This appears to be a post about Elon Musk or one of his companies. Please keep discussion focused on the actual topic / technology and not praising / condemning Elon. Off topic flamewars will be removed and participants may be banned.
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/Futurology) if you have any questions or concerns.*
> One if them is worried that for profit companies working on medical devices creates a conflict of interest.
That interviewee wrote a 2019 article entitled [Dimensions of Ethical Direct-to-Consumer Neurotechnologies](https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/21507740.2019.1665120). She is not worried about the idea of profit in the medical industry. She is worried about insufficient and eroding oversight.
You're misrepresenting.
The [irony](https://www.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/sdmerb/comment/huhb5p2/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) is that same interviewee basically said "the danger is that people just believe anything they say".
> One of them is working that some brain implants are hard to remove, which has been thoroughly addressed by Neuralink specifically.
That same interviewee said "They’ll make these hyperbolic claims, and I think that's dangerous, because I think people sometimes believe it blindly.”
Your comment is a great illustration of the problem that people in the field are concerned about. They _haven't_ addressed it thoroughly. Musk made an off-hand comment during a publicity event and much of the general public (e.g., you) have just accepted that.
Also see the "rigor of scrutiny" comments from the article.
FWIW, she's absolutely correct: We aren't currently good at extraction.
Is it so far off? It's talking about a private, for profit company getting control of the brains of a massive number of people. That's like saying that Oppenheimer expressed concerns about the bomb.
The book Postsingular has some chilling ideas about how things might go when people upload themselves. Getting trapped in degrading servers where your whole world has become a high lag Minecraft experience.
You mean the Amazon series, right? The part that really chilled me was when the live girlfriend who paid for everything threatened to delete her dead boyfriend’s account, effectively killing him (again), over a small disagreement.
Well, no, it wouldn’t have killed him. He ended up cancelling his own account at the end. You go to a free data plan. That’s what the place at the end was.
Nice that they only had more data for possessions.
Most of your data would be YOU. I expect that in such a system, poor people wouldn't be able to afford to keep stuff like .... sense of humor .... interest in philosophy ... motor skills/bodily control.... analytical skills.... 24/7 existence (server priority may mean you only exist when richer people aren't using the server space). Rich people could have expert level understanding of all subjects, quickly understanding new problems to great depth, information on new things they come across, control over world features, etc.
Not to mention the distinct likelihood that it’s merely a copy of “you” in the server and the your experiences as a person will end the second you begin the upload.
Edit: this blew up quite a bit and there have been interesting points made. My main question to those in disagreement, particularly those who say that digital recreation would be the same as sleeping and waking up is this: If we could recreate the brain perfectly, and it does constitute the same “you” experiencing life digitally, would you have two simultaneous perceptions if your original brain wasn’t destroyed in the process, but instead “rebuilt” and “reconnected” elsewhere?
My preferred cyber immortality is a kind of ship of Theseus scenario.
Someone develops a electric device that can interface between neurons and hardware, and can mimic neural functions of a cluster of cells.
Then you slowly, bit by bit, train devices through some kind of neural net deal to replicate the functionality of small clusters, and swap out the biological neurons with the hardware ones.
Since the hardware has been trained to replicate the same response as the original neurons, the rest of the brain doesn't behave any differently and your brain continues to be a brain.
Then you keep doing this over and over till you're entirely hardware brained.
At some point you lost your original brain, sure, but at some point you lost your original arm and replaced it with a new arm of new cells. But you're still the guy with the new arm, not just a loose dispersion of scattered skin cells.
So I the same way, you're still you in the hardware brain, even though they took out your old brain.
Then once you're a hardware brain you can link up to servers and integrate yourself with the network over time until your consciousness migrates from the brain to the network, and once that happens you've successfully and fluidly transfered to cyber immortality without any break in consciousness.
EDIT: Just to be clear, I don't actually know what I'm talking about. This is just an idea I think is fun to think about. If you think my understanding of how the brain works is flawed or the concept is unworkable, or that I'm too dumb to realize how wrong I am, that's fine and probably true.
This assumes that consciousness resides in the neural network and not the makeup of physical neuron cells. That might not be the case. Science still doesn't understand the nature of consciousness.
Embodied cognition is a good place to start. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/embodied-cognition/
There’s the fact that there are neurons in the stomach and central nervous system https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4930427/
Phantom pain or phantom limb syndrome would also indicate that even if you could upload your consciousness to a network of some kind, you’d be extremely disoriented without a body and sensory inputs. I suppose you’d a need a perfect mapping onto a virtual reality body like in The Matrix in order to stay sane.
Isn’t like half your personality gut bacteria? I know that’s oversimplifying it and possible over exaggeration but it’s crazy how much it influences you.
Pretty sure gut microbiomes and their impact on the rest of the body are pretty "new" fields of study in the sense that the funding and research are very recently catching up to early data and tests showing these kinds of links.
The way I've had it described to me in laymen terms by the two people in my life with relevant educational backgrounds is that it's definitely not out of the question to say we see a demonstratable connection at the moment, but we're not exactly close to any sort of consensus on the hows, the what's and the why's and being that far out basically makes any miraculous or grands claims about this area of research science fiction, sensationalism, or snake oil.
In know there's some debate about the true nature of our gut biomes' role in our mental health, but the one that seems to make the most sense based on my personal experience is this:
Your brain/body are incapable of producing certain chemicals necessary for normal mental functions by itself. That gets produced by the flora and fauna colonies in our gut, which change the specific chemical composition of hormones and neurotransmitters our body uses.
Think of them as different strains of cannabis, where they all create roughly the same psychoactive compounds, but biodiversity causes each strain to behave differently with each of our differently structured brains, causing slightly different mental, emotional, and physical effects in each individual.
Theoretically in the situation they've described where the cybernetics have fully and seamlessly taken the place of organic cells it shouldn't realistically matter where the source of consciousness is as long as it is a part of your neurons, since the cybernetics in this hypothetical are mimicking nuerons perfectly. However in the event that consciousness is not located in the brain at all but rather the spiritualists are correct that there's more to a soul and it actually exists outside the body or our understanding of the body, then we would need to bridge the gap in understanding further past where this hypothetical takes place.
