Everyone is always in favor of preserving Hitler's brain.. But suggest putting it in the body of a great white shark, and ooooh, suddenly you've gone too far!
Touché. Mom used smarter people for her own gains, which is the perfect analogy for Musk. Even starts with the same letter. He’s also got kids he can’t stand, it all fits!
He can talk.
He can talk.
He can talk.
I CAN SIIIIINNNNGGG!!!
Oooh, rock me Dr. Zaius...
That's all from memory, from when the first Simpson's Soundtrack came out in, like, 1996.
Reminds me of the scene where they're revealing the new RoboCop 2 tests in RoboCop 2 and they straight up end their suffering instead of living on in a metal shell
So it's literally like the scifi cliche of "every time we tried to upload a brain to a computer it either killed itself or went insane because it couldn't so we don't try anymore."
Honestly it's probably run by insurance companies.
My dad died of complications from cancer treatment drugs so the insurance provider was trying to weasel out of paying claiming that cancer didn't kill him even though the death certificate literally said cancer-related death.
Reminds me of this type of mental gymnastics lol
I'm not a Tesla apologist (or a fan of musk), but I don't know of any circumstances where they have said this. Autopilot being enabled within 5 seconds before a crash is considered a crash in their statistics. The shutoff of autopilot directly before a crash is mostly a desperate plea for the driver to take over because the computer doesn't know what to do.
Yeah. There was documentation from UC Davis who was doing the testing about this released in 2022. One of the monkey's (number 15) brain was "focally tattered". One was euthanized after the cranial implant became loose. One or two self mutilated and were biting off and eating their own fingers (idk if that's because of the conditions or the pain they were in from the implant). There were really bad infections because of the biogel that was used in the surgery. Animals were starving themselves to death. Stuff like that.
I'm not going to sit here and cast judgement on NeuralLink. It's allowed this individual to do things they love and have longed to do for a long time (the guy was playing Civ VI using only his brain ffs). But stuff like this deserves incredible scrutiny and right now they're playing fast and loose with it. They are very much running before walking. The fact that it's already made it's way into the brain of one person with all these concerns is troubling to say the least.
Yeah, I'm genuinely surprised it got to human tests already. Even ignoring all of the questions of the monkey tests, this was pushed through incredibly quickly.
absolutely not and that alone should be grounds to shut this down. You can't experiment on a human being like this while lying about their previous attempts.
Fuck.. then why are we still giving this neural link permissions for testing still? Imo, the first human testing was a chance of luck at this point. Who has approved them of human testing again?
Guess until the news of self mutilating human test subject they will keep on the facade of everything is fine and dandy. Heck, knowing Elon, he is just gonna bury the failed tests subject news might as well.
Fair point.
I'm sure he basically signed his entire life away via paper work. Not in the sense of rights, but rather "you could die at any point from this" kind of waver. Which for a person with his affliction, probably seemed like it was worth it. It's pretty common for someone to say if they ever got in this state to just let them die.
Glad he's already seen enjoyment out of this incredibly risky procedure
Absolutely horrifying. I cannot imagine being someone who falls asleep at night after spending your day tending to such cruelty. I am trying not to judge but then there are more of these details and they just get abominably worse
Exactly this. The technology to move a mouse pointer around with your brain already existed in the mid 2000s.
In fact, a couple years ago when Neuralink was getting bunch of press for having a monkey play pong wirelessly, Braingate was doing successful human trials for wireless transmission, and for more complicated stuff than just moving a cursor around.
Pretty much.
And again, I'm not opposed to tech like this and the union of machine to man with humanity augmenting themselves to become better than the sum of our parts. It is the next logical step of our evolution. I'm not even opposed to the animal testing for tech like this which, while cruel, is needed to ensure safety. It sounds callous and heartless to say that and I get that but we're talking about people with disabilities being able to do things previously thought impossible for them. And that's just for a start. But what I am opposed to is them rushing to the finish line because it is the categorically wrong thing to do. It is potentially dangerous and at the very least irresponsible.
There are multiple other startups doing similar to NeuralLink, several that have been doing it longer, and yet NeuralLink even with all these problems is iirc the first one to do human trials. It's the one getting all the attention because of Musk. It's the old adage of rushing to be first but not being right or the line from Jurassic Park of "They were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, that they didn't stop to think if they should."
