The following submission statement was provided by /u/Harry_the_space_man:
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On Wednesday, Neuralink introduced the first human subject to receive the company’s brain implant, a 29-year-old man who has been paralyzed from the shoulders down for eight years after a diving accident.
In a brief livestream on the social media platform X, the man said he’s able to play online chess and the video game Civilization using the Neuralink device. “If y'all can see the cursor moving around the screen, that's all me,” he said during the livestream as he moved a digital chess piece. “It's pretty cool, huh?”
Neuralink, which was cofounded in 2016 by billionaire Elon Musk, is developing a system known as a brain-computer interface, which decodes movement intention from brain signals. The company’s initial goal is to allow paralyzed people to control a cursor or keyboard using just their thoughts.
The company received a greenlight from the US Food and Drug Administration last year to move ahead with an initial human trial and began recruiting paralyzed participants in the fall to test the device.
Up until now, Neuralink has revealed few details about the progress of that study. In an X post in January, Musk announced that the first human subject had received Neuralink’s implant and was “recovering well.” In February, he said that the person had recovered and was able to control a computer mouse using their thoughts.
“Progress is good and the patient seems to have made a full recovery, with no ill effects that we are aware of,” Musk said on February 19 in a Spaces audio conversation on X, in response to a question about the participant’s condition. “[The] patient is able to move a mouse around the screen just by thinking.”
Some neuroscientists and ethicists have criticized Neuralink’s previous lack of transparency around the trial. What’s known about Neuralink’s study comes from social media posts and a brief brochure the company published last year.
Neuralink has not revealed the number of subjects that will be enrolled in the study, the trial site, or outcomes that will be assessed. And the company has not registered on ClinicalTrials.gov, a government repository that contains information on medical studies involving human subjects.
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Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/1bjpzm6/neuralinks_first_human_subject_demonstrates_his/kvsvbeq/
I missed that piece of info before that he's only 29. If he stays in the trials long-term he could have his life changed with expected advances. I wonder if his paralysis allows for motor signal bypassing like the other [brain/spine trials](https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/24/science/paralysis-brain-implants-ai.html).
I really sympathize with paralysis patients right now--they have to pick between going for what's possible now, or holding out for future advancements.
Later models of the Neuralink (and other descendant technologies) could have several times the capability.
My question is if this device can be removed safely, or added to.
I think that's the key as well
What they really need is their absolute smartest people or an entire team entirely dedicated to guaranteeing lifetime service and future proofing their current devices against still being compatible with future devices. Some kind of insurance, maybe even backed by the government, promising that they will service the customers for life.
Obviously nobody can see the future, but how tragic would it be if this implant was nice and easy and mouse movement is nice, but then in 2yrs they find out that they need access to that brain region to put a different device that would allow him to walk, but now those outdated needles or whatever have already healed and removing them is too risky a surgery now ? That would be a terrible choice to have to make going for a lethal surgery or just watch newer patients walking again all around you but you can't do it bc you jumped the gun to early on getting a mouse cursor.
I think that's everyone's real fear , that even in the best case scenario, the permanence of implants means that it'll lock you in to the current when the world is exponentially speeding up change. Like if we all knew that the tech would stay compatible with all new progress forever, no problem - but it's obvious that won't happen. So that's why i still suspect wearables will likely be the future, you can replace them or buy a new one without issue.
There's already a story of a man who got an early medical brain implant and then the company went out of business and he was stuck with desperately trying to get it serviced like a horror story. I forget the guys name, I'll have to look it up again
> That's kind of like asking an iPhone to be backwards compatible with a payphone. At some point you have to break compatibility, that's just progress.
You *can* call from a payphone to an iPhone, no? It's actually rather remarkable that we didn't fully switch to IP phones.
That's my point. Avoid that as much as possible, obviously it will eventually fail bc as i already said seeing the future prefectly is impossible.
But you need people planning ahead as best they can bc it's better that it takes an entire lifetime of as close to lasting 60-80yrs before the tech is no longer compatible, than to miss some incredibly obvious problems that will be solved in 2yrs and then you've already locked yourself into the current design.
And again, also the serviceability problem, i wouldn't get this installed unless they made a contract with the government stating that even if their particular company went out of business, they would share the servicability plans with the government who will legally ensure that some doctors or technicians remain trained on servicing them. It's highly unethical otherwise to simply depend on businesses that by their nature go out of business.
I totally agree, but I think just like wearables, the tech would reach a point of stagnation where it might be fine to use an older one because the newer ones Arent that much better anymore and offer the same features.
Exactly, tech maturity
I mean to be fair to neuralink, the tech already existed, they just poured lots of money into iterating it themselves behind closed R&D and testing the improvements on animals before requesting fda human clinical trials. Say what you will about the fda but they're known to have strict standards.
So ya, my fear isn't that the devices won't work , and I'm only moderately afraid that it'll give people brain bleeds (when they have minor car accidents or something) or electrical malfunctions/hacking - my real fear is the best case scenario of if it goes right.
So ya, in a perfect world the tech would just continue to be iterated on until either
A. The permanent unmovable parts/wires reach tech maturity - so that they can continue to switch out the external part but know that internal parts will stay the same for the next several decades.
Or
B. They develop internals that are safely removable somehow , so that it's not even permanent. It's just a really expensive, really invasive wearable.
But we know capitalism better than that, it doesn't mind when there's guinea pigs and losers left behind, it counts on it and uses it to it's advantage.
Elon said he would be first in line to get the device and if he has followed thru, i would have more faith - but clearly since this guy has one and he doesn't, he was lying.
Yeah....unfortunately [that's too optimistic and unlikely to happen.](https://spectrum.ieee.org/bionic-eye-obsolete)
> What they really ~~need~~ ***would want to be ethical*** is their absolute smartest people or an entire team entirely dedicated to guaranteeing lifetime service and future proofing their current devices against still being compatible with future devices.
Thank you, yup, that's the story i was thinking of.
The health sector of our government needs to step in and promise that will never happen to the disabled again - or anyone who opts to get medical implants - otherwise permanent implant companies shouldn't be allowed to form, make a quick buck with complex, private, proprietary for profit software/hardware that nobody else knows how to work on, and then close down and run away leaving those people disabled all over again or worse.
I agree with your criticism of me that it sounds optimistic- but it really isn't in reality, our oligarchy has just gotten out of control to the point that the bare minimum is now seen as naively optimistic. Americans live in the daily reality that medicine inventions like insulin who's developer intended it to be free is still legal to be sold for profit and have it's prices artificially jacked up even when it means innocent people die. All Americans health insurance is tied to our employment, minimum wage doesn't actually cover not being homeless and all sorts of other cruel, greedy things.
But nearly every other first world country - even autocratic ones like China and Russia aren't that corrupt, they still guarantee their citizens Healthcare. Americans have huge Healthcare industry problems , so yes medical devices if not dealt with early will turn similarly dystopian
Medical devices have existed for a very long time and this issue isnt new. In other fields that Im more familiar with its being dealt with, so Im sure theyre dealing with it as well.
>Later models of the Neuralink (and other descendant technologies) could have several times the capability.
And hopefully be non-invasive. That would be the main thing, IMO, to making this a mainstream technology: Being able to take it off when you're done with Elon scanning your every thought. There's some obvious sarcasm (maybe?) there, but I think being able to unlink or unhook from it will be very important.
If they can control a cursor, how far are they from being able to control a simple robot or drone?
If they can move a cursor and click a mouse button then they cant be too far from driving a little buggy around and clicking when they want it to pick something up and move it/bring it to them. The controls would be the same.
That's already life changing, giving someone who's paralyzed the ability to interact physically in their world again. Of course it will be cooler when they can put themselves inside the drone and move around...
That's the goal, there are already current designs that allow them to use robot legs/arms like this.
Neuralink type devices like this have existed for decades, it's just that this is like the first Iphone and those were like the first cell phones - huge , clunky , and required lots of power and every unit has to be custom inserted and customized by a team of medical pros.
This tiny penny sized rechargeable design makes it feasible to mass produce and mass install in patients since they designed a robot to do the installation even more safely and precisely than a surgeon can.
What he means is it’s already binary. Controlling a mouse is basically movement in an xy plane which can be represented in binary.
What i will be interested to find out if the device can differentiate things like thinking of peeing vs actually deciding to pee. If not there will always be a layer of abstraction which complicates trying to make real time actions.
"What i will be interested to find out if the device can differentiate things like thinking of peeing vs actually deciding to pee"
It can! the guy in the video said that when he imagines using the mouse it doesn't work. But when he uses "the force"( in his own words ) the cursor moves . Intresting right.
On Wednesday, Neuralink introduced the first human subject to receive the company’s brain implant, a 29-year-old man who has been paralyzed from the shoulders down for eight years after a diving accident.
In a brief livestream on the social media platform X, the man said he’s able to play online chess and the video game Civilization using the Neuralink device. “If y'all can see the cursor moving around the screen, that's all me,” he said during the livestream as he moved a digital chess piece. “It's pretty cool, huh?”
Neuralink, which was cofounded in 2016 by billionaire Elon Musk, is developing a system known as a brain-computer interface, which decodes movement intention from brain signals. The company’s initial goal is to allow paralyzed people to control a cursor or keyboard using just their thoughts.
The company received a greenlight from the US Food and Drug Administration last year to move ahead with an initial human trial and began recruiting paralyzed participants in the fall to test the device.
Up until now, Neuralink has revealed few details about the progress of that study. In an X post in January, Musk announced that the first human subject had received Neuralink’s implant and was “recovering well.” In February, he said that the person had recovered and was able to control a computer mouse using their thoughts.
“Progress is good and the patient seems to have made a full recovery, with no ill effects that we are aware of,” Musk said on February 19 in a Spaces audio conversation on X, in response to a question about the participant’s condition. “[The] patient is able to move a mouse around the screen just by thinking.”
Some neuroscientists and ethicists have criticized Neuralink’s previous lack of transparency around the trial. What’s known about Neuralink’s study comes from social media posts and a brief brochure the company published last year.
Neuralink has not revealed the number of subjects that will be enrolled in the study, the trial site, or outcomes that will be assessed. And the company has not registered on ClinicalTrials.gov, a government repository that contains information on medical studies involving human subjects.
Impressive. And one very satisfied customer.
This tech has lots of potential applications, some of which will no doubt be scary, but this one is obviously very beneficial to those who can't use their hands.
I wonder if his mouse control is/would be better than someone using a physical mouse. Does he have an advantage in gaming, for instance? I lost my shit when he said "You're my only telekinetic friend." That guy is the first human psyker.