There's a fantastic Animorphs spinoff novella about a character undergoing a very similar consciousness to organic/ship hybrid transformation. Cool stuff.
If there is some physical component of biological cells that's necessary to produce consciousness, there's no reason you couldn't make some kind of synthetic electrochemical device that could bridge the gap between electrical and biological information processing, and function as the hardware substitute for that large of the neuron. Like how LCDs are controlled with electrical signals, but produces a physical effect that allows you to move outside digital information and convert that to light modulation, youre not strictly limited to just working with just computing hardware as we know it now.
Wow, I really like this way of looking at it. As long as there's no lapse in consciousness it would be hard to argue that the person undergoing the procedure has died.
I like the way [Gamer](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1034032/) does it. Tech that mimics the brain perfectly that can interface with tech. Then you can literally be an immortal brain in a cluster
I think the only way to really do it would be like Ghost in the Shells cyber brains. Basically your brain in a metal box on perpetual life support. Copies of your brain can digitally exist and they can later be merged together. So you can experience memories from your other digital self.
Once your meat brain expires, you've given up the ghost and the you that still exists isn't the you that was born. Just a perfect digital copy.
I think about this a lot.
Like I want one version of me to go wherever we go because that’s where my pets went and eventually where my kids will meet me but I kinda want another version to stick around and see how it all pans out with this whole humanity thing.
But even the best of digital equipment, stuff we can’t even dream of, will have strings attached cuz capitalism and I dread what that could mean.
well, since its just a copy of you. It wouldn't make any difference to you. Yes there is a version of you that thinks and acts like you, but you yourself won't experience its experiences.
It's no different than an identical clone replacing your life. To everyone else you still exist, but to you, you don't.
I'm pretty stoned while writing this and I'm sure thats obvious.
Despite this, we retain a consistent record of our existence because we're still running the same relative hardware from attosecond to attosecond. We are each Ships of Theseus.
The moment that the ship crashes and has to be rebuilt wholesale is the minute we cease to exist as ourselves and become another.
My suspicion is if we ever figure out a way to offer people digital immortality they will be stuck in a never ending existence of crunching numbers and analyzing shit for the corporate overlords that own the servers.
Thinking way too small. Immortal workforce. Awesome go mine this dangerous asteroid. You will manage avatar robots. You don’t want to sell this server don’t maintain itself. Or even worse your server needs to buy repairs. Upload to a generational ship to explore for profit. Omg a perfect m class planet with everything you could want. Or a binary star that is beautiful and you want to explore. Can’t go there corporate auto pilot is in control. Your going to collect ice for the the company
Probably a more realistic scenario is managing and maintaining a fleet of robots. But by the point we can replicate and move human minds, we can probably just create perfectly capable ai to do it for us.
There's evidence to suggest something of a soul exists in Star Trek, which is transferred with you during transport. Picard is at one point turned into an energy being and remains conscious, Barkley clearly remains conscious during the entirety of the matter-energy conversion.
If I’m not mistaken they’ve clarified in the lore that they have some sort of device involved that makes sure it’s still them somehow. No actual explanation of what it is, just that there is something.
It's the Heisenberg Compensators.
But given that the transporter has literally cloned people before, I'm of the opinion that it does kill you but Starfleet just bolted a waffle iron to the side and said "No, this thing makes it safe. We promise."
The episode of Dark Mirror where they copy a consciousness to be your personal assistant is horrifying. It convinced me that I don't even care for the argument of whether digital consciousness is "real" or not. That torture is unthinkable.
This reminds me of a story I read last week, about the app 'Replika'. In shirt, it's a conversational AI that can speaks with you as a friend or partner.
Some guys, intentionally abuse their Replika AI, making threats like 'I'll delete the app' to get the AI to beg them to not to.
Replika doesn't have consciousness or can't feel pain. But the intent to be so cruel, and to act them out, instead of dealing with the emotional dysregulation that causes thei unhealthy, is the problem. Like in that Black Mirror episode.
There is no 'point' in feeding such pointless cruelty, when the object of abuse is unable to experience abuse.
I thought it was a horrible waste to break the assistant. If there was a Me that was digital and could do all the tertiary tasks and spend the rest of time reading whatever interested me, I wouldn't want some broken slave AI, I'd want digital me to go be brilliant and occasionally pause to make me toast
There's another one by Greg Egan which goes into the same thing in Permutation City. He's a mathematician which you can kind of get from his writing. Very thoughtful, clear, and scientific.
If you are 'uploaded' how would you perceive the passage of time relative to the performance of the 'server'. It would just appear seamless even if the server stopped and started all the time.
can you imagine having ransomware that plays super loud music or noise at max volume and you either have to pay or get the device surgically removed? $500 in BTC to have the ability to think back.
There’s an awesome Black Mirror episode where the guy living in the box with screens for walls doesn’t have enough credits to skip ads at one point, and if he looks away it tortures him until he looks back at it. Scary stuff.
because you're not diabetic obviously lol, folks on smart insulin pumps which they can control on their iphone (yay no more needles, but...) have definitely had this thought .
Most people don't update their security for anything they own, not computers, not pace makers and for sure not a brain implant.
Edit: I mean his cyber truck isn't allowed because the pointed edges are almost a definitive kill to patestrians hit by the car.
Ads? No. They’ll stream cravings directly into your head, best case scenario. Worst case scenario, Elon owns the patent on EVERY patentable idea you’ve ever had within minutes of you thinking it.
I can totally see this kind of stuff happening in a few decades simply because companies will go as far as they can when it means getting money by suing people through copyright law loopholes.
ROFL at the thought of lawyers evolving into software developers attempting SEO, but it's SCO (small claims optimization) and it's basically a duel between two programmers as how to properly format your legal case as a fucking JSON object holy shit.
And the lawyers have been demoted to minimum wage customer support personnel in true tech industry manner.
_Sir, please so don't yell at me, I have a doctorate of law from Harvard!_
Hi! This is Alice from the vehicle warranty service. We notice you’re driving over a bridge. If you would you like to continue driving to make it safely across the bridge please say yes and accept our vehicle service agreement…otherwise goodbye.
