Maybe I’m cynical, but this seems like something that would be incredibly easy to fake
Like all that fake data on Tesla’s self-driving cars
And that robot they were gonna release.
Not the human in a suit, the animatronic one.
What, Elon Musk publishing a doctored video making extraordinary claims as a marketing tool? I can’t imagine it.
The fact it’s a video game smells of Musk’s touch. Anyone else remember all the tweets he made about Tesla running games on the main monitor?
He’d then have to go all the way to the Internet just to lie. Seems like a lot of work to me.
TBH you could replace “elon musk” with “company” just as well. Unfortunately this is general behaviour that has been demonstrated more than once by companies wanting to create hype about their product.
This is fantastic, but I am extremely worried about it being in the control of Elon Musk.
You should be much more worried about the propensity for in-brain devices to cause life threatening infections no matter whose hands it’s in.
How would it be any different than a knee or a hip replacement when it comes to infections?
Because the blood-brain barrier makes your body far less effective in responding to infection of the breath.
Much higher rates (4-13% of implants) and much more severe consequences (more impactful on overall health and less innate ability for immune response).
Well now I’m worried about both.
We’ve all been playing Mario Kart with our minds already, using our mind to manipulate those fleshy sticks attached to our shoulders. It’s fuckin amazing.
The only usefulness this has is to help someone who can’t do that. And the fact that it’s attached to Elon and that all previous test subjects died and that it’s still been put in a human is pretty dystopian.
All previous animal test subjects died, including the majority that were euthanized at the end of the test period for dissection and study. There was a super high failure rate but let’s not misrepresent what actually happened.
I mean, it’s at the very edge of what science can do and realistically there’s not that much else you could do except test on relatively highly developed animals. You’d kind of expect that to happen, but I don’t see a viable alternative.
Working on the bleeding edge of scientific research does not relieve someone of treating animals with ethical consideration. A “move fast and break things” approach might be good for a startup and maybe even for a rocket company, but that approach isn’t okay if “breaking things” includes living, feeling animals.
What’s the alternative for brain related experiments? Just not advance ever?
I believe experiments like these should move slower and with more scrutiny. As in more animal testing before moving on to humans, esp. due to the controversies surrounding Neuralink’s last animal experiments.
The least they should do is make sure no animal suffers needlessly and no more animals than necessary are used for testing. I don’t have confidence in moral standards, when employees say the number of deaths is higher than needed because of demands of faster research.
Also there is some research on non-invasive ways to get signals from the brain. Why not try that before testing implants on animals?
Some people think 1 death is too many.
They did, it’s probably not as good tech, which is why they are looking for better….
Synchron has a similar technology and their death count appears to be lower than Neuralink’s in animal trials. Unfortunately, this article doesn’t actually show the death rate of the trials.
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You can in fact test many of these devices in mice and even zebrafish.
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You repeat testing in animals (with modifications) til it is actually safe or you at least understand what the risk is and how to mitigate it to tell the people who are going to trial it.
- You can in fact test many of these devices in mice and even zebrafish.
So your solution to animal testing is other animal testing? Strange solution.
Nothing will ever be risk free, and most of the subjects stayed alive until euthanized to see the results. How else would you get the results?
Yes, but lower order animals. There are creatures with more or less intelligence and therefore more or less capacity of suffering.
Euthanasia is fine for an end point but as an implanted device is lifelong such a short time with the implant before sacrifice is not as useful as longer timepoints.
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The only usefulness this has is to help someone who can’t do that.
I can’t tell if you know that the patient is quadriplegic?
I can’t tell if you know Musk wants everyone to buy his dangerous deadly crap.
Maybe, but that is not particularly relevant to the article, and
We’ve all been playing Mario Kart with our minds already, using our mind to manipulate those fleshy sticks attached to our shoulders. It’s fuckin amazing.
is quite an ableist thing to say when the subject at hand is a literal quadriplegic person playing Mario Kart.
And blocked. Have a nice day.
Lmao blocking someone for criticism? Kinda cringe if you ask me.