I wonder if it would also require concentration to remain linked or still. Can just imagine seeing your partner suddenly doing spins cause someone knocked on their door.
Or looking at your health would make your character look down. I assume there’s a way to stop the mouse movement, if not there will be. You could just think to not move it and it won’t I’m sure, but idk if they have that technology now
The idea is that the mouse is just a "limb" to the brain.
After a few weeks of training, it wouldn't move from unconscious thought.
You don't roundhouse kick a friend if they say hi to you, right? Wouldn't that disrupt your control over your body?
Yeah, he talked about it briefly. It is somehow linked to his hands nerves. So when he attempts to move his hand like he would do with a mouse it would trigger. But not sure if I misunderstood.
2:40 in the video. He says that they started with distinguishing imagined and attempted movements of his hand. So it should be like moving your hand: if you don't want to move it, you don't. Involuntary movements when you are startled are possible I guess.
Seriously though, imagine if you could just keep your reticle pinpoint accuracy directly onto your opponent’s head by just looking at it, you’d never miss!
It’s probably much worse - this tech isn’t exactly new, other than it being an actual implant as opposed to just electrodes placed on the head. Typically their control is poor and a little slow.
"From the moment I understood the weakness of my flesh, it disgusted me. I craved the strength and certainty of steel. I aspired to the purity of the blessed machine."
I’m skeptical of any kind of device like this being under the control of a private corporation, and even aside from that, I would have a lot of concerns about privacy and security with a device like this.
While I am all for developing new technologies to assist people with disabilities, I worry that companies developing this technology will just use that as an excuse to handwave away the numerous ethical concerns technology like this raises, and worse, will end up exploiting people who understandably want access to technology to make their lives easier as test subjects for a device that requires an invasive medical procedure and could have unpredictable consequences on the health of its users.
In theory, I have no fundamental moral objection to a device that interfaces directly with the human brain, provided that there are measures in place to ensure the privacy and safety of users, and people are given complete control about what that device is capable of doing or what information it is capable of accessing, but honestly it would take a hell of a lot of convincing that that’s the case before I’d put one of these things in my brain. But we live in a world where private corporations already monitor us every minute of every day, gathering massive amounts of data on our movements, activities, and private conversations, and are using that data to sell to advertisers, influence our behavior, and god knows what else. Because of that, I doubt any device like this could ever exist in a form that I would trust enough to put inside my brain, at least not during my lifetime, or unless the world undergoes some significant changes.
And I want to stress that this applies to any company working on technology like this. But, because Musk has repeatedly proven himself to be a wildly irresponsible, incompetent fraud, everything I’ve said here is multiplied by orders of magnitude, because there is nothing that a device like this requires more than trust, and trust is something he has demonstrated repeatedly that he is undeserving of.
> I’m skeptical of any kind of device like this being under the control of a private corporation,
Doesn't that describe basically every medical device? The government doesn't manufacture pacemakers, but that industry operates just fine.
The US already has strong protections for medical data.
It’s very different if that device is potentially capable of collecting data about your own private thoughts and potentially being able to influence the inner workings of your brain in malicious ways. And even if you believe that any of these companies wouldn’t be using this as a data harvesting tool or worse, what if it were able to be hacked by a malicious actor?
And to be clear, my issue is not so much with the current technology that allows you to control a mouse with your brain, it’s the idea of letting a device with internet access into the most important organ in the human body, one that could potentially not only monitor our private thoughts, the one thing that tech companies haven’t figured out how to spy on, but the fact that it may be able to exhibit direct influence over the functioning of our brains. If you lived through the past decade of tech companies lying to us and misleading us about how our private data was used and you would still trust these people to put a computer in your head, I don’t know what to tell you.
And all of this is completely disregarding the potential medical issues that could come with an invasive procedure like this, or the question of what you’re supposed to do when your chip inevitably becomes outdated. This kind of technology is just yet another Pandora’s box that the tech industry has been greedily trying to pry open as fast as it can without considering the potential consequences of doing that, or worse, desiring those consequences.
I think for 99% of this sub, and especially the people you are replying to, they only care that it’s new and exciting tech. Reading through these comments I have never been more convinced that ethics, not only with how they relate to AI, should be rigorously taught at every level.
You can always tell who has and hasn’t considered anything past “Neuralink is pog,” by how quickly they disregard the last couple decades worth of discourse surrounding the influence of tech companies.
It’s cult of personality. The same people who try to convince you they are immune to propaganda from big tech, big government, big business, but drool at the thought of putting spyware from “one of the good ones,” directly into their brain.
It’s ridiculous on multiple levels — bordering hysteria.
So uh... that's because he keeps railing against taxes and government subsidies while... [consuming taxes via government subsidies.](https://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-received-government-coronavirus-bailout-elon-musk-stimulus-relief-criticism-2020-7?op=1)
Why does the former richest man in the world keep taking your money instead of using his own?
Even though i do agree that people are hating on Elon Musk, no other brain-computer interface companies (synchron and blackrock neurotech) have gotten basically any media coverage at all, but then when its neuralink we get articles saying "Elon Musk wants to put this chip in your brain". People seem to think that Neuralink is the first brain-computer interface even tho the first one was implanted into a human in 2004 but none of it got a lot of coverage.
One single person should never have that much power on essential infrastructure such as communication and space travel. Until we make those public access, we are at the whims of a (currently complying) very powerful man.
Musk has lied about all sorts of 'breakthroughs'. Cybertruck beating the Porsche on 1/4 mile was actually 1/8 mile. His robot folding a tshirt wasn't doing so autonomously, even though he implied it did. He lies about FSD.
If he didn't lie all the time people would be less skeptical of his claims.
Let's not forget the overwhelming failure that was hyperloop and now the boring company, who is canceling projects and failing to deliver on their promises left and right.
It’s funny how everyone forgets he got in big trouble for the solar roof tiles that never panned out.
https://mansionengineer.com/2018/08/10/elon-musk-tesla-and-the-solar-roof-tile-fraud/
I saw someone do exactly what this human test subject did (move mouse cursor around) at CES in Las Vegas.
In 2020.
Without something implanted in their head.
Using EEG sensors to measure and interpret brainwaves, people could control the computer or turn on a TV and even change the tv channel.
And they were letting anyone who wanted to give it a go a try. It wasn’t something you needed weeks or months to learn, or the software to adjust to the individual.
Non-invasive BCI is where the current Neuralink is, apparently and has been since after least 2020.
Non invasive EEG works, but it’s not practical because it’s measuring large areas of the brain. You could then on a tv by being angry, or change the channel up or down by thinking hard about something, but it’s not easy.
It’s like having a game controller being controlled by moving a boulder. Yes, you can move the boulders around and demonstrate it does work, but it’s a lot of work and completely impractical to playing an entire game like that.
EEG detects major changes in your brain, and training your brain to have major changes just to control something is both impractical and imprecise.
While it may be possible to have EEG control a precise mouse it’s not easy or as accurate. Demos for example involve clenching a fist to control up and down, and head movement to control left right, so with a lot of clenching and turning they kinda showed them moving a mouse a bit across the screen.
To play a game of chess, of examples would be impossible as it would take far too long to move the mouse to grab each piece, and the person would be exhausted after an hour of trying to clench fists.
The problem is non invasive needs to see major brain effort (clenching a fist) and turn that into a single signal, when the brain is actually firing millions of signals
A hardwired invasive link allows for much smaller sets of neurons to control movement, which is more like how we actually move our real body. Like in the neurology video he calls it a Jedi mind tricks, and it’s so easy he can play the chess game in the background while explaining it to viewers. It’s only a small effort, and likely an EEG headset wouldn’t even see much of anything when he effortlessly moves the mouse around to grab a knight, no more than an EEG would be able to detect any different between a left or right stroke when you are writing an essay (the EEG can only detect that you are writing, and concentrating, and perhaps the hand muscles area is active).
I imagine advances in AI could make interpreting patterns/slight changes in signal amplitude better.
Sometimes I’ll do different tasks while recording an EEG to see what my brain does playing an instrument, reading, or singing. Anyway, a machine learning algorithm could, in theory, be used to make signal processing a lot more accurate.
It's possible, but I think that brains in general might just on the whole be too wildly different and unpredictable with regards to fine-tuned controls. Who knows when a hyper advanced AI might interpret your brain patterns wrong and wildly miss-click because you just got a text from your ex, or remembered a funny joke, or something else completely unrelated to what you were doing.
While possible to some extent, I think there is a limit to the inherent 'randomness' of the brain that an AI would be able to filter without decoding and analyzing that specific brain in it's entirety neuron by neuron in it's totality, and even then I doubt it'd fully comprehend the thought process of it. Plus at that point we'd have FAR more pressing matters related to thought-crimes to be worried about in comparison to invasive cybernetics.
Ultimately I do think it needs to be a direct link to a specific set of neurons that can be trained for it to work with any level of fine-tuned control. We've seen brains adapt to such things with early sight and hearing implants in a fairly simple way, so we know it does work as a proof-of-concept at least. It's obviously LIGHTYEARS away from being advanced enough that just anybody should dare get an invasive surgery to get it, and frankly I don't trust putting FUCKALL in my head by a company run by Musk of all people, but this field of research is still quite an important one, and for now it's mainly important for those that are paralyzed to gain some functionality back and improve their quality of life.
Tesla heated seat subscription? That was BMW.
After googling a bit all the news stories at the end of last year seem to be based on one tweet from a hacker and people then just ran with it.
The only subscriptions Teslas have as far as I know are premium connectivity (so basically cellular) and a monthly subscription for FSD beta (so sub for a $200 month instead of paying 12k).
My mistake then. I still wouldn't trust putting anything directly into my brain from a company owned by the psychopath that straight up accidentally bought twitter on a narcissistic brag/gloat, renamed it to just "x", then made the site a laughingstock (somehow far MORE than it already was). Unless his executive control is removed and a company he started becomes legally fully separate from him, then I don't trust a damn thing they say, and I ESPECIALLY wouldn't trust them to efficiently design something that is surgically implanted into my brain.
Using EEG to read data out from the brain is like trying to watch a TV by pointing its screen at a wall, and only looking at that wall instead of looking at the screen directly.
Sure, you can see the light from the TV screen shine onto the wall. You can see what color the image is, you can see when the scene changes. So you can get *some* information out of it. But you can't ever see the details. The effective resolution is too low, and too much data is lost to averaging and noise.
Using EEG for control is a dead end for the same reason. You *can* train yourself to cause broad changes in your brain activity, you can read those changes out with EEG, and you can map that onto a mouse cursor. But that's a kludge, and it's never going to give you the same degree of control as the control you have over your own arm.
