Then there's the pessimists, like me, wondering how long it'll take to Neuralink to turn their army of computer connected paraplegics into some Mechanical Turk-esque Grok clean up.
It’s just a pragmatic take on sustainability of innovation. If nobody—no person or government or non-profit—would find value in the future of the work, it merits questioning why do it versus something else.
In theory, yes. But other than maybe rare-disease research, I’m struggling to think of an example in medical research.
It's really hard for me to imagine that making more logistic sense than the current state of affairs - which is hiring armies of poor able-bodied people in developing countries.
"By using this implant I agree to the collection and sharing of analysis data with Neuralink and its trusted third parties".
[ ] Agree
[ ] Ask me later
Agreeing to data collection and sharing of your brain activity while concerning for it's own reasons, is not the same as forcing them to complete Mechanical Turk like tasks.
Of course, this creates a perverse situation where choosing humanitarian impact today over investment is always irrational, but this is the fundamental tension in charity vs investment, and aside from relying on governments and guilt, I'm not sure we have discovered a great model to solve it
There’s a bunch of effects to consider 1) improving lives right now may well improve subsequent generations lives directly 2) your future project may have a higher failure rate than your current one 3) the problems you are trying to solve may no longer be relevant in the future 4) you could be very wrong about future population growth.
All of this boils down to: you should be risk-discounting future benefits just the same way as you do future cash flows.
Taking a good thing and fucking people over with it in every way possible is "regular business reasoning"
At a certain point it's smart to say "We have the technology to do something good, let's be extremely cautious about concerns over what's profitable and focus on doing what's right with it"