Neuralink is recruiting subjects for the first human trial
theverge.com
theverge.com
Sure. Elon himself says that the goal of Neuralink is "bidirectional communication" very often. That means reading from and writing to the mind. Obviously he doesn't want to say "mind control" because of the negative connotation, so instead he just describes it.
As for the "mass" part, Elon has also claimed many times that the goal of Neuralink is general use, and that medical applications are a stepping stone to that.
What does "bidirectional communication" mean if not read and write? What other directions are there?
Consider the following: Google has a collection of computers with inputs. One of those inputs can be accessed via the Google web search interface. When you search a term using the Google web interface, you are requesting control over a very small part of the collection of computers at Google in order to complete your request.
When you do this, you do not control all of Google, but you are exercising C2 over a tiny portion of it.
Now consider that Google was built on technologies that can precisely reject requests for control per request based on certain conditions. Google can reject requests based on your IP, your personal identity, the contents of the request, etc.
The human brain does not have facilities for doing that. It did not evolve with the expectation that it would be valuable to reject neurological patterns that behave like sensory inputs. An example of this would be like taking a psychoactive drug, and then trying to think it's effects away. You can't do it.
The difference between a psychoactive drug and a brain to computer interface is that one of them can dynamically impose specific neurological phenomena (what you call inputs) based on the intent of someone else, and the other one will land you in jail for possession.
The facts are that if he was so benevolent he wouldn't be a billionaire. End of story.
I don't trust his benevolence, but that doesn't follow.
Money at that level exists as an indicator of the marginal amount someone else will pay to own a right to the expected future 20-ish years of the profits of the companies he owns, multiplied up as if there were enough people to buy all of it.
This kind of accounting can easily value the average final year university student in the UK at around a million pounds even if they've never had so much as a summer holiday job.
Sometimes this is enough to buy out the business, other times the attempt runs out of buyers and the price crashes part way through.
If Alice has a plan to save the world and doing so involves creating a company that someone else thinks can be asset-stripped for a trillion dollars, then Alice will be "worth" a trillion dollars.
Of course, I just wrote "Alice" rather than "Musk" because I want to make it clear I don't think Musk is anywhere near this angelic; it's just an illustration.
You think that providing input to neurons through an electronic interface is mind control?
As in, we're not talking about people doing research on how to leverage the input/output interaction between the brain and these devices to perform manipulation of conscious/subconscious thought?
We're literally just talking about being able to talk to neurons at all being mind control?
Just so long as I understand where the goalposts are being moved to and we can keep them there. I imagine next we'll hear a slippery slope argument next about how even allowing such communication means it'll be used for mind control?
Um... yes...? I am really confused why people keep describing mind control as a defense of mind control.
> As in, we're not talking about people doing research on how to leverage the input/output interaction between the brain and these devices to perform manipulation of conscious/subconscious thought?
Yes, even if we ignore the part of Neuralink where they are working to understand and deploy complex interactions over human brain to computer interfaces, a little bit of mind control is in fact, still mind control.
I'm not sure who you think is moving goal posts. Controlling the mind with a direct interface to the mind is mind control. That much is obvious.
I also think it's interesting that you dropped the "mind reading" portion of my previous comment. Do you find that harder to refute, or do you think that Elon Musk should be allowed to read peoples thoughts?
Because at the current state of the art, it's no more "control" than from stimulating cochlear with a cochlear implant.
Musk does talk about a Culture-esq Neural Lace (which also covers "mind reading" to the level of being an offsite backup) but the neuroscientists I hear discussing the tech that really exists and that they think is likely to come any time soon regard this as bombastic nonsense.
The research into mind reading from (unrelated, human-rated and already placed) implants is interesting, and I think worth caring about with regards to privacy and security: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qcfC53c3tSc
To use computers as a metaphor, what you described is like influencing the behavior of a computer by sending it a network packet. That is a normal operation that computers are built to process. Hypnosis is like remotely hacking the computer - you use normal sensory / normal network processing means to command unauthorized actions. Neuralink is like taking a magnetic needle to the systems memory to both read and write to influence the behavior and access information from it. The lattermost is mind control.
Vision and hearing on the other hand have been done previously with electrodes.
That's why I said "a direct interface to the brain" is kind control.
> In fact, it would be really difficult to implement mind control with a NeuraLink, because you would need to tune it to do so first, and how would you do that?
Are you suggesting that the work that they are doing at NeuraLink is easy and not mind control? Because I think it is both hard to do and mind control. The easiest way to do it is to take advantage of people who have medical reasons that something like this could greatly improve their life (see the OP).
> Vision and hearing on the other hand have been done previously with electrodes.
I very well could be ignorant about this, but I don't believe people walk around with internet connected electrodes attached to their head. I do consider that mind control though, because it is directly controlling the mind, circumventing normal sensory inputs. It just usually is limited to a medical setting, rather than being a permanent addition to your mind, so it's far easier to rationalize.