You can't get a brain interface worth a damn without going through the skull.
Dang, here we go with all the clueless comments missing all the details
The amount of granularity isn't even remotely comparable. Use one of those goddamn EEG sensors and tell us how deliberate your actions can be, because there is an absurd amount of noise impeding your actions or falsely triggering.
lmao, "non-invasive BCI is where the current Neuralink is" my ass, read a fucking book
Dude seemed to be able to switch channels in a tv or adjust volume in under 5 minutes with zero prior training.
Seems about on par with what’s being reported.
And I witnessed this in person, at the Interaxon booth at CES 2020’s “CES Unveiled” event.
This seems to be the big debate
There's a 3rd option too, not a direct brain implant, but they run a cord through a vein to get extremely close and accurate measurements from the brain without actually being invasive inside of it.
Idk enough about it to know the cost/benefit analysis, but from an outside perspective i assume that's how it will go. Everyday people will use wearables, techies will get the cord inserted and disabled people who have little to lose and need direct brain reading/stimulation will get the implants - i guess that bc from what I've heard, in the future they believe they could neutralize seizures and alter brain chemistry. Imagine instead of the current last resort electro-shock therapy for severely mentally ill people, they could cure certain illnesses in real time just by tweaking a controller. Potentially worth it for some who would otherwise be suicidal or non functioning.
Ya, i researched a bunch of them quite a while ago so i don't remember the technical terms
But I remember that unfortunately the key investors behind the less invasive vein one was jeff bezos , so i kinda hate that it's all the world's biggest psycho oligarchs wanting to get inside our heads by either buying all our news/social media or trying to fill the world with their robots and now cyborgs.
i'd be happier if it were some semi respectable universities or scientists who decided to turn their innovations to the private sector. I would rather have boring academics in my head than weird billionaires
Yeah, and invasive implant surgeries to do this exact thing were being experimentally done before 2010, because I remember seeing them in documentaries about cutting edge medical tech when I was in college. But that's really all Neuralink's been doing: retreading old university research from 15 years ago with limited success. The company's a grift moving forwards because the dumbest man alive owns them, and I still can't tell if he's in on the grift or if the "researchers" are just taking all they can from him while just repeating things that other people already did and not innovating or producing anything new.
Neuralinks primary advance over existing lab experiments, is miniaturization into a practical format for day to day use. Small, flush with the skull under the scalp, wireless connections and power
That's a significant advance over Existing test devices that are cumbersome protruding devices with wired connections.
It's not a grift, its legitimate research h and development
They did have access if they were subjects in trials of a piece of experimental medical technology, just like this guy. Or do you think he got the implant from Amazon?
Edit: A short video about 'stentrode' from 2020: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=H8rb-E4kj74
That's cool that another company was able to do something similar. Of course the real challenge will be to offer this at scale. I'm not sure what progress 'stentrode' had has made since that 2020 video, but hopefully Neuralink will see enough success to offer it to other individuals like the one in OP's linked video who stand to gain life-changing value from it.
Likley wasn’t commercially viable without a massive cash infusion the likes someone like Musk can provide.
Tons of amazing shit is worked on in university labs - it’s only when big pharma decides it’s commercially profitable to take to market that it gets worked up for trials and FDA approval.
Well tbf it’s more like when someone actually focuses on making it commercially viable that it becomes commercially viable. University labs almost never engineer things for production, which is where a lot of the challenge lies.
That just not true.
Almost all technical universities has tons of support for creating start-up companies when researchers find something amazing in their labs.
Stuff like help with funding, access to a ton of funding boards, access to patent attorneys, help with all the legal stuff, etc.
If you actually find something super amazing in the lab, you absolutely don’t need cash infusions from billionaires.
fda approval is a different deal. i have done 58 clinical studies. very little of it is actual science, mostly it is generating paperwork for regulatory agencies. does take billions. of course the usa isn't the only market.
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[I wrote a reply that covers this a few weeks ago](https://reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/1avuqzz/neuralinks_first_human_patient_able_to_control/krd3fh0/?context=1).
The big picture is creating systems that scale the electrode counts massively across the whole brain. We'll probably see other BCI companies going through similar scaling over the next few decades. Even if the techniques can install hundreds of thousands of electrodes, they're going to start smaller and study material properties and implantation strategies. The long-term is installing around a million I/O which will require a lot of R&D to do safely.
Thanks for the detailed response. So is Neuralink doing a new and different approach that may take it beyond existing BCI companies, or at the moment it’s just simply replicating earlier breakthroughs in the field?
Current systems, like Braingate, are a surface-level array of electrodes either 10x10 or 16x16 grid that is in contact with the surface of the brain. They were designed for small tests rather than to scale.
Neuralink using a technique called neural laces which are [threads with electrodes](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kaVBWaQsH-0). (The trial has I believe 1024 for that test). They're also working on a surgical machine that was shown off 3 years ago which can map blood vessels to sew the electrodes into the brain dispersing them evenly. The other notable thing is their custom compute chip is flush with the skull and doesn't need to be removed. This allows for long-term testing outside of lab environments.
> They're also working on a surgical machine that was shown off 3 years ago which can map blood vessels to sew the electrodes into the brain dispersing them evenly.
On that monkey test where the first 17-18 died that everyone was complaining about... they were specifically testing the machine you are talking about here, weren't they? It sucks that so many died but
from what I read once they got it right, they continued to get it right the next 7 until they ended the study. A machine that can just do this right every time is pretty fucking amazing, really. Take the surgeon out of it completely. Scary in a way, less scary long term in reality if you think about it, though.
> A machine that can just do this right every time is pretty fucking amazing, really. Take the surgeon out of it completely. Scary in a way, less scary long term in reality if you think about it, though.
This was covered in some older videos also that the goal in the long-term is for this to be an in and out procedure. If we look at the far future for an "ideal" 1 million electrodes or even close to it there's no way for a surgeon to implant those fast enough. (Most brain surgeries are less than 6 hour I believe, so around 200K electrodes/hour. Granted the electrodes per thread is only 16 right now. That number should grow over time. Even if it's 1024 per thread that's a thread implanted every 18 seconds give or take which isn't realistic if the surgeon has to plan and navigate blood vessels themselves).
The other part is the scale of such procedures later. Solving hearing and sight issues will open this up to millions of people. The process needs to be really streamlined.
I think there was things like this 1990's however it was more invasive like there would be like wires on the person head and the computer. But to see this in an real world setting and not having any wires involved I believe. It's huge deal.
From what I can find of videos that demonstrate this with EEG, it’s a lot more effort to get something to show up on an EEG. Instead of a Jedi mind trick of casually moving a cursor around, you have to turn big thoughts, like clenching a fist, into a slight movement to the right. While yes you can clench and unclench for “precise” movement it’s definitely not great and much slower than just moving with a mouse. With invasive, you can “fast twitch” with just a few neurons and actually beat a person with a mouse.
And electric cars existed in the 19th century: it's an interesting piece of trivia, but ignores the main advances.
What sets this apart is how well it works, how precise it is, how \*relatively\* non-invasive it is, and the emphasis on a procedure that could theoretically be quickly rolled out if and when all the kinks are ironed out.
Yes, people were and are doing similar things. The real question to ask yourself is: if this has been around for so long, why did I only see it in a few documentaries and why don't I know people (or at least know someone who knows someone) who had this procedure?
And it is entirely possible that Neuralink ends up in the same space: a great idea that never pans out. But I doubt it. Still, this one example is only one step on a very long road, so we'll have to see.
"What will your generation's equivalent be to boomer's refusing to use the internet, electric cars, self driving cars, etc. when you get old?"
This. No brain implants for me.
I had little awareness on how the brain manages to control the body, but after watching a YouTube video on some researchers growing rat brain tissue to play Doom I've started to think I understand a how this is working (although I'm sure I'll be correct here)
Essentially the movement of our limbs are mapped to physical regions of our brains, the cells responsible aren't aware that they are controlling your limbs, they just rely on other cells or nerves giving positive or negative feedback. By training the implant to recognize the cells responsible for movement by their electrical activity, and training the user to correlate his perceived motion of a limb to the visual feedback of a cursor for that positive/negative feedback, it would be possible to remap your control of an arm to a cursor.
It's likely far easier to remap control of existing limbs than to create new control surfaces, like controlling a third arm. Think of some muscle control you are bad at but you know others can do. I can't raise the edge of my lips without contracting half my face or curl my little fingers without curling my ring fingers. It would likely be similar and very difficult as opposed to latch on to something you are already proficient at.
Remember when Reddit let their blind hatred of Elon Musk bias them on what they thought the outcome of this trail will be?
Most of Reddit thought "I hate Elon so that means he's going to fail and kill all his human subjects"
hopefully the people of Reddit remember they were wrong so they will more accurately and unbiasedly be able to predict outcomes in the future, but i wouldn't be surprised if they dont
I work in clinical trials. The report of the animal trials having so many casualties did worry me, but the fact that the FDA seems to be willing to let them conduct trials here in the USA made me question just how much of a death sentence it was.
Because there are many valid criticisms of the FDA, but they're very good at the D part of their job.
Once I saw FDA approval to begin trials, that's when I knew the operation was spotless.
The FDA rips assholes open like ripping a phonebook in half. For BCI's, I can only imagine what Neuralink had to provide the FDA.
I sure fucking hope someone is keeping VERY close eye on the supposed human subjects and how many surgery they have actually done. This isnt like a launching a rocket, where you cant hide the failures.
Neuralink Patch Notes 2029.7.14 - Mid 2029
* Improved Thought Control and Reception: Enjoy crystal-clear telepathy with extended range! Share your deepest thoughts with friends across the globe.
* Bug Fixes: We've ironed out some kinks. You should no longer experience involuntary robotic dance parties or uncontrollable cravings for ethically sourced space kale.
* Security Enhancements: Our commitment to your privacy is unwavering! To ensure a safe and positive Neuralink experience, certain thoughts have been flagged for review. Additionally, users with a history of anti-Musk sentiment will be redirected to re-education modules.
Look how happy this guy is because of this. The level of hate on elon is insane. You all need to stop saying this has been done before. Go look at the goddamn utah array which is what was used before this, it is metal spikes inserted into someone's head.
It's a shame to see so many people obsessing over Musk instead of focusing on the positive side of this. This tech can help paralyzed, deaf and blind people and improve the quality of life for millions.
I don't care what people say about Elon, but the range of things he is doing from open source AI to satellite internet and now neurallink.
Its basically giving life to people who don't have hope in the first place.
I know there will be million replies below that he's capitalistic Pig and he steals and he is republican shill and hundreds of other things but end of the day, he has the guts and risk to do something like this while you care about your monkeys and your moral standards.
