Who Controls the Mind? What Neuralink’s Brain Implant Means for Our Communities

A human being now has a computer chip embedded in their brain. The headlines called it a revolutionary milestone. And perhaps it is. But before we celebrate, our communities have questions that the press releases did not answer — questions about consent, access, risk, and what it means to merge human consciousness with infrastructure owned by one of the wealthiest men on earth. These are not anti-science questions. They are the questions of people who have been here before.

What Neuralink Is — and What It Claims to Offer

Neuralink is a neurotechnology company founded by Elon Musk in 2016. Its flagship device — a small chip surgically implanted into the brain — contains over a thousand electrodes distributed across thin, flexible threads. Those electrodes detect and record the electrical signals neurons produce when they communicate with one another. The data is transmitted wirelessly to a computer, which interprets those signals as commands.

The stated purpose is genuinely meaningful: to give people with paralysis, ALS, and other neurodegenerative conditions the ability to control computers, communication devices, and eventually prosthetic limbs using thought alone. In early 2024, Neuralink announced its first human implantation. The patient — a man with quadriplegia — was reportedly able to control a computer cursor with his thoughts. The FDA had granted Neuralink a Breakthrough Device designation, allowing an accelerated development and review process.

The potential to restore autonomy and communication for people living with paralysis is real, and it matters. We hold that truth. We also hold others alongside it.

The History This Technology Enters Into

Medical innovation in America has a shadow history that most textbooks still do not teach fully. Gynecological surgery was developed through experiments performed on enslaved Black women without anesthesia or consent. The Tuskegee Syphilis Study deceived Black men for 40 years, withholding treatment to observe the untreated disease. Henrietta Lacks’ cells were taken without her knowledge and became the foundation of modern cell biology — generating billions in medical revenue while her family received nothing. Puerto Rican women were used as test subjects for the first birth control pill trials without being fully informed of the risks.

This is not ancient history. It is the context into which every new medical technology arrives — especially when that technology involves the body, the brain, and data. The argument for reparations as a public health intervention addresses this legacy directly — see our analysis of reparations and the public health argument.

Neuralink’s animal trials were also not without controversy. In 2022, Reuters reported that the company faced a federal investigation over animal welfare violations following the deaths of more than 1,500 animals — sheep, pigs, and monkeys — in the course of its experiments. The company’s internal culture of speed, driven in part by Musk’s public impatience with regulatory timelines, has been widely documented. These are facts that belong in any honest conversation about this technology.

The Questions Our Communities Must Ask

Who will be the clinical trial population? The history of medical research in the U.S. shows that communities of color are both overrepresented in early-stage trials — bearing the risk — and underrepresented in the populations that ultimately benefit from approved treatments. As Neuralink moves toward broader trials, it matters enormously who is recruited, how consent is obtained, and what long-term follow-up looks like.

Who owns the data? A brain-computer interface generates extraordinarily intimate data — neural signals that could eventually be interpreted to reveal not just movement intentions but cognitive patterns, emotional states, and more. In a country where Black communities are already subject to disproportionate surveillance — through predictive policing, facial recognition, and algorithmic profiling — the question of who controls neural data is not paranoia. It is urgency.

Who will have access? Disability justice advocates have long noted that transformative technologies often arrive with price tags that place them out of reach for the communities with the highest rates of the conditions they treat. Black Americans have higher rates of stroke, which can cause paralysis. Will those communities have equitable access to this technology, or will it remain the province of the well-insured?

What happens when the company fails, pivots, or is acquired? A brain implant is not an app you can uninstall. Neuralink is a private company with a single controlling personality. The long-term governance questions — who is responsible for device maintenance, software updates, and data stewardship across a lifetime — have not been answered publicly.

What Ancestral Frameworks Say About Consciousness

Across African philosophical traditions, consciousness is not located solely in the brain. The Yoruba concept of ori — the personal spiritual intuition that guides a person’s destiny — is understood as something that existed before birth and continues beyond death. In Akan cosmology, the okra (soul) and sunsum (spirit) are understood as distinct from and not reducible to the physical body. Ubuntu philosophy grounds the self not in individual cognition but in relationship: I am because we are.

These frameworks are not anti-technology. They are frameworks of discernment. They ask: what is the relationship between this tool and the wholeness of the human being? Who is accountable to the person whose mind is being interfaced? And what obligations does community carry when one of its members enters into this kind of agreement with a corporation? Science is now exploring how ancestral memory is carried in the body itself — as examined in our piece on epigenetics and ancestral memory.

These are questions Western bioethics is only beginning to formulate. Ancestral wisdom has been holding them for centuries.

Holding Hope and Critique Together

Ubuntu Village is not anti-science. We are pro-community. We believe that science and spirit are complementary, that healing innovation is possible, and that technology can expand human dignity when it is developed with accountability, equity, and informed consent at the center.

We also believe that the communities with the most to gain from new medical technologies are often the communities least centered in the conversations about how those technologies are developed, governed, and deployed. That gap is not inevitable. It is a choice — one that advocacy, policy, and community power can change.

The body is sacred. The mind is sacred. Any technology that enters that terrain carries with it an obligation — to the person, to their community, and to the generations that will inherit whatever we normalize today. We are not required to celebrate uncritically. We are required to pay attention.

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Community is the medicine.

When technology advances without our communities at the table, we bear the risk and miss the benefit. Ubuntu Village ensures our voices shape these conversations — your support makes that possible.

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Michele Mitchell is the Founder, President & CEO of Ubuntu Village Inc., a 501(c)(3) nonprofit rooted in East Harlem, New York, with programs in Kenya, Uganda, and Nigeria. A writer, advocate, and community strategist working at the intersection of ancestral wisdom, public health, and community power, Michele leads Ubuntu Village’s work to center communities as the protagonists of their own healing. She writes from the conviction that science and spirit are complementary, that healing is relational, and that community is the medicine.