• Neuralink is an excellent advancement for brain science and it is greatly going to help disabled people and those with little function left over their bodies. It’s okay to celebrate this technology while also hating musk.

    Like SpaceX, they’ve both been excellent ventures that he so far hasn’t ruined (probably thanks to the people he delegates to). Just because it’s fashionable to hate him for how he’s absolutely fucked over Twitter (which i’ll remind everyone we’ve always hated and agreed is bad, use Mastodon instead) doesn’t mean his other companies largely spearheaded by others, and their results, are also bad.

    That’s not even to mention that the kind of dystopian technology people are imagining isn’t anywhere close to what the Neuralink device is actually capable of. What everyones fearmongering over is still just science fiction. It’s just barely able to interpret brain signals, it’s not as powerful as everyone makes it out to be.

    2nd edit: forgot what instance I’m on, this comment probably ain’t going to do well lol

    • That’s not even to mention that the kind of dystopian technology people are imagining isn’t anywhere close to what the Neuralink device is actually capable of.

      Yet. They’ll get to work on that just as soon as they can, don’t you worry!

      • The brain science and neurology advancements that would be required to get to such a point would be absolute mind-blowing breakthroughs in medical science and would completely change the world as we know it. The mental/personality disorders we could now understand and solve would make me so hopeful for humanity and the upbringing of welfare for everyone. This would without question be a good thing.

        • Yes and at one time sickness was caused by the devil, then germs were found. One day it’ll probably happen. Idk if we’ll be alive or not by then but time will tell, exponential growth in tech and all.

          Almost everything can be good or bad. A.I could save us all, or it could go skynet. Nanobots could be great for surgery, but also great for grey goop. Hell, something as simple as guns, it depends on who is using it and why, and brain implants are a pretty big figurative gun. They could be the savior of humanity, or they could be the device which finally enslaves it in near totality, it’s definitly something to consider.

        • I’m pretty sure being able to continuously observe with such a device how the brain works will speed up research in the field.

          Also, whether this is a good thing is very questionable. I expect that in the future these devices will contribute a lot to being able to manipulate any users emitions and thoughts in any way, without them noticing or being able to fight against it. First by giving more insight on a person’s way of thinking to data brokers, more efficient targeted advertisements and news can be fed to them, and later by directly manipulating how the brain works.

    • I kind of agree. While I think they are not that bad as far as advancements go, most of it is shitstained by Musk, who has to be seen at all cost and have to be seen as the ultimate inventor of everything.

      He wants to be seen, stay relevant, and be the boss of everything, that he usually makes dumb decisions, which is a stain on a company mostly relying on a foundation of very intelligent people.

      • I agree with your assessment except saying that SpaceX’s advancements are “not that bad” is a massive understatement. They’ve completely disrupted and forever changed the space launch industry, with the help of government subsidies.

        Everyone also forgets how Starlink is serving remote indigenous communities and scared the pants off shitty dominant ISPs that have been screwing rural communities over since forever.

        I’ll re-emphasize my point that I think the results of some large companies, which comprises the efforts of many many smart people, can have facets of it be considered overwhelmingly good.

        Edit: some more words

        • Whenever I hear someone unironically use the term “disrupted” I just know I’m going to be hearing some capitalist parasite being glorified for doing something expensive that a government did much cheaper half a century ago.

            • No, the entire space exploration attempt was much cheaper half a century ago - neither the US nor Soviet space programs wasted labor or resources enriching billionaire parasites. There is absolutely nothing that can be performed by parasites such as Musk or Bezos that cannot be done far better, more efficiently and more effectively through public means.

              • Can you provide a source showing space exploration was “much cheaper” half a century ago than SpaceX’s current costs to getting payloads into orbit? It sounds like you’re just assuming it would be cheaper from your idealogical leanings than that actually being the case.

                A half a century ago the US and USSR were devoting a significant fraction of their entre GDP in the space race to blast people into space on some of the largest rockets ever built, mostly for national security and military concerns And that’s not even to speak of the “safety standards” they had and ignored in order to win.

                The later shuttle program itself was a massive MASSIVE expenditure and no one in their right mind would EVER say it was an efficient and cheaper per kg in LEO.

                You’re just straight up wrong.

                • Yeah, hold on… let me compare the costs of enriching a billionaire parasite piggybacking off publicly-funded programs that developed all the technology said billionaire parasite is piggybacking off with said publicly-funded programs.

                  No, Clyde, it was cheaper - because we actually got results other than merely enriching a billionaire parasite.

                  Your brain has been so addled with “free market” fairy tales that you might just as well believe a glass slipper will magically turn you into royalty. There is absolutely nothing parasites like Musk can do that we couldn’t do far, far better, much more efficiently and far cheaper through public means - and that’s it.

    • Does it work though?

      I only ask this because Musk has been promising full self driving in Teslas “next year” for about a decade now, so any claims made should be taken with an enormous pinch of salt.

      • By all appearances yes, it’s an appreciable jump in the technology compared to current brain interfaces that are used for the immobile. They did a whole live tech demo with pigs as well as the people he’s hired to work on it there. He has top level surgeons and neuroscientists all working on it who choose to be there. Oh and also it just passed FDA approval for testing in humans.

        It would be hard to bullshit this passed all the people involved. I have the belief it’s quite a different situation compared to the continuing failure of FSD.

