Neuralink Command Sent while Asleep Caused Fire

A Neuralink command accidentally triggered while asleep caused fire damage to several  apartments in downtown Chicago last weekend. 

Ruth Jones, 35, a long time Neuralink user, went to bed Saturday night forgetting to shut down her implant. At around 3AM, while in deep sleep, she sent a command via her Neuralink to turn on a toaster, which, in turn, set some old paper mail on fire. Luckily, the home assistant AI quickly detected the fire and notified local devices and authorities. Neuralink implant was able to wake Ruth up and safely navigate her to the exit.

Although nobody was harmed in the fire, several apartments in the block have suffered damages. Insurance companies, however, are claiming that Neuralink is a responsible party  due to the implant failing to detect that Ms. Jones was asleep - something that could have been a fatal error.  

Neuralink does include an automatic sleep identification function, although the company has stated that the function is not completely fail safe, especially for people with active REM cycles and vivid dreams. Neuralink emphasizes the user's responsibility when using the product and respecting the company’s guidelines. It issued a public statement reminding their users of the importance of switching off the implant before going to bed.    

Not only vivid dreamers could trigger the Neuralink, deep sleepers too can wake up in the middle of the night and send a command with no memory of it in the morning. There have been several nightmare induced 911 calls over the last few months with people waking up to the sounds of broken doors and police copters in the backyard. There have been some cases of property damage due to flooding and fire when people tried to remotely turn on kitchen appliances, hobs, and showers. UTube is full of videos of home-cleaning robots put to ridiculous tasks in the middle of the night by sleeping owners.

According to Neuralink’s own data, while you can manually shut down the implant for sleep, about 8% of people forget to do it every day. With so many people sleeping with their Neuralink enabled, and the company admitting that their sleep sensors are not failsafe, it is only a matter of time till there is a more serious incident