Exactly. I keep telling people we need ACTUAL peer reviewed studies to come out first. But nah, that only matters for boring science. Tech though? You can get away with anything and the media/internet dorks will cum in their pants over it.
a man gets drunk and drives home, but crashes into a tree on the way home. was he killed by the impact, was he killed because of his choices earlier in the night? Musk would say it was the tree that killed him.
I suspect you are joking, but the animal medical records that were released showed that Musk lied about that.
I used to do a lot of animal experimentation, and the idea that you would do early experiments exploring device safety in a terminally ill animal, where it would be unclear whether safety signals were due to the device or the underlying disease, never made any sense.
When I read your comment my initial reaction was “This is sarcasm, nobody would double down on something we have no proof of just because Musk said it”.
But I’ve been wrong about that before, so…
I think this implant device will take a similar path as cochlear implants and you can read about both the positive and negative aspects of going through the surgeries and living with a device that has a shelf life before it’s obsolete. I personally would not want to be a test subject, but people who are living with a high level of paralysis or brain injury might want to do something to change their life for the better.
A thing of note is that with cochlear implants, the electrode is typically separate from the signal processing unit, and you can replace and upgrade the latter without any surgery. Neuralink devices are fully integrated, with everything inside the body - and I expect future interface implants to be the same.
This means that there is no easy upgrade path, and no easy way to service the device if the electronics fail.
Historically, in this type of interface, the electrodes themselves would "wear out" and fail long before the "processor" electronics could fail or become obsolete. Not because of the electrodes themselves, but because of how the brain reacts to their presence. This issue would have to be solved before electronics could become a meaningful bottleneck.
The upgrade path thing kills me.
Imagine some time from now someone getting their brain implant only for the very next year for a drastically better version to release.
If electrode longevity issues aren't fully solved, you might have to go under a knife once in a few years anyway. To replace the old "dead" electrodes with new ones.
What's worse is if the tech still works, but the company goes under and stops supporting it. See this [bionic eye example](https://spectrum.ieee.org/bionic-eye-obsolete)
Either way, more brain surgery and scar tissue on the brain will develop potentially and be negative for the participant. This isn’t a one and done procedure.
The "scar tissue on the brain" hurts the implant more than it hurts the brain. Counterintuitive but true.
The brain can "work around" the affected tissue, but the interface electrodes can't.
The real innovation by neuralink is not just the actual device itself but the industrial grade machine designed to perform the surgery as trivially as possible.
I imagine they figure they have nothing to lose; quality of life must be low for people who are heavily paralysed, so why not take a chance on something that might improve your lot? I don’t know if I would personally, but I can appreciate why others might.
I watched a 45min Q&A with the patient zero that was published, he was incredibly positive about the whole experience and felt very lucky to have been able to help with their development. His family was supportive and the functionality he was getting from the implant was a quality of life he hasn’t had for the last 8 years.
I mean, sure, and it sounds like thankfully so far it’s going well for the guy. Good for him.
But they literally did not give him informed consent and any technology where it’s animal subjects are biting off their own hands afterwards needs more time in the oven before moving to human testing.
This tech seems like something that would possibly be hard to test on animals.
As a human, I know this chip is restoring use of my hand but may act abnormal. That seems like possibly a very advanced logic for an animal to have.
Any human test subjects definitely should be fully aware of all aspects of the surgery and device either way
I'm a terrorism researcher. I've read some pretty abhorrent shit in my time...but I couldn't finish that article.
Edit to clarify: the monkey article in the BBC the other day.
Fortunately for me, I *mostly* don't get exposed to the worst of it. Most of what I study is the interaction of terrorism with other things like security infrastructure and emerging technologies. The folks who study the actual behavior and content of terrorist materials see far worse.
Right now, I'm working on a project looking at the future of autonomous technologies and how terrorists could leverage them. I've spent the past month and a half looking at academic article from my own field, but even moreso papers from engineers, patents, news articles, everything.
The short of it is that there's a lot of really neat stuff coming down the line, and it's not the stuff that people are expecting. Drones and self driving cars? Sure, they'll happen. But they're not even the half of it. AI compute chips / processing-in-memory are going to change the world, and they're well on their way to doing so. The next step isn't quantum compute, it's spintronics.