        • It would be hard to bullshit this passed all the people involved.

          Do you not understand people? It’s easier to BS 10 people than 1. You just BS 100 and the 10 weakest people tell you who they are. People who want to work on brain interfaces want it to work. Whether it actually works or not depends on the real world, not the number of people involved.

  • I want to thank Facebook for making it blatantly obvious to us that we should never get any brain implants. They’ll definitely use them to read your thoughts and push ads straight into your consciousness. Oh, and you’ll probably have to pay a subscription.

  • I’m sure these implants will give much needed ease to patients who suffer frem tremors like parkinson and other neurological diseases. But the things I’m mostly concerned about are:

    • Will health insurance pay for the implant in a one-time-payment? Will it be a subscription model? What happens when you can’t pay your subscription? Will it be shut off?
    • Will the implant be operated through firmware (like a pacemaker) or software, which reqires frequent updates? If so, will there be - like computer software - “new features” implemented (“With version 2.0 you will be able to share your Neuralink experience with other Neuralink users. Your data may not be leaked, pinky promise.”
    • What if a certain mentally unstable CEO throws a tantrum that will affect the performance of the Neuralink implant negatively? Will there be any legal protection from such thing?
    • The thought that frightens me even more (although I am not a neurologist) is that if this is installed in children, and the neural pathways for the child’s basic functions are formed to pass through that implant, removing the implant will render the child unable to think.

    • Far be it from me to suggest that tech bros won’t ruin a good thing, I really don’t think these will have a subscription model because they probably won’t have any kind of internet connectivity. They’ll be like pacemakers, purpose built for a specific function (prevent tremors, reverse paralysis, etc) and designed to only do that function for as long as possible.

      I’m sure there will be upgradable firmware at some point in the future but having your brain be connected to any kind of cloud service is the worst idea I’ve ever heard of.

      • I’m sure there will be upgradable firmware at some point in the future but having your brain be connected to any kind of cloud service is the worst idea I’ve ever heard of.

        With Musk at the helm, I wouldn’t be surprised if the worst ideas are the ones he wants the most.

      • Of course many comments in this threas are exaggerated; there won’t be played any ads into your brain.

        But there are some implications for the usage of Neuralink that are worth thinking about it - especially when it comes to privacy:

        Given that it “just” runs with firmware, so that the implant can function in a way most stable and reliably, and also given that there will be no subscription model involved into all of that, will the user (patient) be able to control the functionality of the implant (e.g. controlling the intensity of the eletric signal sent out from the implant to counteract the intensity of a tremor)?

        And how will that happen? One thing I could think of is to control the implant with a smartphone app. How good will that smartphone app be? Will it be programmed sloppily like these apps we know from Internet-Of-Things-Apps and have a ton of bugs? Are those (medicinal!) apps secure in terms of privacy? What is with the product support? Will the implant be discontinued after a few years (and also the app)? What if your smartphone fails (no power or hardware failure, or after an update it doesn’t work)?

        A friend of mine has an app to monitor her blood sugar. She is not qute satified with the app. Luckily the provider of those diabetes sensors provided a separate device, so that the app is just an addition for measuring when you are travelling, for example. But in their last iteration they tried to omit the separate device, probably in order to save costs. My friend had to explicitly ask for it.

        With that in mind I’m not keen on having control on such medicinal devices with a smartphone only. If the smartphone fails, there would be no backup. Will such similar things be the case regarding Neuralink?

    • I’ve not yet seen any indication as to what exactly they have approval to test. My guess is it’s literally just something like testing an electrode gel that goes on your skin as part of the process or at most the external parts that interface with the implant. There’s an endless world of things the FDA could have given them approval to test as part of their project that doesn’t involve actually cracking anyone’s skull open and jamming stuff in there to watch them die like the monkeys did. After you get the approval to test your application sponge on real human subject, you launch a press release stating “Neuralink gets FDA approval to move to human testing!” and await that sweet delivious investor money.

  • Brain-computer/machine interfaces are really interesting when treating conditions like paralysis or Parkinson’s disease, and to a certain extent severe psychiatric conditions if you count deep brain stimulation for e.g. severe OCD. I don’t think we’ll be anywhere near sending detailed multisensory content like ads into people’s brains for a long time though. That’s so far outside the scope of what brain stimulation can do right now, it’s really just scifi.

      • It does, but it’s important to note that the theoretical basis for much of the rapid progress we’re seeing now (e.g. machine learning) has actually existed for quite a long time. Training very large models wasn’t feasible at the time they were theorised, but the basis for them did exist.

        When it comes to brains, we don’t even have a good understanding of how multisensory integration works yet, let alone how we could, even in theory, implant multisensory impressions like ads. It’s much easier with things like movement disorders or paralysis because our understanding of those phenomena is much more advanced. Plus - we’re only really dealing with one modality there - movement.

        Deep brain stimulation for psychiatric conditions does exist, but it’s poorly understood, to the point where there isn’t even really a consensus on where you should place the stimulating electrodes for the best effects. At least that’s what a colleague who worked on DBS described a while ago, and I doubt it would’ve changed dramatically in a year.

      • Don’t take my predictions too seriously, but

        10 years, it’ll be possible to have a multisensory chip, but it’ll be super expensive and niche 15 years, it’ll start getting pretty affordable and popular 20 years, you’ll be a social outcast for not having a chip. What are you, a weirdo?