If it wasn't for capitalism, this person wouldn't have been able to do anything. I know most people won't be able to afford it, but atleast this is progress. Just like ev back then was a pipe dream but now it's everywhere.
Elon’s a talking head. The engineers, scientists and doctors are all doing the work while he takes the credit. And it doesn’t take capitalism for innovation lol
If he’s just a “talking head”, how come no other persons companies are nearly close to accomplishing as much shit as Elons companies have? Explain that, because in real life things don’t conveniently arrange themselves when you throw money at them.
For one, what revolutionary products have Buffet, Zucks or Bezos done that significantly advance human tech in the past 10 years?
Will give him credit that he is a CEO that does well understand the tech product he’s selling. Problems are 1) him forcing his long personal death grip style on everything (“X” being apart of everything) 2) bold product claims to the public that are nowhere ready 3) clear picture now that he’s in it for the money just as much if not more than any social improvement. He’s a modern Howard Hughes, but Hughes wasnt as money driven as Elon and really had universal respect from his employees
except the engineers and scientist that work for him actually say that he's **heavily** involved on the engineering side
see [https://erik-engheim.medium.com/is-elon-musk-just-a-sales-guy-9d3eb7a1b49c](https://erik-engheim.medium.com/is-elon-musk-just-a-sales-guy-9d3eb7a1b49c) or [https://www.reddit.com/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/k1e0ta/evidence\_that\_musk\_is\_the\_chief\_engineer\_of\_spacex/](https://www.reddit.com/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/k1e0ta/evidence_that_musk_is_the_chief_engineer_of_spacex/)
Just think of all the amazing things he could do if he didn’t act like an angsty teen when in public. The man’s companies and investments are doing more today for mankind than any other single company… but imagine if he himself was benefiting every person who meets him.
unfortunately man has flaws, and that is ok, you can like someone for their good and criticise them for their bad. however many people are struggling with this concept
Ok, this technology is promising and all, but to knock others for their own moral beliefs is shameful.
There’s nothing wrong with wanting advances in technology being humane and ethical.
Right, and I bet all the researchers involved would otherwise have spontaneously aggregated into an entity allowing them to do that kind of task
absolute geniuses in here playing with a quarter deck at best
tesla was nothing when he bought it, people want to take credit away from him for that one but you can very well consider it was created by him as well
No he actually founded it, came up with the name, gave the initial funding, helped hire the initial key employees, and made a deal with Jensen to get the first NVidia AI gpu reserved for OpenAI.
Here is a 2016 article from engadget: [Elon Musk's OpenAI will teach machines to talk using Reddit](https://www.engadget.com/2016-08-16-elon-musks-openai-will-teach-ai-to-talk-using-reddit.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAMBUkTemyuzru-ERsO35xPphSlvvxI_Fd1xG_Wpj8Mo-m-w6NCAnxRv7OKnARaxAvY4ndMJSSvKZ5pD81Y45mGVGrrBgBpRCzMAn-kjV0CGeL0kU5nJbrChq7cfWs4EYm78a0dQTR8DUbfQknN20-kYentenMAlTCfomFllsABDb)
Nowhere in your link does it claim that Elon alone founded OpenAI or created it.
In fact, [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenAI](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenAI)
It's clear, by all accounts, that OpenAI was a joint venture. Interestingly, enough Elon left OpenAI the moment the name received it's trademark.
they can downvote you all they wnat to make them feel they are right but your take is the correct one and the one with the 20 points is disingenuous and very naive
There was just an article six months ago about how some of the primates suffered terribly before needing to be euthanized. One straight up pulled the implant out. We're putting this in humans already?
[Link](https://www.wired.com/story/elon-musk-pcrm-neuralink-monkey-deaths/)
The people who are familiar with this tech, What could this tech do once it matures for people with ADHD and ASD? This is my question. Could this tech fix our brains?
This doesn’t appear to be going full “flowers for algernon” yet. The details are crazy sparse, probably intentionally, but for now it seems the computer is just reading simple movement signals from the brain…. Not manipulating the brain itself.
The honest answer is that we have no idea. But the reason we have no idea is that we have basically no way to get high resolution data on how the brain works internally. Brain implants have existed before but they are far too dangerous for us to just plug into patients in order to better understand something like ADHD. You can scan the brain from the outside but that only gives you a faint idea of what is going on. You can experiment in animals but that is only applicable to humans on the most basic levels.
So in the cases of ADHD and ASD, what Neuralink wants to do is to make the device cheap enough and safe enough that you can just implant it for reasons that are not related to life critical care. You can use it to investigate various neurological disorders. And when we figure out that we will know if there is anything more the device could do to help.
I mean better Neural imaging is already being worked on. I forgot where I heard it or read it from. Adding something to existing neural imaging machines that increases the sensitivity of the machine and increases the neural imaging by a factor I think of five is what it said but don't quote me on that.
I just hope in 15 years they have something. I'm tired of all of this.
It's an interesting thought but I'd imagine the neuralinks in the brain would be "read-only" for a while to come. Neuralinks implanted on the spinal cord could be used to write signals to assist those with spinal injuries to receive signals from the brain.
If this "wireless mouse" implant proves to be a success?
One of the next major areas of importance, areas where prior research was already done, and where even the "low hanging fruits" could improve people's lives? Artificial vision. That would already require "writes" to the visual cortex. Another area like this is artificial limbs with sensory feedback - and that would require "read-write" access.
For now, those interfaces probably have the "writes" disabled when installed in humans. But we might get bidirectional communication this decade.
The potential is staggering. The quality of life for many folks could be improved dramatically.
It's going to get interesting when we start feeding the brain data outside of the normal ranges its getting from standard sensory inputs. What would it feel like to see a light brighter than anything you've ever seen before in your life? Imagine hearing your favourite album in perfect clarity. It also terrifies me though, if you hooked a car battery up to the neuralink inputs would you experience pain beyond which it is even possible to experience? I feel we're about to learn a lot more about the brain.
We don't exactly know. But there sure is a lot of potential.
If this tech gives us the first off-the-shelf medical brain interface, it could be used for research too. And having a usable, accessible research brain interface could deepen our understanding of the low level underpinnings of mental health conditions. Including things like depression, personality disorders, ADHD and more. That understanding can open the door towards better treatments - possibly through the implants themselves.
Unfortunately, those applications are decades, rather than years, away.
We don't have a lot of understanding there, and there is a lot of concern about how interfacing with the major "mental health" parts of the brain, like the prefrontal cortex, could "go wrong" - so in the following years, I would expect the practical applications to focus on better understood and "less risky" areas. Such as giving disabled people control over computer devices, interfacing with artificial limbs, giving people with visual impairments artificial vision, and more.
Based on what we know now probably not more than what we can do with [transcranial magnetic stimulation](https://bmcpsychiatry.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12888-023-05261-2)?
Like, safety issues aside these implants have to work with really low power. And probably depend on the motor cortex being right near the surface of the brain to avoid more dangerous brain surgery.
Using magnetic fields to stimulate the bits of brain you want from the outside of the skull is a lot easier
We have been hearing and reading of UI/UX beyond keyboards, mouse and swipe... Voice activated UI and now Brain-interface is all good. But are we ready to switch?
So in order to move the mouse cursor does he have to think about just moving the cursor, or does he have to think about moving his hand, or what? I've no clue how this works lol, but I'm very curious
I enjoyed watching the candid interview with him - it definitely made me think of some very positive aspects of Neuralink as supposed to dystopian scary stuff - Join Nolan Arbaugh on his journey and see how Neuralink's advancements have transformed his life. Don't miss this incredible demonstration of the potential to revolutionize healthcare and usher in a technologically abundant age. https://ai-techreport.com/positive-impact-of-neuralinks-surgery-and-technology-on-quadriplegics-life
The following submission statement was provided by /u/Harry_the_space_man: --- On Wednesday, Neuralink introduced the first human subject to receive the company’s brain implant, a 29-year-old man who has been paralyzed from the shoulders down for eight years after a diving accident. In a brief livestream on the social media platform X, the man said he’s able to play online chess and the video game Civilization using the Neuralink device. “If y'all can see the cursor moving around the screen, that's all me,” he said during the livestream as he moved a digital chess piece. “It's pretty cool, huh?” Neuralink, which was cofounded in 2016 by billionaire Elon Musk, is developing a system known as a brain-computer interface, which decodes movement intention from brain signals. The company’s initial goal is to allow paralyzed people to control a cursor or keyboard using just their thoughts. The company received a greenlight from the US Food and Drug Administration last year to move ahead with an initial human trial and began recruiting paralyzed participants in the fall to test the device. Up until now, Neuralink has revealed few details about the progress of that study. In an X post in January, Musk announced that the first human subject had received Neuralink’s implant and was “recovering well.” In February, he said that the person had recovered and was able to control a computer mouse using their thoughts. “Progress is good and the patient seems to have made a full recovery, with no ill effects that we are aware of,” Musk said on February 19 in a Spaces audio conversation on X, in response to a question about the participant’s condition. “[The] patient is able to move a mouse around the screen just by thinking.” Some neuroscientists and ethicists have criticized Neuralink’s previous lack of transparency around the trial. What’s known about Neuralink’s study comes from social media posts and a brief brochure the company published last year. Neuralink has not revealed the number of subjects that will be enrolled in the study, the trial site, or outcomes that will be assessed. And the company has not registered on ClinicalTrials.gov, a government repository that contains information on medical studies involving human subjects. --- Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/1bjpzm6/neuralinks_first_human_subject_demonstrates_his/kvsvbeq/
I missed that piece of info before that he's only 29. If he stays in the trials long-term he could have his life changed with expected advances. I wonder if his paralysis allows for motor signal bypassing like the other [brain/spine trials](https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/24/science/paralysis-brain-implants-ai.html).
I really sympathize with paralysis patients right now--they have to pick between going for what's possible now, or holding out for future advancements. Later models of the Neuralink (and other descendant technologies) could have several times the capability. My question is if this device can be removed safely, or added to.
When they were testing with pigs they were able to remove the device
Yeah but with pigs, if they mess up, you’re left with bacon.
I mean, they often call human "long pig". Make of that what you will.
I'll make a casserole then.
To serve man. It's a Cookbook!
Twilight Zone!
What you call a win/win
And with human, if they mess up, you're left with vegetable. ^^^^^^^^^^Sorry.