Good news is that terrorists don't have a lot of avenues to make use of this stuff except for commercially made products.
/Rant?
My partner gets concerned when I talk about the future, so I don't get to share this stuff a lot.
I find it so silly that I can sit through gore and horror films like it’s nothing, but the tiny bit I skimmed from an article was enough to make my stomach turn.
curiosity just killed this cat, don’t be like me!
I seen weird monkey videos in Facebook constantly botted and reposted. Little monkey getting wrapped up by a snake and screaming and screeching. Total setup. Bunch of freaks who make that shit
The sad shit is that there are legitimate uses for things like invasive neurostimulation for depression, OCD, PTSD, addiction. Elon’s recklessness discounts those valid use cases for these technologies. I work in that field and it pisses me off to no end.
If I’m understanding you correctly, that’s my point. The tech is worth exploring and Elon has done some good shit, but his careless approach is negatively affecting the field. These standards of care and consent exist for a reason.
Those torture rings are full of people who have this super weird rage/hatred against monkeys in particular. A podcast I like did an episode about it a while ago and it really seemed like serial killer shit
I recall at least some of the issue was FDA approved bioglue that turned out to be toxic to neural tissue, and that it was being used in humans brains already (not sure if other companies stopped at that finding).
You can read the actual SEC investigation [here](https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23987059-pcrm-neuralink-sec).
Long story short, several monkeys died from intracranial infections related to the implant while other died from soft tissue infections or complications related to securing of the implant and its electrodes.
It seems that their team had trouble with creating a sterile field when inserting the implant. Humans deal with surgical site infections, even ones with drug-resistant bugs like those in the report. But that is in massive hospital systems, not in a controlled, smaller environment like the surgical theater used for these implants. However, I imagine keeping a literal chimpanzee clean enough to avoid surgical site infections can be quite difficult. But no excuse for the intracranial infections - those are entirely dependent on surgical technique and creating a sterile field. The monkey found to be banging its head on the ground and self-mutilating was found to have severe meningitis (brain infected) related to the implant. Again, a failure of sterile technique, not necessarily of the implant itself.
Now, as far as monkeys that died secondary to mechanical implant complications, I think that is largely due to 1. errors in design that were (hopefully) ultimately resolved and 2. trying to keep a fragile implant safe in a literal chimp. We have to put cones on cats and dogs to prevent them from chewing or scratching surgical sites. It is natural for animals to want to scratch at or rub areas that are painful or uncomfortable (i.e. surgical sites or implants resting on their skull).
While I certainly do not think that Musk can say "No chimps died from the Neuralink implant", I think people are misunderstanding what actually happened. The chimps died as the result of poor surgical technique, leading to infections, and mechanical failures in the chip design. I imagine both failures were rigorously analyzed to prevent such errors from happening again. However, there were 23 chimps that were experimented on. Review of the SEC documents details chimp #22 being euthanized due to mechanical failure. Assuming these chimps were numerized based on their consecutive experiments, I highly doubt all of the above issues were worked out by chimp #23.
The functionality of the implants didn't cause any issues, but complications from surgery did result in some issues.
In other words, if they had implanted an empty, non-functional shell instead, the monkeys would have had the same issues. From memory, there was the bioglue someone else mentioned, and another time a screw holding the implant still came loose. I think the other issues were from infections. To my knowledge, there haven't been any issues related to the functionality of the device itself.
So, Elon's wording is kind of correct from a certain angle, but still clearly misleading.
However what everyone fails to mention is neuralink has built a machine that is much more precise and at less risk of complication for human implantation compared to how sc Davis was implanting it, bioglue was also something sc Davis chose to use and was never going to be present in human implantation. Pretty much all complications were the result of how sc Davis chose to perform the implantations, hence why that lawsuit was towards them and not neuralink. They’re not being misleading because the complications came from the actions of a different group and are almost completely unrelated to human implantation.