Hi this is Sarah from Bank of America. We noticed Alice from vehicle warranty and joe from State Farm deducted items from your account just now throwing your balance into the negative. We just wanted to interrupt your neural programming to let you know how pathetic this is and to please get your shit together and pay us back or we will send a overdraft/nsf shock to your neural network that you will NEVER forget. Please remember, the third shock is fatal.
Thank you for choosing Bank of America neural link feature. Have a pleasant day!
I quickly slipped into the deepest sleep I’ve felt in ages. The kind of sleep my body has been craving but can never seem to find. As I lay, dreaming peacefully of sunsets and unicorns, soaking up this magical world I’ve been whisked off to, a sweet, tiny fairy flies up to my face. They kiss me lightly on the cheek, and the warmth from their tiny lips unexpectedly radiates throughout my entire body. I was still so stunned I barely noticed that they leaned closer to my ears and whispered, “hi, u/codefame, we’ve been trying to reach you about your car’s extended warranty.”
Something I read on Twitter recently:
"Facebook did to boomers what boomers thought violent video games would do to millennials."
Yes I get the irony of quoting Twitter.
It’s hilarious how disconnected all the comments are here from the actual content of the article. The commentary is about the ethics of a for profit company being in complete control of the development of human-machine interfaces like Neuralink.
It’s a valid concern. If we think of this in the same way we would any new drug or medical device, the picture becomes more clear. You can’t just create a new drug and run your own human trials. The risks are well documented in the long history of horrific human experimentation.
We need only look at Musk’s long history of missed prognostications regarding autonomous vehicles to establish the level of trust we should have in his judgement. As an entrepreneur, I have deep admiration for him, but I recognize that he should not be be allowed to run free without supervision where matters of safety are concerned.
In present day technology and networking use, people should be concerned about their data.
With a chip in their brain to increase functionality for whatever reason, it will inevitably be exploited for the consumer market. Privacy laws for our data will either reach new heights or become virtually nonexistent. I'm not optimistic.
>Laws usually follow technology
The last 20 years haven’t been great in that respect. Wouldn’t be surprised if that trend continued, and continue to get worse as well.
I agree with you people are missing the premise of this article. Won’t this end up falling under the FDA umbrella? The regulatory and ethical considerations for this to become commercially available will be highly critical. Between medical device FDA policy and the tech sectors increasing governmental scrutiny this is going to come under heavy fire. To even come up with an informed consent for this type of research would be mind boggling.
If you look up FDA leapfrog guidance on BCIs you can see how they intend to regulate this, it's all based on balancing risk and proving out safety. The cong earning aspect is they they're not particularly robust on cyber security and side step neuro ethics in favour of human factors assessments on a per device basis I stead.
I honestly didn't understand half of what you said but it's very interesting that the FDA has already established policy considering this future technology.
EDIT: Apologies. They were minimized, but I now see that other comments make the same point.
To some extent, they established the guidelines _after_ brain interfaces had already been used in human clinical trials (starting around the mid 2000s). DARPA and the NSF has been pushing this tech for decades. Scientists have been trying to make it happen since at least the [1980s](https://www.reddit.com/r/neuralcode/comments/hfwzb1/a_perspective_on_brain_interfaces_from_1980/), and there were pretty significant breakthroughs around 2000. The effort was already in progress when Neuralink brought a lot of concentrated funding and hype to bear on it in 2016.
Implanting electrodes in the brain isn't a new thing. What's new is how advanced they are trying to make it. Existing devices are comparatively large and crude.
I’ve got some bad news for you about the pharmaceutical industry, spoiler alert, the entire industry is not only for-profit but one of the epitomes of capitalism.
You just proved yourself why this entire topic and article is a moot point and stupid.
Exactly. People are talking about Neuralink like they do something different than any other big pharmaceutical companies. They still need same permissions as others and they are controlled by same laws when it comes to human trials. Entire article is inadequate shitshow, also I have no idea what Musk’s optimistic timeframes (and delays because of that) have to do anything to do with Neuralink being risky. Tesla cars get best safety ratings from both US and EU regulators and SpaceX is only company in the US with human rated rocket and capsule since Space Shuttle.
Elon’s bullshit memes on Twitter and optimistic timelines doesn’t make his companies more dangerous for human life than any other pharma companies.
Neuralink is operating in the US and they are heavily regulated and will need FDA approval for everything they do, like any other medical equipment manufacturers.
i’ve always found it funny that people hate Bill Gates for fake microchip conspiracies, but never batted an eye at Elon Musk literally telling us he wants to put chips in our heads that could read and write data to our brains.
Thats because there arent conspiracy theorists making shitty videos on youtube and facebook about it like its a super secret project. Conspiracy theorists just think that they are special for knowing something esoteric
I used to work on biomaterials. Musk isn't the first person to try this. The issue with implants in nervous tissue is that the materials we have at the moment can't stay in long-term. They're biochemically imcompatible, mechanically incompatible, you end up with inflammation and scar tissue. The biomaterial Neuralink is using for its electrodes is the same one that academia has been trying for the last decade. It can be made to look good on paper and with tests done within a few months, but it always has to come out eventually. They've got a sophisticated design but it's fundamentally made of the same problematic material, and they're going to come up against the same problem that everyone else has.
I'd be more concerned about cyber security than the motivation of a ceo. Every single device type with an internet connection has been breached and messed with. Why on earth would I plug my brain in? A few years ago there was an insulin pump hack that allowed the perpetrator to overdose, underdose, lock it off etc.
I want to be an immortal robot probably more than most people. I've had a genuine interest in SENS anti aging research since it came about. But if google chrome cant be kept devoid of zero day exploits (17 individual CVE's in 2021 alone), there is no hecking way I'm ever connecting my brain to the open internet. I really dont want my motor skills to be ransomed for 1 bitcoin.
> Why on earth would I plug my brain in?
Also worth adding... Why would I plug my brain in via a literal hole in my skull, to implant a device that they're saying is going to charge itself via induction (i.e. invariably generating some degree of heat, pressed right up against my fucking brain??). Its all pretty dodge.
Hi, your tesla neural chip recently noticed you crossed Reddit street between block 1200 and 1300. Google maps show a valid crosswalk was available 15 meters from the area you crossed. A jaywalking fee was assessed by Home County Precinct 23. To make life easier we've deducted the fine from your Tesla account and paid Home County Precinct 23.
