I’m actually still watching but it’s almost over. If you didn’t see it, big reveal was a computer that beeped when a pig touched things with its snout.
However, I believe that it’s going to be able to do what it says, and I think it will revolutionize life as we know it. The paralyzed will walk, you’ll be able to control games, replay memories (yes he actually said this). Stated goals of the team: Telepathy and superhuman vision. Oh and it interfaces with your iPhone, which we are assured is secure.
Elon Musk: “OK now I understand this is starting to sound like a Black Mirror episode. What can I say they’re good at predicting.”
All sounds really terrible to me, but I can see it becoming a situation of all the rich and powerful that have such an implant vs the invisible plebs that don’t have the device. Everyone is already willingly giving up their privacy and lost looking for meaning and relevance on social media, just wait till you are livestreaming your brain and thoughts to everyone, what could possibly go wrong?
Who in the fuck would want this? This is the mental nightmare of every schizophrenic come true. And the opportunities for abuse are inevitable and horrific.
Nobody would ever really want to be telepathic. Lives would be destroyed. No privacy. At all.
What’s funny is literally the day before, I watched a movie on Netflix called Mind Gamers, about a group of people that connect their brains with a neural chip. The movie is from 2015, so FIVE years ago…and of course it starts with some real life news clips and then extrapolates to show ‘real’ news clips from the future that lead up to this invention. And of course it ends with a warning that this technology will be possible soon.
The very next day I’m watching Musk give quotes from the villain of the piece live on my internet.
I think there’s going to be a biiiiig leap from basic brain control and stimulation vs. replayed memories, thought transmission etc.
The former is going to be revolutionary for the disabled. Controlling computers, wheelchairs, etc. through thought will be incredible. That doesn’t even require stimulation, just detection, so the security risks are a tad less.
We already know that cochlear implants work, so a device with zillions of times as many electrodes should turn it from a barely-good-enough-to-work system into something that gives people truly normal (or superhuman) hearing (and ideally without the big external equipment they currently need).
If they really can make it a Lasik-like outpatient procedure, I’d definitely consider it. I’m not at all happy with the primitive state of our computer input interfaces. Depends on how much access I have to the device and its security setup.
Replaying memories, etc. requires significant advancements in our knowledge of the brain. Which may well happen once we have better devices for interfacing with it. But I’m not confident this will happen in the next couple of decades.
Long-term, people who don’t get implants will be left behind. But the Amish seem to get by just fine so it’s their call.
I thought about cochlear implants for years… my hearing is terrible. But I wonder if hearing what everyone around me says would add to my stress. I mean, I already hear enough drivel at the local bar or coffee joint…
And I’ve got to vote no on replaying memories. I’m convinced that the reason my wife and I are still married is that we can’t remember all the little slights from days gone by.
So while all you rich techies are standing there, staring at whatever’s feeding into your visual cortex, I’ll be blissfully sauntering by in my fuzzy, analog world.
While telepathy might be a ways away, what is viable now is basically a telephone call directly to your brain. In a noisy restaurant? Each person wears a microphone, basically a Bluetooth headset, and it transmits directly to the other person’s hearing implant. Almost no environmental noise, but feels natural.
There’s a story by Ted Chiang, The Truth of Fact, the Truth of Feeling, that goes into this. So yeah, probably.
Honestly though, I think memory sharing is in the very distant future. Hearing enhancement, visual overlays, sure. We already know the basics here, and have primitive prototypes already. But memory is very poorly understood and there’s nothing even resembling a prototype yet.
~95% of the video is mini-talks by the various engineers/scientists/etc. on the project. A nice little taste of the details on a bunch of the project’s subcomponents. If you don’t care to hear Musk talk about sci-fi stuff, just skip the first 10 minutes or so.
There was at least one neuroscientist in the audience impressed with their work–he apparently held the previous record for effective bits/second out of the brain, and Neuralink blew away his record.
Justin Roiland was in the audience, too… probably just to get permission to use a cartoon Rick in one of the slides.
If he’s as good at designing neural implants as he is at running Twitter, then I expect a lot more tortured dead monkeys and then, around 2027, a “prototype” that’s actually an old pair of Google Glasses with a sticker over the logo.
The allegations about animal abuse were from Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, which is against all animal testing and gets money from PETA–known nutcases.
I have to laugh at this line from the CNN link above:
In the lawsuit, the committee alleges that staff at the university “removed pieces of the skulls of rhesus macaque monkeys and inserted electrodes into the animals’ brains.”
Uh, no shit? That’s literally the whole point of the testing.
Nothing seems to have come of the lawsuit so I expect it had negligible merit.
…and yet: I have infinitely more respect and trust in what they say than what Elon “I’ll be sending a test flight to Mars in 2018” Musk. The man is a documented fabulist and if he told me it was raining I’d have to go outside to check.
Its kinda horrible to be laughing at the fact that someone has decided to remove pieces of the skulls of rhesus macaque monkeys and inserted electrodes into the animals’ brains for nothing more than his ego and potential profit.
It isn’t funny. And it certainly isn’t necessary. Nobody needs Elon’s Neuralink.
Oh, and Elon: the Neuralink website fails some really basic accessibility tests. Colour contrast should be one of the most easiest things to fix. If they can’t even do that right: heaven help the poor people that will get pieces of their skulls removed and electrodes inserted into their brains.
Thankfully, you don’t have to believe any one person. The FDA will determine when the device is ready for human testing.
That said, I believe the good people at UC Davis (my alma mater) looooong before any PETA-affiliated nutjobs.
I wasn’t laughing at the monkeys, who are undoubtedly more self-aware than the PCRM people, and deserve sympathy. I am laughing at the fact that the PCRM seems to think just restating the research goals amounts to a court case.
Ableist nonsense. You don’t get to decide this for the people it would potentially help most. The more options they have, the better.
…and I’ll continue to believe those “PETA-affilliated nutjobs” over anything that Elon “lying” Musk and his team have to say.
Removing pieces of the skulls of rhesus macaque monkeys and inserted electrodes into the animals’ brains is a very odd research goal. Because it isn’t a research goal.
Which make laughing at them all the more strange.
Don’t you dare accuse me of that. I’m absolutely supportive of research in this area. But I have no doubt that the entire point of Elon’s Neuralink is to feed his ego and to make money. It isn’t about “more options.”