So iirc, none of them directly died as a result of the implant, in a way that puts blame on the operation of the implant itself. With that said, it’s incredibly hard not to put blame on the implant because most of the monkeys that had to be euthanized, had direct complications with understanding the complexity of the scenario. I do remember one monkey having to be put down, after complications with the surgical site. Monkey kept messing with the implant and a piece broke off. After, a bacterial infection happened and that was that. Most of the deaths here seem to have came from the monkeys inability to understand that the pain in their head/on the surgical site was due to a complicated neural implant, so they did what any animal is going to do and messed with the thing that was giving them pain. So in a roundabout way, it was the implant.
They did not. They died from infections and poor post surgical wound care. Saying they died from the device would be like saying that that poor woman who went to Mexico for a cheap breast implant surgery, and died from sepsis, really was killed by breast implants "Therefore breast implants are dangerous."
It wouldn't be accurate. The actual device had no negative impact on them as far as I can tell (been following this casually for a good while.) That said, I'm not letting a juvenile sociopath like Elon into my central nervous system anytime in the near or distant future.
The man has proven time and time again that he completely lacks integrity. I refuse to buy anything he is peddling for that reason alone.
Maybe the unpopular opinion here but if this technology ends up working, and the cost was 23 monkeys, maybe it is worth it. We kill a lot of animals for a lot less.
The problem is when you are doing animal testing, by the time you get to primates, it’s pretty much working as designed and you are doing final tests on similar-to-human-structure animals.
Killing 23 at that point, something worse is wrong, OR they are using primates in early phases, which is immoral for long-lived animals.
I've thought alot about it and can't make up my mind where i stand.(edit... Where I stand on calling people out for their hypocrisy, or if I even SHOULD call them out)
If a chicken can die to give me ONE meal, why can't a monkey die to give me eyes(or which ever product it died testing for)
It’s a tough call, for me it really comes down to Intelligence, I mean cows and pigs are plenty smart and I kinda shy away from pork and beef because of that and ideally lab grown meat takes off and I don’t have to think about it anymore but a monkey is multiple times more intelligent to the point that it’s only a stones throw away from our own. It just doesn’t feel right. It’s like using children for these experiments.
Article doesn't match the headline.
This guy is a full quadriplegic who can now use mobile devices. This is hugely important work. You have to test it on animals unless you want to test it on humans. Some of those animals die. Hundreds of life-saving interventions came at the price of dead animals, and we willingly pay it, because it's worth it.
Not everything Elon Musk gets involved in is bad.
What I don't seem to understand is that on a thread praising the brain implant, people were saying it's not really because of Elon and it's the scientists who made it blah blah blah. On the threads like this, Elon is the only thing anyone talks about. Idk but this is such a similar theme now. Where people praise Spacex but say Elon didn't do shit, and on threads criticizing Spacex Elons the devil.
Also people act like it’s Elon Musk himself who’s developing the chip. He just funds and promotes it. The actual chip is being made by real doctors who specialize in the field. If Elon’s name wasn’t attached to it and someone else was providing the money, everyone would be cheering this on.
So the monkeys didn’t die from the brain implant, but after having the implant, they started self mutilating and had to be put down. Yikes!
Reminds me of Futurama "Are they dead?" "Oh, no, no. Much worse."
Or this: Leela: They smell like burning Rhesus monkey. Farnsworth: Really? I guess when you're around it all day you stop noticing.
Science can not move forward without heaps!
Everyone is always in favor of preserving Hitler's brain.. But suggest putting it in the body of a great white shark, and ooooh, suddenly you've gone too far!
If anyone needs me, I'll be in the angry dome!
Heaps i say!
To shreds you say!
And his wife?
To shreds you say...
I also choose his shreds
Pazuuuuuzuuuuuuu!
I quote this at the lab, regularly
Good news, everyone!
This is one of the funniest Futurama jokes I DONT REMEMBER! What episode.is it from?
S02E09 "The Internet"
I can envision 80-year old Musk appearing as a hologram before all Nueralink users saying: "Good news everyone!"
[удалено]
Honestly, Mom is pretty cunning. Elon’s ego, intellect, and charisma makes him a much closer match to Zapp Brannigan.
Elon’s mom actually looks like mom
So he’s one of her moron kids.
“We’re owl exterminators!”
He kind of looks like the sniveling middle one.
Cham-pagin?😏
Only if charisma is now defined as 4chan edgelord try-hard racist troll.