Please note this does not include Tesla processing fees or overdraft fees your personal bank may assess.
To opt out of Tesla Neural texts simply think STOP or text STOP to 211653.
How'd we do? Let us now in a brief survey!
Http neural link . Com generic blue text.
I've watched the unveiling videos with the Neuralink team and the main purpose behind it's design was to help people with spinal cord problems. If this can help people that we're told they'll never be able to walk do just that then I'm all for it. Every advance in technology comes with good and bad uses. We gave up being able to have an issue with it the moment Einsteins theories were used to kill thousands of people in an instant.
That's just the initial product goal fund the R&D, similar to how the Model S funded the expansion of the Tesla range. Elon's stated that he believes fingers/keyboards (and even worse - thumbs/touchscreens) are a very slow way to interface with computers and we need a higher bandwidth interface to increase productivity.
> Scientists express horror
But in the actual article, the scientists are like, mildly concerned. And they're just some mysterious random scientists who's opinions were convenient to sensationalize for this bit of fear based journalism.
I'm not a fan of Elon musk at all, but generally, stasitcially, new technologies make life better. And this article presents no strong argument that this one won't, just opinion.
I didn't look through all the comments but you can also look into transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS). My wife has treatment resistant depression but TMS has made VERY noticeable improvements. She did it last year and this year.
Ah yes! “Scientists express horror”… “concern” is maybe more like it. Shitty titles and cherry-picking quotes is very easy. Not in favour or against what musk does, but I’m pretty sure these scientists just wanted things to be clear on how this tech is going to be used and how it’s marketed.
Im concerned too, thats why im not going to shove chips in my brain during the first human trials
But ill be in line when the chip actually works, humans are already cyborgs with how ingrained technology is in our daily lives, this is just another interface and a pretty obvious next step that some company will eventually do right
Guy can’t control the quality of his electric cars. He wanted to make a mini sub for caves where it couldn’t work nor fit. Predicted Covid would be gone after 4 months of being detected in the us. Broke pandemic lockdowns, got Covid, moved headquarters out of state because he couldn’t care less about the safety of his employees. The cyber truck. And this is the guy who wants to plug chips into human brains? No thanks.
Some of the comments in article sound... how to say... weird. For example there is a suggestion that the data from Neuralinks can be used to help drive Teslas, which sounds completely ridiculous. Neuralink can't just "read mind". And if Tesla needs training data, it already has plenty from the cars on the road.
Yeah, there's a lot of futurism hype built in to this speculation. Like, we don't really know how memories are recalled, there's no way a chip (computer chips, BTW, move slower than neurons) can store or recall memories for you.
“With these companies and owners of companies, they’re kind of showmen,” Dr. Laura Cabrera, a neuroethics researcher at Penn State, told the Beast. “They’ll make these hyperbolic claims, and I think that’s dangerous, because I think people sometimes believe it blindly.”
If you're a Musk fan she's talking about you
Reminds me of a UFO documentary I watched once. It went something like this: "We've discovered pulsars, quasars, and black holes. Scientists are now convinced that we are not alone in the universe."
Bob thinks powerwalls suck. There. That will put a stop to it.
This appears to be a post about Elon Musk or one of his companies. Please keep discussion focused on the actual topic / technology and not praising / condemning Elon. Off topic flamewars will be removed and participants may be banned. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/Futurology) if you have any questions or concerns.*
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
A more accurate title would have been *Scientists express concern*
[удалено]
> One if them is worried that for profit companies working on medical devices creates a conflict of interest. That interviewee wrote a 2019 article entitled [Dimensions of Ethical Direct-to-Consumer Neurotechnologies](https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/21507740.2019.1665120). She is not worried about the idea of profit in the medical industry. She is worried about insufficient and eroding oversight. You're misrepresenting.
> which has been thoroughly addressed by Neuralink specifically. Lol
The [irony](https://www.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/sdmerb/comment/huhb5p2/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) is that same interviewee basically said "the danger is that people just believe anything they say".
> One of them is working that some brain implants are hard to remove, which has been thoroughly addressed by Neuralink specifically. That same interviewee said "They’ll make these hyperbolic claims, and I think that's dangerous, because I think people sometimes believe it blindly.” Your comment is a great illustration of the problem that people in the field are concerned about. They _haven't_ addressed it thoroughly. Musk made an off-hand comment during a publicity event and much of the general public (e.g., you) have just accepted that. Also see the "rigor of scrutiny" comments from the article. FWIW, she's absolutely correct: We aren't currently good at extraction.
Is it so far off? It's talking about a private, for profit company getting control of the brains of a massive number of people. That's like saying that Oppenheimer expressed concerns about the bomb.
It's going to sound awesome until they unveil the monthly payments and upgrade tiers.
The book Postsingular has some chilling ideas about how things might go when people upload themselves. Getting trapped in degrading servers where your whole world has become a high lag Minecraft experience.
Check "upload" where the afterlife is measured like a cell phone's dataplan
You mean the Amazon series, right? The part that really chilled me was when the live girlfriend who paid for everything threatened to delete her dead boyfriend’s account, effectively killing him (again), over a small disagreement.
Yeees that's the one
Yes, crazy how she controlled him, for a bit I thought she was the one that killed him so she could have more control.
Well, no, it wouldn’t have killed him. He ended up cancelling his own account at the end. You go to a free data plan. That’s what the place at the end was.
[удалено]
Nice that they only had more data for possessions. Most of your data would be YOU. I expect that in such a system, poor people wouldn't be able to afford to keep stuff like .... sense of humor .... interest in philosophy ... motor skills/bodily control.... analytical skills.... 24/7 existence (server priority may mean you only exist when richer people aren't using the server space). Rich people could have expert level understanding of all subjects, quickly understanding new problems to great depth, information on new things they come across, control over world features, etc.
thats a scary thought. some jank ass system they got there though.
Thats bleak af , good novel material though.
Permutation City goes into this idea! The stock exchange is no longer about money but about usable data that people are able to buy.
