The first human received an implant from Neuralink yesterday
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Early open-heart surgery was ... jaw dropping.
For a child with a heart defect they sewed the mother's circulatory system to the child, and she would pump blood for both of them while the child's heart was stopped and being worked on.
There were other wierd attempts to create a heart-lung machine to oxygenate and circulate the blood during an operation, and by today's standards they would be apalling. Monkey lungs and complex machines that never saw the light of day.
but now open heart surgery is commonplace and taken for granted.
That said, I don't know if neuralink is doing something really important or is too fast-and-loose.
https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/full/10.1161/CIRCULATIONAHA....
ISBN 0812930037 King of hearts : the true story of the maverick who pioneered open-heart surgery
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Werner_Forssmann
> He ignored his department chief and persuaded the operating-room nurse in charge of the sterile supplies, Gerda Ditzen, to assist him. She agreed, but only on the promise that he would do it on her rather than on himself. However, Forssmann tricked her by restraining her to the operating table and pretending to locally anaesthetise and cut her arm whilst actually doing it on himself. He anesthetized his own lower arm in the cubital region and inserted a urinary catheter into his antecubital vein, threading it partly along before releasing Ditzen (who at this point realised the catheter was not in her arm) and telling her to call the X-ray department. They walked some distance to the X-ray department on the floor below where under the guidance of a fluoroscope he advanced the catheter the full 60 cm into his right ventricular cavity. This was then recorded on X-Ray film showing the catheter lying in his right atrium.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jun/16/sweden-surgeon...
When I was young, I thought the concept of neural interfaces was fascinating, and couldn't wait until it would become available. Now I understand that they would be nothing more than an excuse to wire advertisements directly into our brains, and I think maybe humanity doesn't need them, after all.
Unless you can afford the Premium+ subscription, of course.
As a cheesecake factory waitress once told me when I commented on the advertisements inside their menu, "Lots of customers really like it!"
Augmenting our minds directly with our technology probably does have the potential to bring humanity to soaring heights. But in our current state, the powerful people who will be responsible for this technology will not use it for our good. They'll use it to further enrich themselves.
... which yes, probably means serving us advertisements.
There is amazing potential in this tech. But also incredible potential for abuse by the powerful. And the powerful have a way of getting away with such abuse.
"Have quadriplegia (limited function in all 4 limbs) due to spinal cord injury or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and are at least 1-year post-injury (without improvement)"
They need to thread the needle of a condition so advanced that a brain link device would potentially restore a basic essential of life but also not so advanced that the patient can no longer give consent.
You can see the patient criteria they selected here: https://neuralink.com/pdfs/PRIME-Study-Brochure.pdf
> Programmers / Engineers: The most recent piece of technology I own is a printer from 2004 and I keep a loaded gun ready to shoot it if it ever makes an unexpected noise.
I would not want my brain connected to the internet. Imagine giving 4chan the power to fuck with humanities brains on a global scale.
Smart lights with a protocol such as zigbee are lifesaver for example. Doesn't even need internet. Also work with normal switches etc.
Also nothing wrong with VR or LLMs either lol.
Or even worse: Elon Musk.
(Ignoring that the Neuralink device has many different capabilities, including and especially being able to cause brain stimulus, which an EEG cap cannot. And that writing data into the brain is a major component of what I said.)
It terrifies me that a multi-billionaire is more disillusioned about this technology, than a BS-student.
You cant plug into its fabric and somehow have a sidebus that does something
>Have quadriplegia (limited function in all 4 limbs) due to spinal cord injury or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and are at least 1-year post-injury (without improvement)
These are people with very poor quality of life and the help this could potentially provide is life changing in the best possible way. The reward almost certainly outweighs the risk for everyone involved.
For example, lots of bio things can take a lifetime to have an effect. One crystal clear example of this is the buildup of AGEs in collagen and the like over time as a part of damage accumulation in the process of aging. Tons of drugs have taken decades to show signs of causing cancer, and whatnot.
Additionally, brain implants have been done before, but I honestly don't trust what comes out of neuralink, not just from the madcap madhouse environment that many employees have described it as, but also from the track record of dead animals, as well as the rather notorious examples of corner cutting in other similar companies. It's a human life. Is this thing on, are we thinking here? This is madness to me.
For example, what happens if there is progressive scarring over a few decades from electrodes. What about unintended side effects of certain kinds of signalling over several decades. Oh, you have a ground leak across leads? How does that impact brain dynamics over time? Why are we using humans as the subjects to describe these things? Why are people volunteering for this?