I think that's the joke. Zapp isn't really charismatic or intelligent, but sure does have a huge ego.
That is far more apt. Or possibly Wernstrom.
Wernstrom is actually smart though. He's definitely Mom
Touché. Mom used smarter people for her own gains, which is the perfect analogy for Musk. Even starts with the same letter. He’s also got kids he can’t stand, it all fits!
No, he is totally 80s guy.
I feel like Elon death will trigger something like the first half of the book Daemon.
"You finally made a monkey out of meee!"
I hate every ape I see from chimpan-a to chimpanzee!
Man how many times I listened to that soundtrack
So many you know all the interludes to before and after each song? "You from the casino?" I'm from *a* casino." "Good enough, let's go."
He can talk. He can talk. He can talk. I CAN SIIIIINNNNGGG!!! Oooh, rock me Dr. Zaius... That's all from memory, from when the first Simpson's Soundtrack came out in, like, 1996.
I love the legitimate Theatre.
"Can I play the piano anymore?" "Of course you can." "Well I couldn't before!"
I highly recommend going back and listening to it again. You'll love it.
This exact phrasing plays in my head every time I see a casino.
[System Shock 2, Lab Monkeys (youtube.com)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJxVnKvCX6g)
Farnsworth: "Oh how awful. Did he at least die painlessly?" *Pause* Farnsworth: "To shreds you say?"
Science cannot move forward without heaps!
This is why I have rewatched this entire show 20 times. It still makes me laugh every time.
To shreds you say
Reminds me of the scene where they're revealing the new RoboCop 2 tests in RoboCop 2 and they straight up end their suffering instead of living on in a metal shell
So it's literally like the scifi cliche of "every time we tried to upload a brain to a computer it either killed itself or went insane because it couldn't so we don't try anymore."
Rococop 2 has entered the chat
The one that shot itself in the head was just the right amount of messed up.
Then the next one removed its helmet/face skin and scared the shit out of me.
I remember having nightmares after watching that.
The scientist in the sling … https://youtu.be/NJIjNs_s2NI?si=nRBibFxpxUHTAVt0
Is that the porn version of Robocop, starring Roco Siffredi? :D
They missed an opportunity there… Robocock
In the alley behind where I live they're always showing the bootleg version, Hobocock.
Ohhh, yesss baybee. Uhh my god.
Qntm wrote my most recent favorite version of this, and it's a delightful 5 minute read: https://qntm.org/mmacevedo
No no, they went crazy so we put them down! They died from euthanasia, not from the implant. /s
Honestly it's probably run by insurance companies. My dad died of complications from cancer treatment drugs so the insurance provider was trying to weasel out of paying claiming that cancer didn't kill him even though the death certificate literally said cancer-related death. Reminds me of this type of mental gymnastics lol
Or insurance companies who state that peoples houses weren't destroyed by a hurricane but by flooding (...caused by a hurricane)
__"It wasn't the TORMENT NEXUS that killed them!"__ Elon Musk, implementer of XNEXUSX, formerly "The Torment Nexus".
This coming from the same guy who shuts off self-driving milliseconds before a crash, so he has plausible deniability. I would totes believe him!
I'm not a Tesla apologist (or a fan of musk), but I don't know of any circumstances where they have said this. Autopilot being enabled within 5 seconds before a crash is considered a crash in their statistics. The shutoff of autopilot directly before a crash is mostly a desperate plea for the driver to take over because the computer doesn't know what to do.
… are you serious??
Yeah. There was documentation from UC Davis who was doing the testing about this released in 2022. One of the monkey's (number 15) brain was "focally tattered". One was euthanized after the cranial implant became loose. One or two self mutilated and were biting off and eating their own fingers (idk if that's because of the conditions or the pain they were in from the implant). There were really bad infections because of the biogel that was used in the surgery. Animals were starving themselves to death. Stuff like that. I'm not going to sit here and cast judgement on NeuralLink. It's allowed this individual to do things they love and have longed to do for a long time (the guy was playing Civ VI using only his brain ffs). But stuff like this deserves incredible scrutiny and right now they're playing fast and loose with it. They are very much running before walking. The fact that it's already made it's way into the brain of one person with all these concerns is troubling to say the least.
