Those are some good nuances that definitely require a nuanced response and forced me to refine my thinking, thank you! I'm actually not claiming that the brain is the sole boundary of the real me, rather it is the majority of me, but my body is a contributor. The real me does change as my body changes, just in less meaningful ways. Likewise some changes in the brain change the real me more than others. However, regardless of what constitutes the real me or not, (and believe me, the philosophical rabbit hole there is one I love to explore), in this case I'm really just talking about the straightforward immediate implications of a brain implant on my privacy. An arm implant would also be quite bad in this regard, but a brain implant is clearly worse.

There have already been systems that can display very rough, garbled images of what people are thinking of. I'm less worried about an implant that tells me what to do or controls me directly, and more worried about an implant that has a pretty accurate picture of my thoughts and reports it to authorities. It's surely possible to build a system that can approximate positive or negative mood states, and in combination this is very dangerous. If the government can tell that I'm happy when I think about Luigi Mangione, then they can respond to that information however they want. Eventually, in the same way that I am conditioned by the panopticon to stop at stop sign, even in the middle of a desolate desert where I can see for miles around that there are no cars, no police, no cameras - no anything that could possibly make a difference to me running the stop sign - the system will similarly condition automatic compliance in thoughts themselves. That is, compliance is brought about not by any actual exertion of power or force, but merely by the omnipresent possibility of its exertion.

(For this we only need moderately complex brain implants, not sophisticated ones that actually control us physiologically.)

I absolutely think that privacy within your own mind should be inviolable (trusting corporations and even government to agree is laughable). Iain Banks' Culture series explores some of these implications, as well as who should be in control of your mental state. It's messy and hard, and is one of the reasons I currently wouldn't get a brain implant. I might change my mind if I had ALS, for instance.

All LLMs are AI, all AI is not an LLM.

Tell me you don’t understand what depression is without telling me you don’t understand what depression is. You can be depressed while living for free on a beach with no responsibilities. To suggest you can fix everyone’s depression with external changes is the height of “just go outside and you’ll feel better.”

As someone who is literally living where others go on holidays while depressed let me tell you my depression is very much a response to the world being a rotting shithole. I am not sad because my life sucks but because so many others are suffering and I feel powerless to change it. The narrative of 'chemical imbalance' is a very reductive and misleading one.

The feeling of powerlessness and disconnect also points to the cure I find for myself. Instead of implanting experimental BS inventions into my brain I try to be a force of connection, community and hope for others. There is very few things I can do as a single tiny person, but in these very small things lies the power of change for the better.

Horror might be more entertaining than depression, but the sheer idea of letting some techbro implant shit in my brain is so ridiculous, I'd probably try DIY lobotomy before I consider the AI option.

Depressed ever since puberty when I realised that Hollywood isn't real life.

Lobotomy is a bit extreme. Try Trepanning first.

Trepanning was sometimes performed on people who were behaving in a manner that was considered abnormal. In some ancient societies it was believed this released the evil spirits that were to blame.

Wanting full control over the sick is also some Mother Teresa evil shit. It’s bad enough that life-saving medication is gate-kept by patents and pharmaceutical companies thriving on suffering (oh look, there she is again) but now people that suffer should give up access to what makes them them, their entire personhood, to some tech-bro ingrate? Is that truly the best option?

I’d rather die.

Nope I'd definitely kill myself before letting an ai fuck with my brain

In a sense, AI is already fucking with everyone's brain when it comes to mass-produced ads and propaganda.