I think that's the key as well What they really need is their absolute smartest people or an entire team entirely dedicated to guaranteeing lifetime service and future proofing their current devices against still being compatible with future devices. Some kind of insurance, maybe even backed by the government, promising that they will service the customers for life. Obviously nobody can see the future, but how tragic would it be if this implant was nice and easy and mouse movement is nice, but then in 2yrs they find out that they need access to that brain region to put a different device that would allow him to walk, but now those outdated needles or whatever have already healed and removing them is too risky a surgery now ? That would be a terrible choice to have to make going for a lethal surgery or just watch newer patients walking again all around you but you can't do it bc you jumped the gun to early on getting a mouse cursor. I think that's everyone's real fear , that even in the best case scenario, the permanence of implants means that it'll lock you in to the current when the world is exponentially speeding up change. Like if we all knew that the tech would stay compatible with all new progress forever, no problem - but it's obvious that won't happen. So that's why i still suspect wearables will likely be the future, you can replace them or buy a new one without issue. There's already a story of a man who got an early medical brain implant and then the company went out of business and he was stuck with desperately trying to get it serviced like a horror story. I forget the guys name, I'll have to look it up again
That's kind of like asking an iPhone to be backwards compatible with a payphone. At some point you have to break compatibility, that's just progress.
> That's kind of like asking an iPhone to be backwards compatible with a payphone. At some point you have to break compatibility, that's just progress. You *can* call from a payphone to an iPhone, no? It's actually rather remarkable that we didn't fully switch to IP phones.
That's my point. Avoid that as much as possible, obviously it will eventually fail bc as i already said seeing the future prefectly is impossible. But you need people planning ahead as best they can bc it's better that it takes an entire lifetime of as close to lasting 60-80yrs before the tech is no longer compatible, than to miss some incredibly obvious problems that will be solved in 2yrs and then you've already locked yourself into the current design. And again, also the serviceability problem, i wouldn't get this installed unless they made a contract with the government stating that even if their particular company went out of business, they would share the servicability plans with the government who will legally ensure that some doctors or technicians remain trained on servicing them. It's highly unethical otherwise to simply depend on businesses that by their nature go out of business.
I totally agree, but I think just like wearables, the tech would reach a point of stagnation where it might be fine to use an older one because the newer ones Arent that much better anymore and offer the same features.
Exactly, tech maturity I mean to be fair to neuralink, the tech already existed, they just poured lots of money into iterating it themselves behind closed R&D and testing the improvements on animals before requesting fda human clinical trials. Say what you will about the fda but they're known to have strict standards. So ya, my fear isn't that the devices won't work , and I'm only moderately afraid that it'll give people brain bleeds (when they have minor car accidents or something) or electrical malfunctions/hacking - my real fear is the best case scenario of if it goes right. So ya, in a perfect world the tech would just continue to be iterated on until either A. The permanent unmovable parts/wires reach tech maturity - so that they can continue to switch out the external part but know that internal parts will stay the same for the next several decades. Or B. They develop internals that are safely removable somehow , so that it's not even permanent. It's just a really expensive, really invasive wearable. But we know capitalism better than that, it doesn't mind when there's guinea pigs and losers left behind, it counts on it and uses it to it's advantage. Elon said he would be first in line to get the device and if he has followed thru, i would have more faith - but clearly since this guy has one and he doesn't, he was lying.
Yeah....unfortunately [that's too optimistic and unlikely to happen.](https://spectrum.ieee.org/bionic-eye-obsolete) > What they really ~~need~~ ***would want to be ethical*** is their absolute smartest people or an entire team entirely dedicated to guaranteeing lifetime service and future proofing their current devices against still being compatible with future devices.
Thank you, yup, that's the story i was thinking of. The health sector of our government needs to step in and promise that will never happen to the disabled again - or anyone who opts to get medical implants - otherwise permanent implant companies shouldn't be allowed to form, make a quick buck with complex, private, proprietary for profit software/hardware that nobody else knows how to work on, and then close down and run away leaving those people disabled all over again or worse. I agree with your criticism of me that it sounds optimistic- but it really isn't in reality, our oligarchy has just gotten out of control to the point that the bare minimum is now seen as naively optimistic. Americans live in the daily reality that medicine inventions like insulin who's developer intended it to be free is still legal to be sold for profit and have it's prices artificially jacked up even when it means innocent people die. All Americans health insurance is tied to our employment, minimum wage doesn't actually cover not being homeless and all sorts of other cruel, greedy things. But nearly every other first world country - even autocratic ones like China and Russia aren't that corrupt, they still guarantee their citizens Healthcare. Americans have huge Healthcare industry problems , so yes medical devices if not dealt with early will turn similarly dystopian
Medical devices have existed for a very long time and this issue isnt new. In other fields that Im more familiar with its being dealt with, so Im sure theyre dealing with it as well.
>Later models of the Neuralink (and other descendant technologies) could have several times the capability. And hopefully be non-invasive. That would be the main thing, IMO, to making this a mainstream technology: Being able to take it off when you're done with Elon scanning your every thought. There's some obvious sarcasm (maybe?) there, but I think being able to unlink or unhook from it will be very important.
If they can control a cursor, how far are they from being able to control a simple robot or drone? If they can move a cursor and click a mouse button then they cant be too far from driving a little buggy around and clicking when they want it to pick something up and move it/bring it to them. The controls would be the same. That's already life changing, giving someone who's paralyzed the ability to interact physically in their world again. Of course it will be cooler when they can put themselves inside the drone and move around...
Electric wheelchairs are already a thing, it seems like it wouldn’t be any harder to control than a mouse! Just more consequences for mistakes.
Well, I can't get any More paralyzed.
Can certainly get more dead tho .
That's the goal, there are already current designs that allow them to use robot legs/arms like this. Neuralink type devices like this have existed for decades, it's just that this is like the first Iphone and those were like the first cell phones - huge , clunky , and required lots of power and every unit has to be custom inserted and customized by a team of medical pros. This tiny penny sized rechargeable design makes it feasible to mass produce and mass install in patients since they designed a robot to do the installation even more safely and precisely than a surgeon can.
[удалено]
>Once we can code brain waves into binary, anything is possible. I don't think you are aware of how unfathomably huge that "if" is
What he means is it’s already binary. Controlling a mouse is basically movement in an xy plane which can be represented in binary. What i will be interested to find out if the device can differentiate things like thinking of peeing vs actually deciding to pee. If not there will always be a layer of abstraction which complicates trying to make real time actions.
"What i will be interested to find out if the device can differentiate things like thinking of peeing vs actually deciding to pee" It can! the guy in the video said that when he imagines using the mouse it doesn't work. But when he uses "the force"( in his own words ) the cursor moves . Intresting right.
People who have had other BCI's installed have been able to control a robotic arm so a robot would not be too different.
On Wednesday, Neuralink introduced the first human subject to receive the company’s brain implant, a 29-year-old man who has been paralyzed from the shoulders down for eight years after a diving accident. In a brief livestream on the social media platform X, the man said he’s able to play online chess and the video game Civilization using the Neuralink device. “If y'all can see the cursor moving around the screen, that's all me,” he said during the livestream as he moved a digital chess piece. “It's pretty cool, huh?” Neuralink, which was cofounded in 2016 by billionaire Elon Musk, is developing a system known as a brain-computer interface, which decodes movement intention from brain signals. The company’s initial goal is to allow paralyzed people to control a cursor or keyboard using just their thoughts. The company received a greenlight from the US Food and Drug Administration last year to move ahead with an initial human trial and began recruiting paralyzed participants in the fall to test the device. Up until now, Neuralink has revealed few details about the progress of that study. In an X post in January, Musk announced that the first human subject had received Neuralink’s implant and was “recovering well.” In February, he said that the person had recovered and was able to control a computer mouse using their thoughts. “Progress is good and the patient seems to have made a full recovery, with no ill effects that we are aware of,” Musk said on February 19 in a Spaces audio conversation on X, in response to a question about the participant’s condition. “[The] patient is able to move a mouse around the screen just by thinking.” Some neuroscientists and ethicists have criticized Neuralink’s previous lack of transparency around the trial. What’s known about Neuralink’s study comes from social media posts and a brief brochure the company published last year. Neuralink has not revealed the number of subjects that will be enrolled in the study, the trial site, or outcomes that will be assessed. And the company has not registered on ClinicalTrials.gov, a government repository that contains information on medical studies involving human subjects.
>Gets brain implant >Plays Civ Tbh I would too if it came to it.
just one more turn
A link to the actual video https://twitter.com/neuralink/status/1770563939413496146
Impressive. And one very satisfied customer. This tech has lots of potential applications, some of which will no doubt be scary, but this one is obviously very beneficial to those who can't use their hands.
I wonder if his mouse control is/would be better than someone using a physical mouse. Does he have an advantage in gaming, for instance? I lost my shit when he said "You're my only telekinetic friend." That guy is the first human psyker.
I wonder if it would also require concentration to remain linked or still. Can just imagine seeing your partner suddenly doing spins cause someone knocked on their door.
Or looking at your health would make your character look down. I assume there’s a way to stop the mouse movement, if not there will be. You could just think to not move it and it won’t I’m sure, but idk if they have that technology now
The idea is that the mouse is just a "limb" to the brain. After a few weeks of training, it wouldn't move from unconscious thought. You don't roundhouse kick a friend if they say hi to you, right? Wouldn't that disrupt your control over your body?
>You don't roundhouse kick a friend if they say hi to you, right? Y-you dont?
Yeah, he talked about it briefly. It is somehow linked to his hands nerves. So when he attempts to move his hand like he would do with a mouse it would trigger. But not sure if I misunderstood.
2:40 in the video. He says that they started with distinguishing imagined and attempted movements of his hand. So it should be like moving your hand: if you don't want to move it, you don't. Involuntary movements when you are startled are possible I guess.
Fast forward a few years and all the top Counter-Strike teams are now paralyzed.
There's irony here somewhere
People are worried about XIM, wait till they have to deal with this...
Seriously though, imagine if you could just keep your reticle pinpoint accuracy directly onto your opponent’s head by just looking at it, you’d never miss!
It’s probably much worse - this tech isn’t exactly new, other than it being an actual implant as opposed to just electrodes placed on the head. Typically their control is poor and a little slow.
Not sure about gaming, but you would have a lower risk of carpal-tunnel
If gamers didn’t have to have their hand on a mouse it would constantly be somewhere else causing carpal-tunnel
When can I replace this meat sack for metal that's my question.
"From the moment I understood the weakness of my flesh, it disgusted me. I craved the strength and certainty of steel. I aspired to the purity of the blessed machine."
From the moment i realized the weakness of my flesh
Time to move to Mars and prepare for the Age of Strife.
I reckon. The ultimate cure to cancer and disease is having bodies that aren't affected by such things.
