Article here. I’m happy for him, and it sounds very cool. Hopefully the technology becomes cheap and effective enough that more people get a chance to use it.
The tech is improving and getting more portable. I remember one of the news shows 20/20 or Dateline? covered the research. It was very cumbersome equipment then.
2022 article
I have a couple of friends who have pinned hopes on this technology. For one of them, it might even be affordable as his employer isn’t blind to his abilities due to the wheelchair. The other, though, eventually gave up looking for work. Only one employer took a chance on him being able to change his skill set and it didn’t work out.
I saw a clip on the news. Amazing.
The scientists also credited AI with the breakthrough. A powerful reminder that banning AI just because it can write an essay is extremely short-sighted. AI has become the new GMO, a set of letters that frightens people but has possibilities of making a desperate world better and more livable.
I read the story in the Times. It looks like a wonderful technology that can only get better. Maybe they won’t need actual brain implants, maybe training will become easier. Possible improvements are wondrous.
Good luck with that.
Pshaw. It isn’t really walking. The AI is just mimmicking walking by pasting together steps it was trained on. Only a hunan can truly walk.
For the record, what is being called AI in this thread is very different from the AI being discussed elsewhere. This is not a Large Language Model like ChatGPT, but software specifically designed for this purpose, doing exactly what it is programmed to do. The debates over LLMs involve claimed abilities beyond what they have been programmed to do, as well as the nature of consciousness.
“Teddy Pendergrass… will walk!..
Superman… will fly!”
(A song, who did it I forget, in the 90s. Superman = Christopher Reeve)
A friend of mine is a quadriplegic, due to a neck injury she suffered while practicing gymnastics as a high schooler. She’s in her 40s now, with a husband and three kids, and she and her husband have been closely watching these developments for years, hoping that they become more widely available.