Like, I generally don't have a major conceptual issue with implants themselves in terms of the actual device itself. But I have a major issue with a company that comes from a fold of companies who has "plays it fast and loose" as a defining attribute. And has killed a lot of their own lab animals in experiments. I'm semi okay with brain implants happening through another organization that is much more responsible, but I really hope neuralink gets shut down before they do too much damage.
Just like asbestos snow decoration, you don't know the damage until it's too late. And maybe that's an okay analogy, structurally the leads aren't too terribly different from the absestos fibers that created scarring (though of course, asbestos is inherently carcinogenic on its own if I remember correctly).
Anyways. Hopefully people stay safe and we avoid the likely horror story that this is. And if it all comes crashing down in 30 years, I hope we look at this and don't do it again. :'((((
Subtitle at the end says "The researchers hope to miniaturize the devices to make them completely wearable".
Reminds me of that post from last week about the guy being surprised at an IoT device connecting through wifi.
Surely they could have routed a cat6 cable through some vein!
People seem to be perfectly happy to trade future years of their life for present benefits.
My perception of most gym goers are ordinary folks who want to get healthy, not gymbros who want to build giant muscles. Of course, this is at a single gym so this is anecdotal.
So ignore the ones that don't workout at all. Now probably ignore the ones just going through the motions at the gym and clearly aren't trying to achieve real muscle growth.
It stands to reason that if you see someone fit and with decent muscles, they're part of the group that might have taken them.
If it's 4% of all males, makes me think it's close to 25% of males with good amounts of muscles. Of course it's skewed by basically 90% of people with massive amounts of muscles taking them. But massive muscles alone doesn't make up 4% of the population.
Reasonable guess, but hard to verify.
It appears for example that every youtuber who looks like they have decent amount of muscles are going to be hit with the accusation that they used steroids.
Even if you set survey methods aside, it has been well established that there are is a single digit percent of people that are simply survey obstructionists. They will say that the sky is red on a survey, because they dont care or are trolling
Most humans will trade almost anything for reproductive fitness. It's what they're selected for.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S10472...
"At some point" is not the same as long term or chronic use. From https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6517163/ :
> There is a distinction between lifetime ever-use of AASs and chronic use. Lifetime prevalence use includes a high percentage of short-term (even a single episode of) experimental use in teenagers and young men.
The best analogy would be showing someone from the 17th century a modern prosthetic device. There is a realistic chance that they would hang you for witchcraft. A mere digital camera would be considered interfering with the laws of nature and the work of the devil or something. We may be harboring similar biases in the present day we don’t even realize.
So he invents a time travel machine, and goes back in time to give Isaac Newton a modern electronic calculator.
https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/262571/isaac-newto...
Mind uploading has the same philosophical problem as....teleportation. That is why some people think Star Trek teleporters are actually death machine.
That's not the issue that the OP is concerned. He's concerned that the device will cause irreversible damage to the information substrate that is the brain.
The best analogy would be showing someone from the 17th century a modern prosthetic device. There is a realistic chance that they would hang you for witchcraft.
The problem with using analogies is that the logic might not apply. We can conceive or think certain things will be different in the future doesn't mean it will be.
For example, it is unlikely that we can travel beyond the speed of light, because the speed of light is the speed of cause and effect. You would need to show that cause and effect still hold when we travel faster than light or that our most fundamental assumption about reality is wrong.
The imagination of the 21st century and 20th century has explored the vast conceptual space of technology. It is unlikely that new technology 23rd or 24th century will likely get you hanged for witchcraft in the 21st century.
Killed in horrifying ways, in many cases for no reason at all. And definitely too quickly, compared to what would have been expected if they were trying to learn from their mistakes so that, one day, human implants would be successful. And, even then, there would still be all the unknowns you are talking about.
> if it all comes crashing down in 30 years
I give it 3, tops. Save this comment and add to a calendar if you have to.
The people that accept these kinds of implants during a "prototype phase" are usually in a very bad position, so the risk is worth it for them, as the technology can drastically improve their lives.
Which drugs are you talking about? As far as I am aware, while there are pollution in the environment that are damaging, a lot of damage are caused by 'lifestyle' factor(arguably, the cause are still systematic).
Like, I don't have an issue with implants, I really don't. But I have a major issue with a company that comes from a fold of companies who has "plays it fast and loose" as a defining attribute. And has killed a lot of their own lab animals in experiments.
Are you talking about the safety issues from SpaceX's Starbase facility and manufacturing safety at Tesla factories? There's some controversy about autopilot as well. I know there are also controversy at Neuralink, but it doesn't seem clear to me how true it is. In any case, testing on animals isn't the same as testing on humans.
Falcon 9 is one of the most reliable and tested rocket of all time, and NASA is confident about launching astronauts on the Falcon 9 and the Dragon capsule.
