I really don't see what a neural implant gets you that an AR headset doesn't provide. It's trivially easy to saturate a human brain with visual stimuli. Elon keeps saying there's a bandwidth issue, but I just don't see it.

Whether there would be a benefit is an open scientific/engineering problem. We certainly haven't reached the limits if Jnon-neural interfaces (I still can't casually mumble to my computer and have it reliably understand), but there are definitely limits. For instance, regardless of how much visual data you can present to a user, she can only focus on one place/element at a time. A "neural uplink" might give us ways to bypass or finesse that bottleneck, which would by itself be huge.

Or perhaps not! But Musk has no interest in sure-fire bets. :)

It hopefully gives input and output. Also eyes can run instructions. Maybe it can, but I've never seen an image/video that can force limbs to move or sensations in an efficient way.

Input?

If you control the input, at that point can't you hack a human mind?

The issue is the bandwidth on uploads at the speed of speech or thumbs and fingers and the extra encoding steps needed to tak thoughts and encode them into speech or other muscle movements.

AR headsets will never catch on, people don't want to looking silly wearing that thing on their face. Neural implants have way more mainstream potential.

Just so I understand your proposition, you're arguing that there will be a higher adoption rate of an invasive surgically implanted brain computer interface than a pair of glasses?

Q/A system, query results returned as memories. You wouldn't need to read about X, you would just remember that you already know about X.

Have big hopes for this fascinating area! :-)

Bring on Ghost in the Shell!

Is the point of this more to understand exactly how the brain processes things like memory than for allowing us to control machines through thought? Thought-control has its uses, I suppose, but personally I'd much rather have a way to influence memory than anything else.