Probably thinks that I’m a Elon Musk fan, when the exact opposite is true. Why denounce a Musk-owned company for improving the life of a quadriplegic person when there are a million more valid criticisms to be made?
And now we wait. Quick reminder about the Monkeys, which still haunt me.
Yeah, all of this news sounds cool, but I’m skeptical when all we hear is good things, especially after such tumultuous monkey trials.
I’m just waiting for a whistle blower to dump a bunch of evidence a decade from now showing all the horrific Unit 731- esque shit they’re currently covering up in the name of science. But by that point we’ll be receiving all our news directly into our cerebral cortex using “Musk-X” brand implants, so it will never be seen or reported on. And yes, even the poors have them; their units are subsidized by the unavoidable ads being drilled directly into their subconscious.
All you folks with kids have such a bright future for them to look forward to!
“Musk-X”, dying monkeys… this is all sounding a little familiar…
I genuinely hope this works out for this guy, and everyone else who could benefit from it. This dude volunteered because basically he might as well risk dying in return for a meaningful quality of life. That’s an awful situation to be in.
But the fact is, Musk is a self absorbed narcissistic conman, and he has never taken his customers safety seriously in any of his businesses. You don’t beta test self driving cars on public roads if you care about people’s lives.
That’s probably not going to work out well.
That sounds chillingly similar to that episode in Fall of the House of Usher.
D:
Another quick reminder that what happened to those monkeys is actually pretty common for medical trials and not really out of the ordinary.
What they shown so far does not sound impressive. There is a twitch streamer that uses EEG device ans translates signals to button presses. She has beaten elden ring with that. From “achievement” point of view what they have shown here is not that special
It’s still very impressive. The EEG she uses only reads general thoughts: e.g. thinking about pushing a boulder. She can only really do specific actions with that: there’s no level of analog control (how much should this move), it’s just a single action (fire a fireball). The brain chip is likely much higher fidelity and therefore can read much finer signals. All the credit goes to the researchers, of course, who’ve spent the last decade researching and fine tuning this technology.
The brain chip is likely much higher fidelity and therefore can read much finer signals
Then they should be doing a demonstration that shows that. I don’t think Mario Kart generally requires fine tuned signals.
Mario card definitely not but maybe this cursor moving exercise does
There is no way I am putting proprietary hardware and especially proprietary software into my brain.
I agree, but years ago most of us would have said something similar when asked to carry around a device that will track your position everywhere you go. Now we all do that, because smartphones are just so convenient.
Yep I agree with your agreement, I can totally see the next generations being amazed by viewing short videos without even having the fatigue of holding a phone.
I use custom degoogled rom and custom DNS server on my phone, so I minimized the tracking to minimum.
Either way brain chip and phone are a lot different. One you can easily discard, other one you cant. I don’t want to dream coca cola ads at night. What happens when they stop supporting / updating it. There is probably something in their contract, where they can force you back on the operating table to take the chip back, if they don’t like something that you did, or they are running out of money etc.
If I have a shitty phone the worst case scenario is I throw it away…
What if it was open source, like Threads? (☞ﾟヮﾟ)☞
No comment about the topic, im just stealing the emoji. (☞ﾟヮﾟ)☞
If you like that emoji then you’ll love this.
ʕ•ᴥ•ʔ This one is awsome :D Thank you!
(☞ﾟ∀ﾟ)☞
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ಠ_ಠ
If you run windows then try 🪟+. (Full stop) To access an array of ascii emoji.
emoticon.
Fair enough, BTW Sync for a Lemmy has some of these as a handy access, and I am pretty sure some other clients do.
How much is the subscription for ad-free thinking? Or is it free for non-commercial use?
Don’t worry you will only get ads in your sleep, no productivity from yourself will be affected 👍🏻
Imagine being an early adopter and every time you close your eyes it’s the same fucking ad where Kanye chants: “Elon macht frei” for hours.