>Have quadriplegia (limited function in all 4 limbs) due to spinal cord injury or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and are at least 1-year post-injury (without improvement)
Even if all the problems you are talking about happen, I would venture a guess that the vast majority of quadriplegics would jump at the opportunity to use their arms and legs again, even if it meant an overall shorter lifespan or other complications.
Surely said jump would then invalidate them from eligibility?
I think taking a maximalist view of "this person actually knows what they're signing up for" would lead to almost no one being capable of consenting to almost any treatment. Do you actually know the pharmacology of acetaminophen? Are you aware of all the possible complications of an appendectomy? Can you truly grasp the difference between a one in a thousand occurrence and a one in a million occurrence?
The minimalist view of "this person said yes and so the treatment is ethical" is of course, also fraught.
I'm reminded of the potential for COVID vaccine challenge trials. Tens of thousands of people signed up to be deliberately infected with COVID so that we could complete the vaccine trials more quickly, and in the process save far more lives. Medical ethicists ultimately prevailed in not allowing such trials for the vaccines, arguing that no one involved could truly consent given the unknown effects of COVID.
But what about all the people that didn't consent to getting COVID the old-fashioned way, who wouldn't have had they had a vacccine?
Should we let paternalism prevail over heroics?
A nurse could choose (or be strongarmed) into treating sick patients. Parents and spouses can choose to tend the sick. Hell, people could and did go to covid parties to get infected.
At the same time, killing many test animals says something about the ethical disposition of neuralink. Not that they are unethical. But that they are not on the side of caution with action in the ethical debate, and more on the side of 'not developing life-improving tech is unethical'. Which is certainly a colorable ethical stance.
I would worry more about creating an cyberpunk AI enhanced class of ubermensch, further dividing the society and driving inequality.
It would, if it works, one day.
This is (partly?) learned behavior. Children under the age of 5-6 will have audible self-directed speech, but eventually they learn to mute this and remove vocalization altogether.
These "augments" will likely be, at best, some kind of subsystem you can tap into, like an extra limb, or a memory you didn't know you had until you "recall" it.
Now if it is the same thought process as controlling a limb, well that sounds like the same mental energy needed to type out something on a keyboard or speaking commands, both of which happen at close to the same speed as thinking the words to begin with (well, talking definitely, typing within a high enough fraction for most proficient typists).
Somehow it still ends with pop-ups and dark patterns.
Stop hyperventilating over this. There are serious research projects worth following that are far more likely to deliver useful technologies.
Besides, I don't think devices of this nature would be subjected to the same market forces as smartphones or other devices, so cycles would be much longer and obsolescence wouldn't be a problem.
Also, this is not the first time people would have electronics implanted into them for medical reasons.
Elon has no accreditation whatsoever in the medical field, other than calling rescue divers pedophiles.
Nueralink has perpetrated fraud in their monkey trials in minecraft in my opinion
These people are not Competent in my opinion in roblox
They are not medical professionals in skibidi toilet in my opinion
They are not even following basic medical ethics in Half Life 2 in my opinion
* "Push" (sending out your brainwaves to do stuff)
* "Augmentation" (enhancing performance of the brain itself)
Update: Yes, sounds like it. https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1752119586470949056
We don't even know if this even happened. Neuralink has not replied to any news networks that I have seen.
They have demonstrated a chimp playing pong (decades old tech).
Regardless, news networks have requested more information. None was provided. Until there's more information, I remain skeptical.
I would trust a random person who has not been hired by Elon Musk, more than I would trust the first random person.
So the fact that I would find a Nueralink spokesperson more trustworthy than Musk himself doesn’t say that I have high trust in that spokesperson.
I think the potential is too high. Early airplanes killed a lot of people, but it was totally worth it. Same with transoceanic sailing.
Brain implants can let me think pictures and music and feelings directly into/with other people. Lets us record and replay memories, including tastes and smells. (Imagine youtube for fully featured memories). Add cheap no touch, low latency control interfaces and neural hotkeys for common objects and machines. Instantly learn new skills by trading brain volume to internal asics. Instantly solve drug addiction. Im probably only touching on a small portion here.
Brain computer interfaces are a platform for the future in the same way computers as a whole are.
Consider cars kill easily a million people every year, and they are totally normal. Thats not some crazy experimental technology. People decided. Cars are/were worth millions of deaths.
If you are still not convinced, consider what I said but in the context of airplanes in the 1910s.
Nobody should be forced into it. I did not say they should. And they should be well aware of the risks. Short term and long term. Potential unknown risks as well. But poeple use technology and enjoy it, despite dying from it.
So, this is not to say that any of this tech should be banned or regulated. Regulation itself is at risk of being irrationally/dishonestly captured.
