The movie Upgrade highlights a very important insight into possible issues that may arise from implanting technology into humans. Who owns the implants after they are implanted. Can this access be revoked? Also, how does keeping powerful technology as a trade secret affect the consumers and what are the potential negative consequences.
In the universe that Upgrade takes place in, one of the most jarring and important plot points is that Grey is forced to sign a non-disclosure agreement after receiving the implant. Eron, the owner of the company that provided the implant, later on in the movie tells Grey that he owns the implant and thus is allowed to track him and see how he uses it. Currently, in the United States it is legal for medical implants, including Grey's, to send information to doctors as long as the FDA permits it. Currently, the ideas surround implants and ownership are very muddled in the United States [1]. Eron could have argued that Grey is licensing the technology from him and thus must follow specific rules on how he can apply his new prosthesis. In this scenario, Eron would still maintain full ownership over STEM. This is plausible for the movie as Grey isn't allowed to modify his implant, similar to if he had signed a licensing agreement. However, Grey isn't shown to sign a licensing agreement in the movie and thus the legal terms that this arrangement would fall under are left to speculation. Currently, an individual could find themselves in a similar situation as Grey where their life altering treatment is being used as a means of controlling them. This movie truly highlights how the US legal system needs to update terms as implants such as those seen in Upgrade become more and more realistic. Additional implications include that before receiving body modifications one should be positive that they aren't entering an agreement such as the one Grey finds himself in.
Additionally, Eron kept STEM as a trade secret. In the movie, this meant that he didn't have to report the technology to the government. In the movie, Eron used this secrecy to conduct an illegal, unregulated surgery on Grey. As implants get more and more abundant, Upgrade seems to be reminding us that as this technology develops a form of secrecy it is important that we prepare to protect desperate people from implants that haven't been clinically tested yet.
Muireann Quigley and Semande Ayihongbe, Everyday Cyborgs: On Integrated Persons and Integrated Goods, (Med Law Rev, Feb 22, 2018), https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5963303/ (4/21/2020) [1]
Eren Zeyn Eroglu