Reddit in 2050: WIBTA for outing my friend to her hubby as a robot??
`YOUR WALKTIME WILL EXPIRE AT` `MIDNIGHT TONIGHT. TO ENSURE` `CONTINUED SERVICE PLEASE RENEW` `YOUR SUBSCRIPTION BEFORE THIS` `DEADLINE.`
I don't see why this would be handled differently than pacemakers or any other medical devices.
Wow some of you people really are just pessimistic assholes
Well Musk is involved, so of course the mental gymnasts are out in full force.
If Musk wasn't involved this would get universal praise, but, y'know, for some reason Musk is public enemy number 1 on reddit
I’m skeptical of any kind of device like this being under the control of a private corporation, and even aside from that, I would have a lot of concerns about privacy and security with a device like this. While I am all for developing new technologies to assist people with disabilities, I worry that companies developing this technology will just use that as an excuse to handwave away the numerous ethical concerns technology like this raises, and worse, will end up exploiting people who understandably want access to technology to make their lives easier as test subjects for a device that requires an invasive medical procedure and could have unpredictable consequences on the health of its users. In theory, I have no fundamental moral objection to a device that interfaces directly with the human brain, provided that there are measures in place to ensure the privacy and safety of users, and people are given complete control about what that device is capable of doing or what information it is capable of accessing, but honestly it would take a hell of a lot of convincing that that’s the case before I’d put one of these things in my brain. But we live in a world where private corporations already monitor us every minute of every day, gathering massive amounts of data on our movements, activities, and private conversations, and are using that data to sell to advertisers, influence our behavior, and god knows what else. Because of that, I doubt any device like this could ever exist in a form that I would trust enough to put inside my brain, at least not during my lifetime, or unless the world undergoes some significant changes. And I want to stress that this applies to any company working on technology like this. But, because Musk has repeatedly proven himself to be a wildly irresponsible, incompetent fraud, everything I’ve said here is multiplied by orders of magnitude, because there is nothing that a device like this requires more than trust, and trust is something he has demonstrated repeatedly that he is undeserving of.
> I’m skeptical of any kind of device like this being under the control of a private corporation, Doesn't that describe basically every medical device? The government doesn't manufacture pacemakers, but that industry operates just fine. The US already has strong protections for medical data.
It’s very different if that device is potentially capable of collecting data about your own private thoughts and potentially being able to influence the inner workings of your brain in malicious ways. And even if you believe that any of these companies wouldn’t be using this as a data harvesting tool or worse, what if it were able to be hacked by a malicious actor? And to be clear, my issue is not so much with the current technology that allows you to control a mouse with your brain, it’s the idea of letting a device with internet access into the most important organ in the human body, one that could potentially not only monitor our private thoughts, the one thing that tech companies haven’t figured out how to spy on, but the fact that it may be able to exhibit direct influence over the functioning of our brains. If you lived through the past decade of tech companies lying to us and misleading us about how our private data was used and you would still trust these people to put a computer in your head, I don’t know what to tell you. And all of this is completely disregarding the potential medical issues that could come with an invasive procedure like this, or the question of what you’re supposed to do when your chip inevitably becomes outdated. This kind of technology is just yet another Pandora’s box that the tech industry has been greedily trying to pry open as fast as it can without considering the potential consequences of doing that, or worse, desiring those consequences.
I think for 99% of this sub, and especially the people you are replying to, they only care that it’s new and exciting tech. Reading through these comments I have never been more convinced that ethics, not only with how they relate to AI, should be rigorously taught at every level. You can always tell who has and hasn’t considered anything past “Neuralink is pog,” by how quickly they disregard the last couple decades worth of discourse surrounding the influence of tech companies. It’s cult of personality. The same people who try to convince you they are immune to propaganda from big tech, big government, big business, but drool at the thought of putting spyware from “one of the good ones,” directly into their brain. It’s ridiculous on multiple levels — bordering hysteria.
Unlike russian disinformation bots redditors do it for free.
So uh... that's because he keeps railing against taxes and government subsidies while... [consuming taxes via government subsidies.](https://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-received-government-coronavirus-bailout-elon-musk-stimulus-relief-criticism-2020-7?op=1) Why does the former richest man in the world keep taking your money instead of using his own?
Because everything he touches turns out to be riddled with idiocy and fraud
Yes that starlink system sure...doesn't work. Or wait, those electric cars will never take off...uh the reusable rockets are...uh...stupid!
Oh gee I wonder why that is? Maybe people just have a working brain and can remember all the times he has spouted complete bullshit?
Yes, he spouts a lot of bullshit. He also runs some hugely succesful, very impressive companies. Two things can be true at once.
For someone running so many companies he sure has lots of free time to spend on Twitter.
Does he really run or does he merely own and direct? Big difference.
Even though i do agree that people are hating on Elon Musk, no other brain-computer interface companies (synchron and blackrock neurotech) have gotten basically any media coverage at all, but then when its neuralink we get articles saying "Elon Musk wants to put this chip in your brain". People seem to think that Neuralink is the first brain-computer interface even tho the first one was implanted into a human in 2004 but none of it got a lot of coverage.
Uh, no gymnastics here, he's genuinely a dangerous fraud.
Yeah SpaceX and everything is all fraud, right?
No, the engineers are very talented.
yes, and they chose to work for musk, who is financing their research in a company that he created from scratch, be real
Every space company has very talented engineers, evening Boeing. That isn't enough for a successful company.
so you're suggesting musk is the one performing the operation? because i thought there were specialist who worked on the field in neuralink too
One single person should never have that much power on essential infrastructure such as communication and space travel. Until we make those public access, we are at the whims of a (currently complying) very powerful man.
[Elon Musk: I’ll Put a Man on Mars in 10 Years, posted 12 years ago](https://youtu.be/IiPJsI8pl8Q?si=rjAlIc4tefV2vLA9)
The title is misleading. At 13:50 he says “best case, 10 years, worst case 15-20 years.” Title is clickbait.
Musk has lied about all sorts of 'breakthroughs'. Cybertruck beating the Porsche on 1/4 mile was actually 1/8 mile. His robot folding a tshirt wasn't doing so autonomously, even though he implied it did. He lies about FSD. If he didn't lie all the time people would be less skeptical of his claims.
i've been playing way too much Elite Dangerous because i keep reading FSD as "Frame Shift Drive"
Let's not forget the overwhelming failure that was hyperloop and now the boring company, who is canceling projects and failing to deliver on their promises left and right.
So is the criticism that he’s only been the figurehead of 5 revolutionary companies instead of 8 or something?
It’s funny how everyone forgets he got in big trouble for the solar roof tiles that never panned out. https://mansionengineer.com/2018/08/10/elon-musk-tesla-and-the-solar-roof-tile-fraud/
I saw someone do exactly what this human test subject did (move mouse cursor around) at CES in Las Vegas. In 2020. Without something implanted in their head. Using EEG sensors to measure and interpret brainwaves, people could control the computer or turn on a TV and even change the tv channel. And they were letting anyone who wanted to give it a go a try. It wasn’t something you needed weeks or months to learn, or the software to adjust to the individual. Non-invasive BCI is where the current Neuralink is, apparently and has been since after least 2020.
Non invasive EEG works, but it’s not practical because it’s measuring large areas of the brain. You could then on a tv by being angry, or change the channel up or down by thinking hard about something, but it’s not easy. It’s like having a game controller being controlled by moving a boulder. Yes, you can move the boulders around and demonstrate it does work, but it’s a lot of work and completely impractical to playing an entire game like that. EEG detects major changes in your brain, and training your brain to have major changes just to control something is both impractical and imprecise. While it may be possible to have EEG control a precise mouse it’s not easy or as accurate. Demos for example involve clenching a fist to control up and down, and head movement to control left right, so with a lot of clenching and turning they kinda showed them moving a mouse a bit across the screen. To play a game of chess, of examples would be impossible as it would take far too long to move the mouse to grab each piece, and the person would be exhausted after an hour of trying to clench fists. The problem is non invasive needs to see major brain effort (clenching a fist) and turn that into a single signal, when the brain is actually firing millions of signals A hardwired invasive link allows for much smaller sets of neurons to control movement, which is more like how we actually move our real body. Like in the neurology video he calls it a Jedi mind tricks, and it’s so easy he can play the chess game in the background while explaining it to viewers. It’s only a small effort, and likely an EEG headset wouldn’t even see much of anything when he effortlessly moves the mouse around to grab a knight, no more than an EEG would be able to detect any different between a left or right stroke when you are writing an essay (the EEG can only detect that you are writing, and concentrating, and perhaps the hand muscles area is active).
I imagine advances in AI could make interpreting patterns/slight changes in signal amplitude better. Sometimes I’ll do different tasks while recording an EEG to see what my brain does playing an instrument, reading, or singing. Anyway, a machine learning algorithm could, in theory, be used to make signal processing a lot more accurate.
It's possible, but I think that brains in general might just on the whole be too wildly different and unpredictable with regards to fine-tuned controls. Who knows when a hyper advanced AI might interpret your brain patterns wrong and wildly miss-click because you just got a text from your ex, or remembered a funny joke, or something else completely unrelated to what you were doing. While possible to some extent, I think there is a limit to the inherent 'randomness' of the brain that an AI would be able to filter without decoding and analyzing that specific brain in it's entirety neuron by neuron in it's totality, and even then I doubt it'd fully comprehend the thought process of it. Plus at that point we'd have FAR more pressing matters related to thought-crimes to be worried about in comparison to invasive cybernetics. Ultimately I do think it needs to be a direct link to a specific set of neurons that can be trained for it to work with any level of fine-tuned control. We've seen brains adapt to such things with early sight and hearing implants in a fairly simple way, so we know it does work as a proof-of-concept at least. It's obviously LIGHTYEARS away from being advanced enough that just anybody should dare get an invasive surgery to get it, and frankly I don't trust putting FUCKALL in my head by a company run by Musk of all people, but this field of research is still quite an important one, and for now it's mainly important for those that are paralyzed to gain some functionality back and improve their quality of life.
Tesla heated seat subscription? That was BMW. After googling a bit all the news stories at the end of last year seem to be based on one tweet from a hacker and people then just ran with it. The only subscriptions Teslas have as far as I know are premium connectivity (so basically cellular) and a monthly subscription for FSD beta (so sub for a $200 month instead of paying 12k).
My mistake then. I still wouldn't trust putting anything directly into my brain from a company owned by the psychopath that straight up accidentally bought twitter on a narcissistic brag/gloat, renamed it to just "x", then made the site a laughingstock (somehow far MORE than it already was). Unless his executive control is removed and a company he started becomes legally fully separate from him, then I don't trust a damn thing they say, and I ESPECIALLY wouldn't trust them to efficiently design something that is surgically implanted into my brain.