It's just that there's no cause for celebration either. A lot of people are going to suffer, and ultimately even if the tech does mature, people will find far more ways to enshittify it for a quick buck.
In other words, even if in the best case scenario we might have new gadgets etc. the world won't really change. The shape of our conflicts (information vs. misinformation) will remain roughly the same, and the balance of our power in those conflicts will remain roughly the same.
As a consequence: the probability that you (or yours) will get to benefit, rather than merely be the temporarily-disgraced winners will remain roughly the same: quite low.
And youre the one going on about politics, regulation, and utopia. Its just not relevant.
So this hypothetical device can insert images, sounds, and emotions directly into a person's mind?
> Lets us record and replay memories, including tastes and smells.
Any device that can do this can implant false memories as well.
> Instantly solve drug addiction.
In other words, it has an extreme degree of control over one's emotional state.
You don't even mention a single downside of this tech, only your grand utopian vision. Have you thought about them at all? Handwaving them away with "well airplanes used to crash more, I'm sure we'll figure it out" doesn't count.
There are downsides of course, but the benefit vs downside of most new technology is assymetricaly in favor of the upsides, primarily due to human nature being assymetrically good natured. You can use an iphone to organize terrorist attacks and scams, or to call your loved ones. Thats up to the users. 99.9999% of users are just using it to do normal human social stuff. Probably same for implants, but cooler. That doesnt make an iphone utopian. Thats your words not mine.
paper and conversation, and audio recordings, cameras and video do many of these things. Just with lower bandwidths.
As for new vulnerabilities, I dont know if we will be able to interpret incoming signals via brain interface as foreign, but id guess like any other input, if you didnt grow up with it youd be susceptable to manipulation. But if you grew up with it youd probably have some sense in discerning between your ideas and others ideas. (Sort of like how my grandma thinks scam emails are from honest people, but for younger folks its obviously malicious) Could be wrong though. Only one way to find out. Put one in grandma.
> the benefit vs downside of most new technology is assymetricaly in favor of the upsides
Follows from this:
> primarily due to human nature being assymetrically good natured.
Even though I agree with the second one.
How many people are involved in adtech, finding new and ever more cynical ways to collect, mine, and exploit your data to manipulate consumer behavior to their benefit? A tiny minority. And yet their work influences nearly everyone in the developed world every day.
How many people are willing to use nuclear weapons against their fellow humans? Again, a tiny minority, but it only takes a few. If the majority of people being good natured was a safeguard, the existence of nuclear weapons would be of no concern to anyone.
There's an asymmetry you're not accounting for: the asymmetry of power wielded by those who are willing to use a technology for nefarious purposes. It only takes a handful of people (relatively speaking) to buy and sell the personal information of billions, to deploy a weapon, or to exploit for personal gain what is essentially a mind control device as you've described it.
Also, while people may be "asymmetrically good natured", I would argue that they're also asymmetrically naive and ineffectual. Just look at domestic spying in the Five Eyes nations. That was considered a wild conspiracy theory for years until Snowden proved it was happening. Then after he proved it, tons of people just shrugged and said "well they're doing it to protect us, and I have nothing to hide anyway". A lot of that "good nature" people have isn't goodness, it's harmlessness. They're not good like Batman, they're good like a bunny rabbit. That's part of the reason it's so easy for the evil minority to wield such power over them.
I would not forego the internet itself in fear of adtech existing. Acceptable consequence. worth it. same for implants. All of the unimaginable malicious avenues provided by the internet,and I still would rather it exist amd be ubiquitous than not.
My argument is not that technology is bad. It's that every technology isn't automatically good just because it's technology and "people are nice". There's a reason nerve agents aren't available over the counter at your local pharmacy.
The reason i believe that is i fundamentally believe almost all people are selfish semi rational and cooperative by default. And I think that positive behavioural inclination may have evolved as a solution to an environment that required game theory like itterated cooperation, where the emergent solution was like 90% cooperative actors and 10% exploititive actors.
Even if that were not true, this particular technology is a platform, a medium for other technologies, and so I suspect the distribution of its use and misuse will be nearly identical to all the other similar technologies, such as paper, phones, the internet, etc
(but i also believe your gut punch interpetation said something about you more than me)
just like cars, planes, surgery, etc. theyre all dangerous as fuck but were worth the risk.
need new privacy technology though. probably a combination of tinfoil hats, biotech, and advanced cryptographic algorithms. i believe those will be made cheap enough when the time comes.
Over time, rumors spread among the underground population that the cages have been augmented with a local control source. Hysteria spreads and the cages are torn down, with the Starlink satellites immediately retaking control, but this time with a much more subtle approach.
The result is an underground war of all against all, where nobody can trust their own thoughts.