I didn’t know about people, but there is no way I am getting a fucking electronic chip installed in my brain, no matter how cool it might be
It should only ever be imo used to help the disabled and that too without any involvement of someone like elon
Non invasive BCI capable of the exact stuff neuralink has demonstrated has existed for a while and its probably a much more viable way to help the disabled than cramming chips into their head.
What if it’s a suppository.
🤔 How girthy we talkin’ here?
Can it vibrate?
I mean, it is up to you.
I mean, it is up you.
Now this is what I signed up for.
This technology is evolving so fast it wont be long and a non invasive wearable will be able to do exactly the same.
Still around, too: https://www.gtec.at/product-configurator/unicorn-brain-interface/
$1,200 US entry price might seem a bit steep for a “fancy game controller/keyboard” to the able-bodied, but the QOL improvements for disabled people easily eclipse that.
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Then what is your plan to learn about upcoming things like the new pampers absorption technology 4.0.1?!
I hate Elon but love the idea of this. The utopian version, not the dystopian version obviously.
We are really going to have to make sure that regulation is solid if we want to go towards the positive utopian version.
There is no utopian version of this.
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Same, being able to do things with your mind would be wonderful but if it comes with cost of potentially handing your own killswitch to ketaminecrazed billionaire… (or anyone). If the device isnt 100% opensource so anyone can see how it works, there is no way to know what it can do. And even if we assume it wont be used in overtly malicious way, being able to physically affects someone’s brain( be it reading or writing) means being able to absolutely control of someone.
They’re not being manipulated, though. You can tell because 100% of Neuralink users feel they’re not being manipulated at all and that their absolutely fanatical devotion to the company is because it, and its founder Galactic President Musk, are just that great!
There is no utopian version as long as we maintain the capitalist system. How long do you think “regulations” can stand against the profit incentive of every conceivable greedy ghoul out there?
Ok, the solution is to abolish capitalism then, and I’m more than fine with that.
Yes, literally.
Without capitalism we would be free to build any cool technology we desire, with the only motivation being the benefit of humanity and improvement of our daily lives.
Capitalism is a wasteful and nonsensical system that will only guarantee the enslavement and annihilation of human life.
I agree 100%. It wouldn’t be easy though. Humans are inherently selfish and greedy. I believe a large minority are borderline sociopathic as well, whether its inherited or learned idk. We need a system that really punishes and limits sociopathic behavior.
Unfortunately but accurately, capitalism rewards sociopathic behavior exponentially, to the point where you have to at least act sociopathic in your decision making to have a very large scale successful business, or at least never/rarely make altruistic decisions. Otherwise, you’ll be priced out by competition that does make the more sociopathic decisions (lower pay for workers, dangerous work environments, whatever to cut costs, etc.).
I dont know how we fix this, but it’s certainly time for capitalism to die or be reigned in significantly.
It’s an unfortunately common misconception that humans are inherently selfish and greedy.
Like you stated Capitalism rewards sociopathic behaviour.
Humans learn and adapt to the systems they live under.
Selfishness and greed is enforced under the capitalist system.
You should check our Peter Kropotkin’s ‘Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution’ for an alternate take which sounds like you’re already on board with.
even if it were completely F/OSS including the hardware I’m as afraid of a brain accident as I am of someone purposely doing awful shit to my brain. I want what you want too, it’s just that there’s no world in which that happens.
Neuralink hasn’t address the security complications, hopefully their engineers know what are they doing
This is cool but they burned through a bunch of monkeys to get here.
Also, fuck Elon.
They say, on their mobile phone made by impoverished children they’ll never see the faces of…
I mean, fuck the entire Musk family. First in line to the woodchipper when the prols finally rise up.
But, perspective, ya know?
I dare you to forgo electronics for a year and make that point again so smugly. Society demands that we have a phone, society does not demand animal abuse in the pursuit of developing highly questionable technology.
It’s funny how upset people are that disabled people are getting new tech to help them simply because bad Twitter man owns the company.
Musk has a history of cutting important safety and regulatory jobs to reduce costs. He runs extremely lean businesses.