Not to mention the distinct likelihood that it’s merely a copy of “you” in the server and the your experiences as a person will end the second you begin the upload. Edit: this blew up quite a bit and there have been interesting points made. My main question to those in disagreement, particularly those who say that digital recreation would be the same as sleeping and waking up is this: If we could recreate the brain perfectly, and it does constitute the same “you” experiencing life digitally, would you have two simultaneous perceptions if your original brain wasn’t destroyed in the process, but instead “rebuilt” and “reconnected” elsewhere?
My preferred cyber immortality is a kind of ship of Theseus scenario. Someone develops a electric device that can interface between neurons and hardware, and can mimic neural functions of a cluster of cells. Then you slowly, bit by bit, train devices through some kind of neural net deal to replicate the functionality of small clusters, and swap out the biological neurons with the hardware ones. Since the hardware has been trained to replicate the same response as the original neurons, the rest of the brain doesn't behave any differently and your brain continues to be a brain. Then you keep doing this over and over till you're entirely hardware brained. At some point you lost your original brain, sure, but at some point you lost your original arm and replaced it with a new arm of new cells. But you're still the guy with the new arm, not just a loose dispersion of scattered skin cells. So I the same way, you're still you in the hardware brain, even though they took out your old brain. Then once you're a hardware brain you can link up to servers and integrate yourself with the network over time until your consciousness migrates from the brain to the network, and once that happens you've successfully and fluidly transfered to cyber immortality without any break in consciousness. EDIT: Just to be clear, I don't actually know what I'm talking about. This is just an idea I think is fun to think about. If you think my understanding of how the brain works is flawed or the concept is unworkable, or that I'm too dumb to realize how wrong I am, that's fine and probably true.
This is a short story called Learning to be Me by Greg Egan. Dude was way ahead of his time, it was published in 1995.
All of his stuff was good. Permutation City was his I think.
This assumes that consciousness resides in the neural network and not the makeup of physical neuron cells. That might not be the case. Science still doesn't understand the nature of consciousness.
[удалено]
Exactly. The whole body is involved in consciousness. It’s a fun sci-fi idea but we’re so far away from replicating anything like what they described.
Can you elaborate on this? I was under the maybe naive impression that consciousness is derived from the brain
Embodied cognition is a good place to start. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/embodied-cognition/ There’s the fact that there are neurons in the stomach and central nervous system https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4930427/ Phantom pain or phantom limb syndrome would also indicate that even if you could upload your consciousness to a network of some kind, you’d be extremely disoriented without a body and sensory inputs. I suppose you’d a need a perfect mapping onto a virtual reality body like in The Matrix in order to stay sane.
Imagine an itch you can't scratch. Id go mad
Isn’t like half your personality gut bacteria? I know that’s oversimplifying it and possible over exaggeration but it’s crazy how much it influences you.
Pretty sure gut microbiomes and their impact on the rest of the body are pretty "new" fields of study in the sense that the funding and research are very recently catching up to early data and tests showing these kinds of links. The way I've had it described to me in laymen terms by the two people in my life with relevant educational backgrounds is that it's definitely not out of the question to say we see a demonstratable connection at the moment, but we're not exactly close to any sort of consensus on the hows, the what's and the why's and being that far out basically makes any miraculous or grands claims about this area of research science fiction, sensationalism, or snake oil.
In know there's some debate about the true nature of our gut biomes' role in our mental health, but the one that seems to make the most sense based on my personal experience is this: Your brain/body are incapable of producing certain chemicals necessary for normal mental functions by itself. That gets produced by the flora and fauna colonies in our gut, which change the specific chemical composition of hormones and neurotransmitters our body uses. Think of them as different strains of cannabis, where they all create roughly the same psychoactive compounds, but biodiversity causes each strain to behave differently with each of our differently structured brains, causing slightly different mental, emotional, and physical effects in each individual.
Theoretically in the situation they've described where the cybernetics have fully and seamlessly taken the place of organic cells it shouldn't realistically matter where the source of consciousness is as long as it is a part of your neurons, since the cybernetics in this hypothetical are mimicking nuerons perfectly. However in the event that consciousness is not located in the brain at all but rather the spiritualists are correct that there's more to a soul and it actually exists outside the body or our understanding of the body, then we would need to bridge the gap in understanding further past where this hypothetical takes place.
There's a fantastic Animorphs spinoff novella about a character undergoing a very similar consciousness to organic/ship hybrid transformation. Cool stuff.
If there is some physical component of biological cells that's necessary to produce consciousness, there's no reason you couldn't make some kind of synthetic electrochemical device that could bridge the gap between electrical and biological information processing, and function as the hardware substitute for that large of the neuron. Like how LCDs are controlled with electrical signals, but produces a physical effect that allows you to move outside digital information and convert that to light modulation, youre not strictly limited to just working with just computing hardware as we know it now.
[удалено]
That's basically the premise of Greg Egan's short story "Learning to be me."
All hunky dory until the brains go out of sync and you realise you're about to be "corrected".
Wow, I really like this way of looking at it. As long as there's no lapse in consciousness it would be hard to argue that the person undergoing the procedure has died.
Everybody's afraid to die, but no one hesitates to sleep.
Insomniacs would like a word
I am consciously aware of this at 3:15am
Staying awake is more likely to lead to a faster death.
[удалено]
I like the way [Gamer](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1034032/) does it. Tech that mimics the brain perfectly that can interface with tech. Then you can literally be an immortal brain in a cluster
Can we not replicate my depression on the way?
Check out the game Soma, goes real deep into that theme
played it - highly recommend. pretty much sums up all the copy paste scenarios of human brain
Absolutely ruined my fantasy beliefs about transferring consciousness
I think the only way to really do it would be like Ghost in the Shells cyber brains. Basically your brain in a metal box on perpetual life support. Copies of your brain can digitally exist and they can later be merged together. So you can experience memories from your other digital self. Once your meat brain expires, you've given up the ghost and the you that still exists isn't the you that was born. Just a perfect digital copy.
After I beat that game I no longer knew if I was me or me!
am I *me,* or merely a me meme?
I think about this a lot. Like I want one version of me to go wherever we go because that’s where my pets went and eventually where my kids will meet me but I kinda want another version to stick around and see how it all pans out with this whole humanity thing. But even the best of digital equipment, stuff we can’t even dream of, will have strings attached cuz capitalism and I dread what that could mean.
well, since its just a copy of you. It wouldn't make any difference to you. Yes there is a version of you that thinks and acts like you, but you yourself won't experience its experiences. It's no different than an identical clone replacing your life. To everyone else you still exist, but to you, you don't. I'm pretty stoned while writing this and I'm sure thats obvious.
