This is a linkpost for http://waitbutwhy.com/2017/04/neuralink.html
For this tactic to be effectual it requires that a society of augmented human brains will converge on a pattern of aggregate behaviours that maximize some idea of humanity's collective values or at least doesn't optimize anything that is counter to such an idea. If the degree to which human values can vary between _un_augmented brains reflects some difference between them that would be infeasible to change then it's not likely that a society of augmented minds would be any more coordinated in values that a society of augmented ones.
In one sense I do believe a designed AI is better - the theorems a human being devised can stand or fall independently of the man who devised them. The risk increases inversely with our ability to follow trustworthy inference procedures in reasoning about designing AIs. With brain-augmentation the risk increases inversely with our aggregate ability to avoid the temptation of power. Humanity has produced many examples of great mathematicians. Trustworthy but powerful men are rarer.
We have been gradually getting more peaceful, even with increasing power. So I think there is an argument that brain augmentation is like literacy and so could increase that trend.
A lot depends on how hard a take off is possible.
I like maths. I like maths safely in the theoretical world, occasionally bought out to bear on select problems that have proven to be amenable to it. Also I've worked with computers enough to know that maths is not enough. They are imperfectly modeled physical systems.
I really don't like maths trying to be in charge of everything ...