Maybe it will be different with a biomedical business but I think people are right to be skeptical.
I think mainly people are upset about the animal abuse occurring because of the research at the company.
You mean the animal abuse that occurs during research and development of practically every Type III medical device? I don’t hear a lot of people demonizing pacemakers though.
I’ve never eaten meat in my life or worn fur, I’ve had the conversstions a lot snd know how people react to animal cruelty, sadly it’s normally indifference.
If it was just the animal cruelty then it would be more then just nuralink people are mad at. The only reason it was a news story and none of the other things peta rage about are news stories is because people hate Elon, I hate Elon and I think they should all he news stories but I also try to live in reality.
If we’re going to torture animals for food and medical experiments then giving control back to people with one of the most debilitating and distressing medical conditions is probably the best examples of justification to be made.
I mean he’s not a bad twitter man, he’s literally spreading white supremacy and transphobia to millions on his rigged platform, I absolutely want him to fail the same way I’d want Henry Ford to fail in his time, I’d want a horrible fate to fall on them both regardless of what engineers at their companies end up accomplishing.
Something similar existed in 2013 already:
I keep reminding people that this technology was already in development, that Elon and is Neuralink isn’t a unique invention…
Literally every business he’s ever touched. He’s not an inventor he’s an exploiter.
Sure but everyone bought the iPhone, Steve Jobs was basically not a better person either.
Sure absolutely but also it’s a bad idea to be disingenuous just because Elon needs a dick. This technology is impressive because it’s fully internal. You don’t have to wear some massive hat, it’s a compact internal design. Does actually show some significant advancement
I would much rather wear a silly hat than have open skull brain surgery to implant a device that will stop receiving security updates in 5 years.
Go beat up on it it’s not at all the same thing. By being internal it allows for much better connectivity.
It’s a difference between having a sensor per nerve ending and a sensor that just checks average electrical activity. Completely different.
Bruh, are you really comparing a digital two input wearable device to an implant with fine analog control? This is the biggest leap in brain to computer interface technology, probably ever.
I hate that Neuralink is associated with Elon and the testing they did on animals as absolutely abhorrent, but this is crazy. The guy has been playing Civ 6 ffs.
I didn’t say there’s no difference in the technology used. But the results are quite comparable at the moment. Maybe that can be changed and further developed in future. But is much much more dangerous to implant than to put a cap on your head. So I say don’t be fooled by the marketing of Neuralink.
Bullshit until proven otherwise. Dangerous and stupid regardless. And a depressing harbinger of the corpo cyberpunk dystopia whether this is real or totally faked.
I agree with your take on the corpo dystopia issue and would prefer other solutions instead of this but the sort of patients being served definitely need some significant support.
Mutahar made a video about this that gives us a rough outline of where we are at with this technology, and I agree with his opinion about using eye trackers instead of brain implants for the sort of feature they seem to provide.
thanks for the linked video, it is worth a watch
genuinely worried this is the next medbeds bullshit parade
I’ve seen this kind of thing as well as people given an entirely new sense (a sense of direction similar to how birds can sense magnetic north) with just an EEG cap. Why would you need to implant something directly in the brain to do this?
This is how he intends to get full self drive teslas
there was a tv show with this in it. Captain Laserhawk.
Prisoners were locked in VR tubes and forced to play this taxi game endlessly.
By having someone locked inside the trunk that drives in your stead? Sounds very Musk.
I was thinking more like the patient will die, like all of the monkeys did, he’ll then take the brain and put it in the Tesla. Problem solved. I mean it all makes sense because this subject has already been learning to play Mario kart. Weehee in your Tesla
This sounds like an '80s movie plot, where the car would then seek revenge… shutupandtakemymoney.gif
Someone already pointed to captain laserhawk, buts that’s a last years series. But yeh I get what you mean haha. Could be just a black mirror episode, or a love death robots episode.
Yeah, the only way they’ll put a Musk chip in my brain is by force.
EDIT: on second thought, maybe they play Mario kart cause that’s the only thing they can do now…
