with cataracts. He said that if the cataracts prevent a child from seeing during the early years of development, removing them later may not allow the child to develop normal vision because the brain did not learn to process signals from the eyes during the key period.His view is that a similar effect could eventually apply to brain-computer interfaces. “When we get Neuralink and we get these other technologies, kids who are born with them are going to learn how to use them in like, crazy, crazy ways,” Wang said.Why Alexandr Wang believes children could adapt betterWang said a brain-computer interface could eventually become integrated into the way a person's brain works if it is introduced early enough. He believes this could be different for adults who receive an implant later in life.“It'll be a actually like a part of their brain in a way that it'll never be true for an adult who gets like a neural link or whatever, hooked into their brain,” he said.The Meta AI chief also connected his thinking about brain-computer interfaces to the rapid development of artificial intelligence. “I believe a lot in AI,” Wang said, adding that he expects AI to become “smarter and smarter, more and more capable, more and more powerful.”He said AI could eventually take different forms, including robots and other systems.Get the latest technology news and updates. Download the TOI App.