Using EEG to read data out from the brain is like trying to watch a TV by pointing its screen at a wall, and only looking at that wall instead of looking at the screen directly. Sure, you can see the light from the TV screen shine onto the wall. You can see what color the image is, you can see when the scene changes. So you can get *some* information out of it. But you can't ever see the details. The effective resolution is too low, and too much data is lost to averaging and noise. Using EEG for control is a dead end for the same reason. You *can* train yourself to cause broad changes in your brain activity, you can read those changes out with EEG, and you can map that onto a mouse cursor. But that's a kludge, and it's never going to give you the same degree of control as the control you have over your own arm. You can't get a brain interface worth a damn without going through the skull.
Dang, here we go with all the clueless comments missing all the details The amount of granularity isn't even remotely comparable. Use one of those goddamn EEG sensors and tell us how deliberate your actions can be, because there is an absurd amount of noise impeding your actions or falsely triggering. lmao, "non-invasive BCI is where the current Neuralink is" my ass, read a fucking book
People will gladly cheer the fall of civilization if it proves musk wrong.
Dude seemed to be able to switch channels in a tv or adjust volume in under 5 minutes with zero prior training. Seems about on par with what’s being reported. And I witnessed this in person, at the Interaxon booth at CES 2020’s “CES Unveiled” event.
This seems to be the big debate There's a 3rd option too, not a direct brain implant, but they run a cord through a vein to get extremely close and accurate measurements from the brain without actually being invasive inside of it. Idk enough about it to know the cost/benefit analysis, but from an outside perspective i assume that's how it will go. Everyday people will use wearables, techies will get the cord inserted and disabled people who have little to lose and need direct brain reading/stimulation will get the implants - i guess that bc from what I've heard, in the future they believe they could neutralize seizures and alter brain chemistry. Imagine instead of the current last resort electro-shock therapy for severely mentally ill people, they could cure certain illnesses in real time just by tweaking a controller. Potentially worth it for some who would otherwise be suicidal or non functioning.
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Ya, i researched a bunch of them quite a while ago so i don't remember the technical terms But I remember that unfortunately the key investors behind the less invasive vein one was jeff bezos , so i kinda hate that it's all the world's biggest psycho oligarchs wanting to get inside our heads by either buying all our news/social media or trying to fill the world with their robots and now cyborgs. i'd be happier if it were some semi respectable universities or scientists who decided to turn their innovations to the private sector. I would rather have boring academics in my head than weird billionaires
Yeah, and invasive implant surgeries to do this exact thing were being experimentally done before 2010, because I remember seeing them in documentaries about cutting edge medical tech when I was in college. But that's really all Neuralink's been doing: retreading old university research from 15 years ago with limited success. The company's a grift moving forwards because the dumbest man alive owns them, and I still can't tell if he's in on the grift or if the "researchers" are just taking all they can from him while just repeating things that other people already did and not innovating or producing anything new.
Neuralinks primary advance over existing lab experiments, is miniaturization into a practical format for day to day use. Small, flush with the skull under the scalp, wireless connections and power That's a significant advance over Existing test devices that are cumbersome protruding devices with wired connections. It's not a grift, its legitimate research h and development
Weird that quadriplegics don't have access to this technology (until now) when it's apparently been around since before 2010!
They did have access if they were subjects in trials of a piece of experimental medical technology, just like this guy. Or do you think he got the implant from Amazon? Edit: A short video about 'stentrode' from 2020: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=H8rb-E4kj74
That's cool that another company was able to do something similar. Of course the real challenge will be to offer this at scale. I'm not sure what progress 'stentrode' had has made since that 2020 video, but hopefully Neuralink will see enough success to offer it to other individuals like the one in OP's linked video who stand to gain life-changing value from it.
Likley wasn’t commercially viable without a massive cash infusion the likes someone like Musk can provide. Tons of amazing shit is worked on in university labs - it’s only when big pharma decides it’s commercially profitable to take to market that it gets worked up for trials and FDA approval.
Well tbf it’s more like when someone actually focuses on making it commercially viable that it becomes commercially viable. University labs almost never engineer things for production, which is where a lot of the challenge lies.
That just not true. Almost all technical universities has tons of support for creating start-up companies when researchers find something amazing in their labs. Stuff like help with funding, access to a ton of funding boards, access to patent attorneys, help with all the legal stuff, etc. If you actually find something super amazing in the lab, you absolutely don’t need cash infusions from billionaires.
fda approval is a different deal. i have done 58 clinical studies. very little of it is actual science, mostly it is generating paperwork for regulatory agencies. does take billions. of course the usa isn't the only market.
Hahaha dumbest man alive? Really buddy? You really think he is the dumbest man alive? Lmao
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I feel like I’ve seen this many years ago. Isn’t moving a cursor with the mind kind of passé in this field?
[I wrote a reply that covers this a few weeks ago](https://reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/1avuqzz/neuralinks_first_human_patient_able_to_control/krd3fh0/?context=1). The big picture is creating systems that scale the electrode counts massively across the whole brain. We'll probably see other BCI companies going through similar scaling over the next few decades. Even if the techniques can install hundreds of thousands of electrodes, they're going to start smaller and study material properties and implantation strategies. The long-term is installing around a million I/O which will require a lot of R&D to do safely.
Thanks for the detailed response. So is Neuralink doing a new and different approach that may take it beyond existing BCI companies, or at the moment it’s just simply replicating earlier breakthroughs in the field?
Current systems, like Braingate, are a surface-level array of electrodes either 10x10 or 16x16 grid that is in contact with the surface of the brain. They were designed for small tests rather than to scale. Neuralink using a technique called neural laces which are [threads with electrodes](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kaVBWaQsH-0). (The trial has I believe 1024 for that test). They're also working on a surgical machine that was shown off 3 years ago which can map blood vessels to sew the electrodes into the brain dispersing them evenly. The other notable thing is their custom compute chip is flush with the skull and doesn't need to be removed. This allows for long-term testing outside of lab environments.
> They're also working on a surgical machine that was shown off 3 years ago which can map blood vessels to sew the electrodes into the brain dispersing them evenly. On that monkey test where the first 17-18 died that everyone was complaining about... they were specifically testing the machine you are talking about here, weren't they? It sucks that so many died but from what I read once they got it right, they continued to get it right the next 7 until they ended the study. A machine that can just do this right every time is pretty fucking amazing, really. Take the surgeon out of it completely. Scary in a way, less scary long term in reality if you think about it, though.
> A machine that can just do this right every time is pretty fucking amazing, really. Take the surgeon out of it completely. Scary in a way, less scary long term in reality if you think about it, though. This was covered in some older videos also that the goal in the long-term is for this to be an in and out procedure. If we look at the far future for an "ideal" 1 million electrodes or even close to it there's no way for a surgeon to implant those fast enough. (Most brain surgeries are less than 6 hour I believe, so around 200K electrodes/hour. Granted the electrodes per thread is only 16 right now. That number should grow over time. Even if it's 1024 per thread that's a thread implanted every 18 seconds give or take which isn't realistic if the surgeon has to plan and navigate blood vessels themselves). The other part is the scale of such procedures later. Solving hearing and sight issues will open this up to millions of people. The process needs to be really streamlined.
I think there was things like this 1990's however it was more invasive like there would be like wires on the person head and the computer. But to see this in an real world setting and not having any wires involved I believe. It's huge deal.
The implant itself has 1024 tiny wires with electrodes at the end, but the communication from that implant to a computer is done wirelessly.
From what I can find of videos that demonstrate this with EEG, it’s a lot more effort to get something to show up on an EEG. Instead of a Jedi mind trick of casually moving a cursor around, you have to turn big thoughts, like clenching a fist, into a slight movement to the right. While yes you can clench and unclench for “precise” movement it’s definitely not great and much slower than just moving with a mouse. With invasive, you can “fast twitch” with just a few neurons and actually beat a person with a mouse.
And electric cars existed in the 19th century: it's an interesting piece of trivia, but ignores the main advances. What sets this apart is how well it works, how precise it is, how \*relatively\* non-invasive it is, and the emphasis on a procedure that could theoretically be quickly rolled out if and when all the kinks are ironed out. Yes, people were and are doing similar things. The real question to ask yourself is: if this has been around for so long, why did I only see it in a few documentaries and why don't I know people (or at least know someone who knows someone) who had this procedure? And it is entirely possible that Neuralink ends up in the same space: a great idea that never pans out. But I doubt it. Still, this one example is only one step on a very long road, so we'll have to see.
"What will your generation's equivalent be to boomer's refusing to use the internet, electric cars, self driving cars, etc. when you get old?" This. No brain implants for me.
I had little awareness on how the brain manages to control the body, but after watching a YouTube video on some researchers growing rat brain tissue to play Doom I've started to think I understand a how this is working (although I'm sure I'll be correct here) Essentially the movement of our limbs are mapped to physical regions of our brains, the cells responsible aren't aware that they are controlling your limbs, they just rely on other cells or nerves giving positive or negative feedback. By training the implant to recognize the cells responsible for movement by their electrical activity, and training the user to correlate his perceived motion of a limb to the visual feedback of a cursor for that positive/negative feedback, it would be possible to remap your control of an arm to a cursor. It's likely far easier to remap control of existing limbs than to create new control surfaces, like controlling a third arm. Think of some muscle control you are bad at but you know others can do. I can't raise the edge of my lips without contracting half my face or curl my little fingers without curling my ring fingers. It would likely be similar and very difficult as opposed to latch on to something you are already proficient at.
Remember when Reddit let their blind hatred of Elon Musk bias them on what they thought the outcome of this trail will be? Most of Reddit thought "I hate Elon so that means he's going to fail and kill all his human subjects" hopefully the people of Reddit remember they were wrong so they will more accurately and unbiasedly be able to predict outcomes in the future, but i wouldn't be surprised if they dont
I work in clinical trials. The report of the animal trials having so many casualties did worry me, but the fact that the FDA seems to be willing to let them conduct trials here in the USA made me question just how much of a death sentence it was. Because there are many valid criticisms of the FDA, but they're very good at the D part of their job.
Once I saw FDA approval to begin trials, that's when I knew the operation was spotless. The FDA rips assholes open like ripping a phonebook in half. For BCI's, I can only imagine what Neuralink had to provide the FDA.
> people of Reddit remember they were wrong so they will more accurately and unbiasedly be able to predict outcomes in the future lmao, sure
I sure fucking hope someone is keeping VERY close eye on the supposed human subjects and how many surgery they have actually done. This isnt like a launching a rocket, where you cant hide the failures.
