Neuralink Raises an Additional $43M
techcrunch.com
techcrunch.com
She can’t walk, and she can’t control her bowels and bladder. She has a port in her skull, a brain shunt, that moves the cerebrospinal fluid into her belly which is extremely important for her continued wellbeing.
Her prognosis at this point is she should be able to live into her sixties or seventies with modern medical technology. But with modern technology she’ll never be able to walk.
I’m really hopeful that one day Neuralink will let my child walk. Things like this give me hope when I feel depressed about her quality of life or how she’ll be treated as an adult.
That's not to avoid discussing the animal welfare concerns that merit attention, though. One can only speculate what's going on in the man's head at any given point, but I wonder where the truth lies in his pressuring for results.
In any case, it reminds me of the story from the KingKiller Chronicles of the member of the Amyr who killed tens of thousands of peasants in unethical medical experiments hundreds of years before the story of Kvolthe. Kvolthe reflects on the balances of lives saved with the medical knowledge gained, systemetized, and shared through those medical experiments, the balance being -to his estimate- positive.
Which is why his ability to find sources of capital is not surprising in the least.
Tesla: Eberhard and Terpenning SpaceX: Gwynne Shotwell, above all, but also Cantrell and Mueller.
vs. say - the Boring Company - what have they done recently that wasn't a joke?
I'd say I'd be more confident of Neuralink if someone who actually knows about BCI/BMI were involved, like I'd like to see names like Rich Andersen, Doris Tsao, or someone from the late Krisha Shenoy's lab involved...
- moving servers by himself against advice from his own talent
- rescuing children trapped in caves by insulting other rescuers
- finishing international wars by wrestling dictators.
The fact that such person is able to secure funding convinces me that the stock exchange is quite disturbed (and disturbing) mechanism.
It has done its job, so why would he put any more effort into it?
I think it is just a message via WhatsApp or other messaging app? I also wonder if he just has a group with many VCs and broadcast the message there.
I simplify the founding process in two group of founders: the ones for mere mortals and the ones that are oversubscribed and people ask YOU in random places if you have some access to the deal with dilated pupils.
I know people get elective surgeries all the time (plastics, etc), but I feel hard pressed that this company is going to convince people to open up their skull for some promise of cool technology.
Even if it is successful from a technology perspective, the chicken and egg problem they'll face with developers is an order of magnitude or two higher than with AR/VR headsets. It's already an uphill battle without having to convince people to open up their brain, I just can't see this gaining any adoption unless there's a surgery-lite path outside the skull.
I can think of quite a few initiatives which have taken in countless billions of dollars, cancer research, Alzheimer's, Dementia, Cystic Fibrosis, etc.
Nothing sexy about that at all, just helping people lead normal lives.
Here, the snake oil is in the comments similar to 'Neuralink will help disabled people'. But Neuralink so so wide spectrum that, if it works, it will spawn multiple different industries. And capital will find it's way to the most lucrative applications, as it always does ... and those applications won't be 'helping disable people'.
Unless my brain has a bobbin in it, it probably doesn't work like a modern sewing machine.
This is your brain on dance music