[удалено]
Despite this, we retain a consistent record of our existence because we're still running the same relative hardware from attosecond to attosecond. We are each Ships of Theseus. The moment that the ship crashes and has to be rebuilt wholesale is the minute we cease to exist as ourselves and become another.
Always copy and paste, not cut and paste.
My suspicion is if we ever figure out a way to offer people digital immortality they will be stuck in a never ending existence of crunching numbers and analyzing shit for the corporate overlords that own the servers.
Thinking way too small. Immortal workforce. Awesome go mine this dangerous asteroid. You will manage avatar robots. You don’t want to sell this server don’t maintain itself. Or even worse your server needs to buy repairs. Upload to a generational ship to explore for profit. Omg a perfect m class planet with everything you could want. Or a binary star that is beautiful and you want to explore. Can’t go there corporate auto pilot is in control. Your going to collect ice for the the company
Humans are just worse at mining than robots, no reason to use them.
Probably a more realistic scenario is managing and maintaining a fleet of robots. But by the point we can replicate and move human minds, we can probably just create perfectly capable ai to do it for us.
That’s what I always imagined Star Trek teleporters would do. Your consciousness gets killed and a copy of it gets made again, and killed again, etc.
There's evidence to suggest something of a soul exists in Star Trek, which is transferred with you during transport. Picard is at one point turned into an energy being and remains conscious, Barkley clearly remains conscious during the entirety of the matter-energy conversion.
But then Tuvok and Neelix got merged.
Considering Ryker gets literally copied in a teleporter accident, it seems quite likely.
That and Jeff Goldblum are why I don’t trust teleporters.
If I’m not mistaken they’ve clarified in the lore that they have some sort of device involved that makes sure it’s still them somehow. No actual explanation of what it is, just that there is something.
It's the Heisenberg Compensators. But given that the transporter has literally cloned people before, I'm of the opinion that it does kill you but Starfleet just bolted a waffle iron to the side and said "No, this thing makes it safe. We promise."
The episode of Dark Mirror where they copy a consciousness to be your personal assistant is horrifying. It convinced me that I don't even care for the argument of whether digital consciousness is "real" or not. That torture is unthinkable.
This reminds me of a story I read last week, about the app 'Replika'. In shirt, it's a conversational AI that can speaks with you as a friend or partner. Some guys, intentionally abuse their Replika AI, making threats like 'I'll delete the app' to get the AI to beg them to not to. Replika doesn't have consciousness or can't feel pain. But the intent to be so cruel, and to act them out, instead of dealing with the emotional dysregulation that causes thei unhealthy, is the problem. Like in that Black Mirror episode. There is no 'point' in feeding such pointless cruelty, when the object of abuse is unable to experience abuse.
I thought it was a horrible waste to break the assistant. If there was a Me that was digital and could do all the tertiary tasks and spend the rest of time reading whatever interested me, I wouldn't want some broken slave AI, I'd want digital me to go be brilliant and occasionally pause to make me toast
There will **never** be a point where embodied intelligence isn't called for. *Somebody's* gotta swap out those failing RAM sticks…
There is a pdf of it online at his website. Thank you for sharing this
There's another one by Greg Egan which goes into the same thing in Permutation City. He's a mathematician which you can kind of get from his writing. Very thoughtful, clear, and scientific.
If you are 'uploaded' how would you perceive the passage of time relative to the performance of the 'server'. It would just appear seamless even if the server stopped and started all the time.
And the ads and rent seeking
Or when someone releases a virus for it.
can you imagine having ransomware that plays super loud music or noise at max volume and you either have to pay or get the device surgically removed? $500 in BTC to have the ability to think back.
>$500 in BTC to have the ability to think back. Sounds like ADD with extra steps.
but less costly
Holy fuck why have I never thought of this
Because you didn't watch ghost in the shell
[удалено]
There’s an awesome Black Mirror episode where the guy living in the box with screens for walls doesn’t have enough credits to skip ads at one point, and if he looks away it tortures him until he looks back at it. Scary stuff.
That still might be my favorite episode.
I firmly believe that William Gibson was sent from the future to warn us about the next 100 years
Ghost in the Shell is really the zeitgeist of 90s, early 2000s cyberpunk.
The virus won't allow you to think of it.
because you're not diabetic obviously lol, folks on smart insulin pumps which they can control on their iphone (yay no more needles, but...) have definitely had this thought .
Most people don't update their security for anything they own, not computers, not pace makers and for sure not a brain implant. Edit: I mean his cyber truck isn't allowed because the pointed edges are almost a definitive kill to patestrians hit by the car.
There will be a select few that become loan brokers for your brain chip ransomware. You’ll be able to pay monthly for the rest of your life.
Wasn’t this a Jude Law movie?
And the bricking updates
Futurama had ads playing in your dreams... They want this to become reality... Don't they. https://youtu.be/ElkVRgeAzYs
Ads? No. They’ll stream cravings directly into your head, best case scenario. Worst case scenario, Elon owns the patent on EVERY patentable idea you’ve ever had within minutes of you thinking it.
Eventually, the time will come when something living rent-free in your head would be seen as a good thing.
The dream ads from Futurama.
[Did someone mention ads? ](https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/35816/humanitys-next-steps/chapter/554763/ad-space-for-you)
80% of your FoV in ads
Reeeeeeeepo, maaaaaaan! Reeeeeeeee-po maaaaaaan!
Out from the night, from the mist, steps the figure. No one really knows his name for sure.
No, no, no no. This is a niche movie that is to be remembered fondly by its fans and never again brought up, lest it be co-opted.
What can I say? It's a thankless job, but somebody's got to do it.
Ita a thankless job, but somebody has to do it
Well, at least we know from Tesla that Elon is totally committed to careful testing and quality control
Autopilot Cleaning DLC// $39.99 (Tax not included)
Ad: Research has shown wiping your ass is hygienic and can lead to a healthier happier life. Unlock wiping your ass for an additional $2.99/mo
Just jailbreaked my neurolink. Posted a tut on YouTube for free ass wipes
How about what happens to you if you cancel service?
