Are you familiar with the term "luddite"?
That aspect of connecting via bluetooth from a phone is most conventionally used to interact with replaceable commodities such as wireless speakers/headphones, but here it's being used to interact with a _live_ monkey. This framing somewhat gives the impression that this living being has been reduced to the status of a replaceable commodity, a mere peripheral that one might connect to via bluetooth.
I agree that given how much modern society relies on animal testing that it's not really a rational response - maybe this reaction could have been mitigated somewhat if they had connected to the monkey via a computer or more involved process rather than simply just the conventional bluetooth pairing flow on a phone.
I understand that, but I think to some degree, you're letting somewhat unrelated things influence your opinion of this.
You know what else it interacted with and controlled wirelessly? Pacemakers. Nobody thinks of those people are replaceable commodities.
Also, what about those that don't live a life of luxury and have access to lots of commoditized devices that wirelessly pair through a cellphone? People in less affluent countries might be less jaded about controlling something wirelessly and still view that as an amazing new technology associated with things they can rarely afford.
So, to what degree are those associations useful and accurate, and to what degree are they you bringing unrelated prior biases to bear?
The good thing about messy, human models of transactions and interaction is that it can take a long time and many different voices can be heard, allowing disuptes to occur and be resolved.
Many of these successful tech corporates work to eliminate the human discussion element, and replace it with digitized (and frequently proprietary, or at least gatekept) rules.
I think I've dealt with a few difficult dominant personality types in the past, and it would not surprise me at all to see them consider humans-as-pets as a desirable future. Match that with digitized 'asset ownership' and other non-repudiable mechanisms and there could be a very dystopian and authoritarian future in the mind of some of these people.
Now I'll make sure to sound like a complete nutter (as if I hadn't already) and mention that some of these individuals and companies are now so essential to the U.S., both domestically and internationally, that they are becoming untouchable.
Meanwhile our own tech industry is busy debating and trying to determine what the future of libre software will look like. It's a pivotal moment and I'm optimistic we'll figure it out to everyone's benefit, but there is a lot at stake.
It's great that this tech could help paralyzed people and amputees, but is it worth the cost?
Edit: This is a moot point if it turns out we can repair the damage from paralysis and amputation using bioengineering.
Why don't they do it on humans then?
Link?
https://www.fda.gov/medical-devices/premarket-approval-pma/p...
If you've never gone through the process of bringing a medical device to market, well, I'm not sure there's an easy FAQ that will answer your scepticism. But the basic idea is that you have to do a bunch of testing in the lab, then probably a bunch in animals, then finally a bunch in human clinical trials, then you can actually market the device to the public.
Neuralink is in the 'animal testing' phase, and it sounds like they're likely to start human testing soon.
Note that once they've gotten a device approved for humans, that doesn't mean they will stop testing on animals. There will likely be improvements to the device, new protocols, etc. that will necessitate continued testing as new features are brought to market.
Relevant section:
> Among the types of evidence that may be required, when appropriate, to determine that there is reasonable assurance that a device is safe are investigations using laboratory animals, investigations involving human subjects, and nonclinical investigations including in vitro studies.