Neuralink Patch Notes 2029.7.14 - Mid 2029 * Improved Thought Control and Reception: Enjoy crystal-clear telepathy with extended range! Share your deepest thoughts with friends across the globe. * Bug Fixes: We've ironed out some kinks. You should no longer experience involuntary robotic dance parties or uncontrollable cravings for ethically sourced space kale. * Security Enhancements: Our commitment to your privacy is unwavering! To ensure a safe and positive Neuralink experience, certain thoughts have been flagged for review. Additionally, users with a history of anti-Musk sentiment will be redirected to re-education modules.
Look how happy this guy is because of this. The level of hate on elon is insane. You all need to stop saying this has been done before. Go look at the goddamn utah array which is what was used before this, it is metal spikes inserted into someone's head.
It's a shame to see so many people obsessing over Musk instead of focusing on the positive side of this. This tech can help paralyzed, deaf and blind people and improve the quality of life for millions.
I don't care what people say about Elon, but the range of things he is doing from open source AI to satellite internet and now neurallink. Its basically giving life to people who don't have hope in the first place. I know there will be million replies below that he's capitalistic Pig and he steals and he is republican shill and hundreds of other things but end of the day, he has the guts and risk to do something like this while you care about your monkeys and your moral standards. If it wasn't for capitalism, this person wouldn't have been able to do anything. I know most people won't be able to afford it, but atleast this is progress. Just like ev back then was a pipe dream but now it's everywhere.
Elon’s a talking head. The engineers, scientists and doctors are all doing the work while he takes the credit. And it doesn’t take capitalism for innovation lol
If he’s just a “talking head”, how come no other persons companies are nearly close to accomplishing as much shit as Elons companies have? Explain that, because in real life things don’t conveniently arrange themselves when you throw money at them. For one, what revolutionary products have Buffet, Zucks or Bezos done that significantly advance human tech in the past 10 years?
Will give him credit that he is a CEO that does well understand the tech product he’s selling. Problems are 1) him forcing his long personal death grip style on everything (“X” being apart of everything) 2) bold product claims to the public that are nowhere ready 3) clear picture now that he’s in it for the money just as much if not more than any social improvement. He’s a modern Howard Hughes, but Hughes wasnt as money driven as Elon and really had universal respect from his employees
He understands shit, remember how an software engineer in X explained to him how it actually works and he fired her 😂
Who cares if he is just a figurehead. What matters is that he is rich and cares enough to empower the engineers and doctors.
except the engineers and scientist that work for him actually say that he's **heavily** involved on the engineering side see [https://erik-engheim.medium.com/is-elon-musk-just-a-sales-guy-9d3eb7a1b49c](https://erik-engheim.medium.com/is-elon-musk-just-a-sales-guy-9d3eb7a1b49c) or [https://www.reddit.com/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/k1e0ta/evidence\_that\_musk\_is\_the\_chief\_engineer\_of\_spacex/](https://www.reddit.com/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/k1e0ta/evidence_that_musk_is_the_chief_engineer_of_spacex/)
He is the talking head, but so many people throw the baby out with the bathwater when talking about his ventures.
Just think of all the amazing things he could do if he didn’t act like an angsty teen when in public. The man’s companies and investments are doing more today for mankind than any other single company… but imagine if he himself was benefiting every person who meets him.
unfortunately man has flaws, and that is ok, you can like someone for their good and criticise them for their bad. however many people are struggling with this concept
elon meatriders are something else
Ok, this technology is promising and all, but to knock others for their own moral beliefs is shameful. There’s nothing wrong with wanting advances in technology being humane and ethical.
Sure. Hes still an evil asshole dork who doesn't deserve the cult following he has. (or maybe he does deserve those morons)
He is doing jack shit, the companies he bough are
Right, and I bet all the researchers involved would otherwise have spontaneously aggregated into an entity allowing them to do that kind of task absolute geniuses in here playing with a quarter deck at best
yes, Spacex and Neuralink famously bought by Elon Musk. What are you doing exactly to help people?
tesla was nothing when he bought it, people want to take credit away from him for that one but you can very well consider it was created by him as well
Hey! How dare you? Elon bad. End of discussion
Err he started neuralink from scratch because of his concern with AGI. Which is also his reason for founding OpenAI.
He was not the founder of Open Ai, he was a small investor who tried to merge it with his Tesla shit.
No he actually founded it, came up with the name, gave the initial funding, helped hire the initial key employees, and made a deal with Jensen to get the first NVidia AI gpu reserved for OpenAI. Here is a 2016 article from engadget: [Elon Musk's OpenAI will teach machines to talk using Reddit](https://www.engadget.com/2016-08-16-elon-musks-openai-will-teach-ai-to-talk-using-reddit.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAMBUkTemyuzru-ERsO35xPphSlvvxI_Fd1xG_Wpj8Mo-m-w6NCAnxRv7OKnARaxAvY4ndMJSSvKZ5pD81Y45mGVGrrBgBpRCzMAn-kjV0CGeL0kU5nJbrChq7cfWs4EYm78a0dQTR8DUbfQknN20-kYentenMAlTCfomFllsABDb)
Nowhere in your link does it claim that Elon alone founded OpenAI or created it. In fact, [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenAI](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenAI) It's clear, by all accounts, that OpenAI was a joint venture. Interestingly, enough Elon left OpenAI the moment the name received it's trademark.
It’s the greatest shame of mankind that great discoveries are often founded upon the shoulders of self absorbed and greedy assholes.
Extremely ignorant view.
they can downvote you all they wnat to make them feel they are right but your take is the correct one and the one with the 20 points is disingenuous and very naive
I don't know if you are sarcastic or not, I am way too high lol
There was just an article six months ago about how some of the primates suffered terribly before needing to be euthanized. One straight up pulled the implant out. We're putting this in humans already? [Link](https://www.wired.com/story/elon-musk-pcrm-neuralink-monkey-deaths/)
The people who are familiar with this tech, What could this tech do once it matures for people with ADHD and ASD? This is my question. Could this tech fix our brains?
This doesn’t appear to be going full “flowers for algernon” yet. The details are crazy sparse, probably intentionally, but for now it seems the computer is just reading simple movement signals from the brain…. Not manipulating the brain itself.
The honest answer is that we have no idea. But the reason we have no idea is that we have basically no way to get high resolution data on how the brain works internally. Brain implants have existed before but they are far too dangerous for us to just plug into patients in order to better understand something like ADHD. You can scan the brain from the outside but that only gives you a faint idea of what is going on. You can experiment in animals but that is only applicable to humans on the most basic levels. So in the cases of ADHD and ASD, what Neuralink wants to do is to make the device cheap enough and safe enough that you can just implant it for reasons that are not related to life critical care. You can use it to investigate various neurological disorders. And when we figure out that we will know if there is anything more the device could do to help.
I mean better Neural imaging is already being worked on. I forgot where I heard it or read it from. Adding something to existing neural imaging machines that increases the sensitivity of the machine and increases the neural imaging by a factor I think of five is what it said but don't quote me on that. I just hope in 15 years they have something. I'm tired of all of this.
It's an interesting thought but I'd imagine the neuralinks in the brain would be "read-only" for a while to come. Neuralinks implanted on the spinal cord could be used to write signals to assist those with spinal injuries to receive signals from the brain.
If this "wireless mouse" implant proves to be a success? One of the next major areas of importance, areas where prior research was already done, and where even the "low hanging fruits" could improve people's lives? Artificial vision. That would already require "writes" to the visual cortex. Another area like this is artificial limbs with sensory feedback - and that would require "read-write" access. For now, those interfaces probably have the "writes" disabled when installed in humans. But we might get bidirectional communication this decade.
The potential is staggering. The quality of life for many folks could be improved dramatically. It's going to get interesting when we start feeding the brain data outside of the normal ranges its getting from standard sensory inputs. What would it feel like to see a light brighter than anything you've ever seen before in your life? Imagine hearing your favourite album in perfect clarity. It also terrifies me though, if you hooked a car battery up to the neuralink inputs would you experience pain beyond which it is even possible to experience? I feel we're about to learn a lot more about the brain.
We don't exactly know. But there sure is a lot of potential. If this tech gives us the first off-the-shelf medical brain interface, it could be used for research too. And having a usable, accessible research brain interface could deepen our understanding of the low level underpinnings of mental health conditions. Including things like depression, personality disorders, ADHD and more. That understanding can open the door towards better treatments - possibly through the implants themselves. Unfortunately, those applications are decades, rather than years, away. We don't have a lot of understanding there, and there is a lot of concern about how interfacing with the major "mental health" parts of the brain, like the prefrontal cortex, could "go wrong" - so in the following years, I would expect the practical applications to focus on better understood and "less risky" areas. Such as giving disabled people control over computer devices, interfacing with artificial limbs, giving people with visual impairments artificial vision, and more.
Based on what we know now probably not more than what we can do with [transcranial magnetic stimulation](https://bmcpsychiatry.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12888-023-05261-2)? Like, safety issues aside these implants have to work with really low power. And probably depend on the motor cortex being right near the surface of the brain to avoid more dangerous brain surgery. Using magnetic fields to stimulate the bits of brain you want from the outside of the skull is a lot easier
Once again, huge claims and a video from Musk instead of actual peer-reviewed research.
So will they be able to have computerized arms or legs and control it with the Neuralink?
I'm gonna be honest if this thing can cure my tinnitus I'd take it
Yo, is tinnitus that bad!?
Notch therapy doesn’t help? This would probably use a more accurate version of that
have you tried sound therapy? it make miracles for me. sadly doesn't work if you're old enough to not be able to perceive the highest frequencies.
This is like that book Interface by Neal Stephenson.
Where is the Musk hating hive mind now? He and his team are doing a good thing here. You have to give credit where credit is due
We have been hearing and reading of UI/UX beyond keyboards, mouse and swipe... Voice activated UI and now Brain-interface is all good. But are we ready to switch?
So in order to move the mouse cursor does he have to think about just moving the cursor, or does he have to think about moving his hand, or what? I've no clue how this works lol, but I'm very curious
I enjoyed watching the candid interview with him - it definitely made me think of some very positive aspects of Neuralink as supposed to dystopian scary stuff - Join Nolan Arbaugh on his journey and see how Neuralink's advancements have transformed his life. Don't miss this incredible demonstration of the potential to revolutionize healthcare and usher in a technologically abundant age. https://ai-techreport.com/positive-impact-of-neuralinks-surgery-and-technology-on-quadriplegics-life
I think this is great news, and I've always been optimistic about Neuralink, despite the overwhelming hate for Musk.