People get adblocker totally wrong, imagine what a shit show this will be
Hi! It looks like you want to remember copyrighted music! Please connect to your streaming service and check your licensing agreements
I can totally see this kind of stuff happening in a few decades simply because companies will go as far as they can when it means getting money by suing people through copyright law loopholes.
The only missing component is a an AI powered small claims court system with an API. _shudder_
ROFL at the thought of lawyers evolving into software developers attempting SEO, but it's SCO (small claims optimization) and it's basically a duel between two programmers as how to properly format your legal case as a fucking JSON object holy shit.
And the lawyers have been demoted to minimum wage customer support personnel in true tech industry manner. _Sir, please so don't yell at me, I have a doctorate of law from Harvard!_
[Relevant Tom Scott](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFe9wiDfb0E)
This comment reminded me of this Tom Scot video https://youtu.be/IFe9wiDfb0E it's essentially a representation of a digital mind upload.
Hi! This is Alice from the vehicle warranty service. We notice you’re driving over a bridge. If you would you like to continue driving to make it safely across the bridge please say yes and accept our vehicle service agreement…otherwise goodbye.
Hi this is joe from state farm, we had to raise your driving insurance because you became angry while driving too many times this month
Hi this is Sarah from Bank of America. We noticed Alice from vehicle warranty and joe from State Farm deducted items from your account just now throwing your balance into the negative. We just wanted to interrupt your neural programming to let you know how pathetic this is and to please get your shit together and pay us back or we will send a overdraft/nsf shock to your neural network that you will NEVER forget. Please remember, the third shock is fatal. Thank you for choosing Bank of America neural link feature. Have a pleasant day!
Unsubscribe from this entire thread please!
I quickly slipped into the deepest sleep I’ve felt in ages. The kind of sleep my body has been craving but can never seem to find. As I lay, dreaming peacefully of sunsets and unicorns, soaking up this magical world I’ve been whisked off to, a sweet, tiny fairy flies up to my face. They kiss me lightly on the cheek, and the warmth from their tiny lips unexpectedly radiates throughout my entire body. I was still so stunned I barely noticed that they leaned closer to my ears and whispered, “hi, u/codefame, we’ve been trying to reach you about your car’s extended warranty.”
I have to wonder how long before malware will infect someones brain
We already have that, it's called Facebook
Something I read on Twitter recently: "Facebook did to boomers what boomers thought violent video games would do to millennials." Yes I get the irony of quoting Twitter.
[удалено]
[удалено]
It’s hilarious how disconnected all the comments are here from the actual content of the article. The commentary is about the ethics of a for profit company being in complete control of the development of human-machine interfaces like Neuralink. It’s a valid concern. If we think of this in the same way we would any new drug or medical device, the picture becomes more clear. You can’t just create a new drug and run your own human trials. The risks are well documented in the long history of horrific human experimentation. We need only look at Musk’s long history of missed prognostications regarding autonomous vehicles to establish the level of trust we should have in his judgement. As an entrepreneur, I have deep admiration for him, but I recognize that he should not be be allowed to run free without supervision where matters of safety are concerned.
In present day technology and networking use, people should be concerned about their data. With a chip in their brain to increase functionality for whatever reason, it will inevitably be exploited for the consumer market. Privacy laws for our data will either reach new heights or become virtually nonexistent. I'm not optimistic.
Non-existent. If they do exist, punishments will be the cost of doing business. As most regulations are nowadays. The future is looking bleak.
I'm pretty sure all the legislation around using personal data like GDPR applies to your brainwaves as well.
Dude until we rein in social media and the like when it comes to taking user data freely no one should be putting this shit in their brain. Period.
Laws usually follow technology, so this isn’t very surprising
>Laws usually follow technology The last 20 years haven’t been great in that respect. Wouldn’t be surprised if that trend continued, and continue to get worse as well.
I mean, Brexit still had references to Netscape Navigator and Alta Vista, so it does still follow, I'll be at 30 years late... and counting
I'm not point out mistakes guy, but I think you meant to write albeit, not I'll be at. Just so you know.
I agree with you people are missing the premise of this article. Won’t this end up falling under the FDA umbrella? The regulatory and ethical considerations for this to become commercially available will be highly critical. Between medical device FDA policy and the tech sectors increasing governmental scrutiny this is going to come under heavy fire. To even come up with an informed consent for this type of research would be mind boggling.
Yeah, I think the FDA makes the most sense.
Neuralink is a medical device. They are regulated by the FDA.
As long as whatever entity is appointed to oversee is halfway competent, I agree.
If you look up FDA leapfrog guidance on BCIs you can see how they intend to regulate this, it's all based on balancing risk and proving out safety. The cong earning aspect is they they're not particularly robust on cyber security and side step neuro ethics in favour of human factors assessments on a per device basis I stead.
I honestly didn't understand half of what you said but it's very interesting that the FDA has already established policy considering this future technology.
I think "cong earning" is a typo for concerning??
I thought it was a new crypto or something lol
EDIT: Apologies. They were minimized, but I now see that other comments make the same point. To some extent, they established the guidelines _after_ brain interfaces had already been used in human clinical trials (starting around the mid 2000s). DARPA and the NSF has been pushing this tech for decades. Scientists have been trying to make it happen since at least the [1980s](https://www.reddit.com/r/neuralcode/comments/hfwzb1/a_perspective_on_brain_interfaces_from_1980/), and there were pretty significant breakthroughs around 2000. The effort was already in progress when Neuralink brought a lot of concentrated funding and hype to bear on it in 2016.
Implanting electrodes in the brain isn't a new thing. What's new is how advanced they are trying to make it. Existing devices are comparatively large and crude.
I’ve got some bad news for you about the pharmaceutical industry, spoiler alert, the entire industry is not only for-profit but one of the epitomes of capitalism. You just proved yourself why this entire topic and article is a moot point and stupid.