No. You weren't attempting to turn "Mind reading" into a dirty word. You aren't be disingenuous with the phrasing in a deliberate attempt to paint the very act of interfacing with the brain as mind control-- which again, it isn't, and you don't get to assert that it is without support and have your opinion respected. Mind boggling. I haven't seen any effort being put into direct modification of thought, myself.
Anyway, I guess there's no point in actually discussing this with you. You think "mind control" (scare quotes included, so we can maintain your negative connotation!) is implied by direct input to neurons, which is a stretch pretty much everyone isn't going to agree with. I think you'll find most people think that when you say mind control, you'd be, you know, controlling their mind, a behavior for which you have no evidence to support.
Edit:
Thinking about this further. Let's apply your solid logic of "It inputs to a neuron so it's mind control".
So how far are we gonna push that? Does it have to be a neuron inside the brain? What if I interface with a neuron in the spinal column, a system which is intrinsically attached to the brain? Do you think think that the prosthesis invented recently that involves bidirectional communication in the brain as "mind control"?
If a spinal interface doesn't count, why not? Is it because it's outside the brain? What if I put it at the edge of the spinal column juuuuust below the brain stem, does that count or not count as mind control? I mean, I can provide direct input from the spinal column to convince the mind that the body is in specific positions or receiving specific input it isn't. Is that mind control?
Maybe you should start distinguishing between "Mind control" and "Scary tech that could potentially enable mind control so we need to be real careful with it despite how potentially rewarding it could be". It would really help your case a lot.
I'm actually insanely curious where you draw the line here!
At its best, Neuralink is supposed to give humans a chance against AI by speeding up human i/o. But if AI continues to expand its capabilities and speed, then that "advantage" will only last for a short time.
In exchange, we will give corporations and governments direct read/write access to our brains.
Oh, and if AI does take over the world, Neuralink style implants will likely come in very handy to control humans, won't they?
This isn't just about Musk. Ideally, nobody should ever do this. This is the final frontier of agency and privacy.
How is anyone on-board with this?
Corporate and governmental access are extremely scary. Companies will, as always, have to be the first movers in this space, but once it takes off we NEED open hardware and open source software. Imagine running an obfuscated binary on your brain. No thank you.
Do you really see technology like this *not* coming to fruition though? Do you think we will never have mass-market BCIs?
My point was that there is no competition, even with neuro interfaces. Unless it stops advancing for some reason, AGI will win. If faster I/O helps today, the advantage will be gone tomorrow. If humans have to "compete" with AGI, then we are guaranteed to lose in the long run.
> Imagine running an obfuscated binary on your brain. No thank you.
You say no thank you, but most people won't care if it makes their lives 1% easier. Musk, for example, is historically against open sourcing any of his products.
> Do you really see technology like this not coming to fruition though? Do you think we will never have mass-market BCIs?
This needs to be the first time that we actually regulate an area of tech before it becomes a multi-billion dollar industry. We screwed up on web tracking. That cannot happen again. We need a neuro bill of rights ASAP.
How long until TSA requires a quick scan before boarding?
This is the final frontier of agency and privacy.
Please read the transcript, or listen to this podcast with Sean Carroll and Nina Farahany. There are primitive brain interfaces entering the market now, including one from Meta.
https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2023/03/13/229-...
That's why I said we need open source and open hardware alternatives. But there's no world where that kind of tech comes first. Companies are going to develop the cutting edge first, when has that not been the case?
I'm really, really happy to see that there's healthy competition in the space. Especially, ironically, from Meta who has just been so great on the open-source front for quite a while.
Please, please listen to the podcast that I mentioned earlier.
If you are down, I have email notifications turned on here. If you listen to that podcast, and the still don't want to regulate the hell out of brain interfaces, I would love to discuss, even weeks later.
Transistors outpace organic synapses by significantly more than humans on foot outpace continental drift, which is a gap so much larger that a mere factor of ten is irrelevant.
I’m still waiting for any sort of progress towards the hyperloop. Not to mention "Full" self driving, or Mars colonies. Last time I heard of Neuralink, they butchered hundreds of animals for no apparent progress.
That (and that the cars shipped instead of being vapourware like all the other "green" initiatives from the incumbents) are why people were even inclined to bother listening to any of the other projects he's been involved with, even though the same ideas would normally be dismissed as if the proponent couldn't tell fact from fiction.
This article, which has a lot of bias, doesn't add anything to the announcement other than disparaging it.
Not sure i trust a company with brain implants that can't identify how an acronym is supposed to work...
Seems like the obvious choice
This is cutting edge research with the potential to help people with quadriplegia, a group of people who desperately need focused research. It is only a good thing.
The best and brightest researchers in this field are focusing on solving an amazingly hard problem and directly helping people who desperately need it. So why add negativity by nitpicking? Does that really contribute anything substantive or make the world a better place?
Here is a link to the actual Neuralink page talking about the PRIME study: https://neuralink.com/blog/first-clinical-trial-open-for-rec...
They highlighted the word for you to see how the acronym works.
I absolutely agree, I think it could definitely improve countless lives and it certainly is exciting, but it just seems like a petty decision to try to work in an acronym when in reality it doesn't matter what it means.