>> brain machine interfaces
I'm pretty skeptical of the common "brain machine interface". It probably requires surgery, and for what ? to make people smarter in a world with AI ?
No, i think the main motivation for a brain machine interface should be experience/emotion oriented, And there's a big question if people will take surgery for it, or would they suffice with an external device ?
One such modality is fmri neurofeedback - using fmri analysis to give detailed and accurate feedback of what happens inside your brain, so you could achieve better control of it, and your internal world.
How much better control ? well, there's some early research about treating depression/anxiety, etc. but the more interesting research is about letting people train themselves to reach(very rapidly, unlike years/decades as a monk) a state very similar to the buddhist enlightenment, where you are content and free of ego. Another type of training session has taught people to increase empathy. And i'm sure you could do a lot more, since fmri is relatively accurate and fine-grained.
This line of research is early, and very expensive to do, but the technology is drastically improving[1], and with it will research.
And once you have that, once you could potentially become internally satisfied and happy, why would you risk that with a brain surgery , in order to have somewhat better virtual reality ?
[1]mri's are expensive, but marie lou-jespen is working on a $100 mri helmet