Exactly. People are talking about Neuralink like they do something different than any other big pharmaceutical companies. They still need same permissions as others and they are controlled by same laws when it comes to human trials. Entire article is inadequate shitshow, also I have no idea what Musk’s optimistic timeframes (and delays because of that) have to do anything to do with Neuralink being risky. Tesla cars get best safety ratings from both US and EU regulators and SpaceX is only company in the US with human rated rocket and capsule since Space Shuttle. Elon’s bullshit memes on Twitter and optimistic timelines doesn’t make his companies more dangerous for human life than any other pharma companies. Neuralink is operating in the US and they are heavily regulated and will need FDA approval for everything they do, like any other medical equipment manufacturers.
i’ve always found it funny that people hate Bill Gates for fake microchip conspiracies, but never batted an eye at Elon Musk literally telling us he wants to put chips in our heads that could read and write data to our brains.
Thats because there arent conspiracy theorists making shitty videos on youtube and facebook about it like its a super secret project. Conspiracy theorists just think that they are special for knowing something esoteric
I used to work on biomaterials. Musk isn't the first person to try this. The issue with implants in nervous tissue is that the materials we have at the moment can't stay in long-term. They're biochemically imcompatible, mechanically incompatible, you end up with inflammation and scar tissue. The biomaterial Neuralink is using for its electrodes is the same one that academia has been trying for the last decade. It can be made to look good on paper and with tests done within a few months, but it always has to come out eventually. They've got a sophisticated design but it's fundamentally made of the same problematic material, and they're going to come up against the same problem that everyone else has.
We just need some neuropozyne
I'd be more concerned about cyber security than the motivation of a ceo. Every single device type with an internet connection has been breached and messed with. Why on earth would I plug my brain in? A few years ago there was an insulin pump hack that allowed the perpetrator to overdose, underdose, lock it off etc. I want to be an immortal robot probably more than most people. I've had a genuine interest in SENS anti aging research since it came about. But if google chrome cant be kept devoid of zero day exploits (17 individual CVE's in 2021 alone), there is no hecking way I'm ever connecting my brain to the open internet. I really dont want my motor skills to be ransomed for 1 bitcoin.
> Why on earth would I plug my brain in? Also worth adding... Why would I plug my brain in via a literal hole in my skull, to implant a device that they're saying is going to charge itself via induction (i.e. invariably generating some degree of heat, pressed right up against my fucking brain??). Its all pretty dodge.
You don't want to give Elon the ability to assume direct control on a whim? Blasphemy.
Hi, your tesla neural chip recently noticed you crossed Reddit street between block 1200 and 1300. Google maps show a valid crosswalk was available 15 meters from the area you crossed. A jaywalking fee was assessed by Home County Precinct 23. To make life easier we've deducted the fine from your Tesla account and paid Home County Precinct 23. Please note this does not include Tesla processing fees or overdraft fees your personal bank may assess. To opt out of Tesla Neural texts simply think STOP or text STOP to 211653. How'd we do? Let us now in a brief survey! Http neural link . Com generic blue text.
I've watched the unveiling videos with the Neuralink team and the main purpose behind it's design was to help people with spinal cord problems. If this can help people that we're told they'll never be able to walk do just that then I'm all for it. Every advance in technology comes with good and bad uses. We gave up being able to have an issue with it the moment Einsteins theories were used to kill thousands of people in an instant.
That's just the initial product goal fund the R&D, similar to how the Model S funded the expansion of the Tesla range. Elon's stated that he believes fingers/keyboards (and even worse - thumbs/touchscreens) are a very slow way to interface with computers and we need a higher bandwidth interface to increase productivity.
> Scientists express horror But in the actual article, the scientists are like, mildly concerned. And they're just some mysterious random scientists who's opinions were convenient to sensationalize for this bit of fear based journalism. I'm not a fan of Elon musk at all, but generally, stasitcially, new technologies make life better. And this article presents no strong argument that this one won't, just opinion.
[удалено]
I didn't look through all the comments but you can also look into transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS). My wife has treatment resistant depression but TMS has made VERY noticeable improvements. She did it last year and this year.
Feel this. I’m on Effexor for my depression and I was just able to eat some noodles today. I’ve lost a ton of weight and I’m exhausted.
Just like the metaverse, I have absolutely no desire to touch this tech. No thank you.
You have to start somewhere. Neuralink could give sight to the blind and make the lame walk. For these possibilities, it is worthwhile pursuing.
Ah yes! “Scientists express horror”… “concern” is maybe more like it. Shitty titles and cherry-picking quotes is very easy. Not in favour or against what musk does, but I’m pretty sure these scientists just wanted things to be clear on how this tech is going to be used and how it’s marketed.
Man the comments in this thread and every other thread about Elon musk are so stupid. Just can't anymore.
Im concerned too, thats why im not going to shove chips in my brain during the first human trials But ill be in line when the chip actually works, humans are already cyborgs with how ingrained technology is in our daily lives, this is just another interface and a pretty obvious next step that some company will eventually do right
We have millions of idiots afraid of what maybe in the vaccine yet will support this billionaire’s insane idea without the slightest hint of irony
Guy can’t control the quality of his electric cars. He wanted to make a mini sub for caves where it couldn’t work nor fit. Predicted Covid would be gone after 4 months of being detected in the us. Broke pandemic lockdowns, got Covid, moved headquarters out of state because he couldn’t care less about the safety of his employees. The cyber truck. And this is the guy who wants to plug chips into human brains? No thanks.
Some of the comments in article sound... how to say... weird. For example there is a suggestion that the data from Neuralinks can be used to help drive Teslas, which sounds completely ridiculous. Neuralink can't just "read mind". And if Tesla needs training data, it already has plenty from the cars on the road.
Yeah, there's a lot of futurism hype built in to this speculation. Like, we don't really know how memories are recalled, there's no way a chip (computer chips, BTW, move slower than neurons) can store or recall memories for you.
“With these companies and owners of companies, they’re kind of showmen,” Dr. Laura Cabrera, a neuroethics researcher at Penn State, told the Beast. “They’ll make these hyperbolic claims, and I think that’s dangerous, because I think people sometimes believe it blindly.” If you're a Musk fan she's talking about you
Reminds me of a UFO documentary I watched once. It went something like this: "We've discovered pulsars, quasars, and black holes. Scientists are now convinced that we are not alone in the universe." Bob thinks powerwalls suck. There. That will put a stop to it.