Brain machine interface development has been around for a lot longer than nueralink. Musk is just better at getting his stuff into the headlines. Yes, the idea is good and beneficial to humanity, but then so are electric cars. That's part of Musk's grift. He latches onto something genuinely good and turns it into his pet project so that any criticism of how he does it can easily be deflected, because he's automatically the good guy just for being there at all.