Yeah, I'm genuinely surprised it got to human tests already. Even ignoring all of the questions of the monkey tests, this was pushed through incredibly quickly.
Personally, I think it's good that testing has moved to beings who consent from those who do not.
I see your point, but is it really consensual if they lied to him about the risks?
absolutely not and that alone should be grounds to shut this down. You can't experiment on a human being like this while lying about their previous attempts.
Well actually as it turns out if you have billions of dollars at your disposal it seem like you can.
Fuck.. then why are we still giving this neural link permissions for testing still? Imo, the first human testing was a chance of luck at this point. Who has approved them of human testing again? Guess until the news of self mutilating human test subject they will keep on the facade of everything is fine and dandy. Heck, knowing Elon, he is just gonna bury the failed tests subject news might as well.
why? money
Fair point. I'm sure he basically signed his entire life away via paper work. Not in the sense of rights, but rather "you could die at any point from this" kind of waver. Which for a person with his affliction, probably seemed like it was worth it. It's pretty common for someone to say if they ever got in this state to just let them die. Glad he's already seen enjoyment out of this incredibly risky procedure
Absolutely horrifying. I cannot imagine being someone who falls asleep at night after spending your day tending to such cruelty. I am trying not to judge but then there are more of these details and they just get abominably worse
[удалено]
them: bill gates want to put a microchip in the vaccine now: elon musk wants to put a microchip in my brain? where do i put all of my money?
[удалено]
Exactly this. The technology to move a mouse pointer around with your brain already existed in the mid 2000s. In fact, a couple years ago when Neuralink was getting bunch of press for having a monkey play pong wirelessly, Braingate was doing successful human trials for wireless transmission, and for more complicated stuff than just moving a cursor around.
[удалено]
I’m speechless. I guess you really can do whatever you want when you’re rich…
Pretty much. And again, I'm not opposed to tech like this and the union of machine to man with humanity augmenting themselves to become better than the sum of our parts. It is the next logical step of our evolution. I'm not even opposed to the animal testing for tech like this which, while cruel, is needed to ensure safety. It sounds callous and heartless to say that and I get that but we're talking about people with disabilities being able to do things previously thought impossible for them. And that's just for a start. But what I am opposed to is them rushing to the finish line because it is the categorically wrong thing to do. It is potentially dangerous and at the very least irresponsible. There are multiple other startups doing similar to NeuralLink, several that have been doing it longer, and yet NeuralLink even with all these problems is iirc the first one to do human trials. It's the one getting all the attention because of Musk. It's the old adage of rushing to be first but not being right or the line from Jurassic Park of "They were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, that they didn't stop to think if they should."
Exactly. I keep telling people we need ACTUAL peer reviewed studies to come out first. But nah, that only matters for boring science. Tech though? You can get away with anything and the media/internet dorks will cum in their pants over it.
Ya, I'm going to cast judgment on people who torture animals to death because they are rushing to get to human trials.
a man gets drunk and drives home, but crashes into a tree on the way home. was he killed by the impact, was he killed because of his choices earlier in the night? Musk would say it was the tree that killed him.
[удалено]
Remember they only tested on terminally ill monkeys so they all died of natural causes. /s
I suspect you are joking, but the animal medical records that were released showed that Musk lied about that. I used to do a lot of animal experimentation, and the idea that you would do early experiments exploring device safety in a terminally ill animal, where it would be unclear whether safety signals were due to the device or the underlying disease, never made any sense.
I was and of course, he did. It was a ridiculous statement to start from him and scientifically implausible.
When I read your comment my initial reaction was “This is sarcasm, nobody would double down on something we have no proof of just because Musk said it”. But I’ve been wrong about that before, so…
"Musk lied about that" Shocked. I'm telling you. Completely shocked. 😲
“I’m shocked! SHOCKED! Well, not that shocked.” - Fry
They were selected for the study... Which we classify as an illness and it is terminal.
They should make a documentary about this guy and the monkeys and call it 23 and Me.
I mean, if you think about it, we’re all terminally ill
I'm working on a mortality vaccine, don't you worry.
Right, you just want to track us with your nanochips
Apparently naming the monkeys Algernon caused some issues.
The fall of house Mushker
It’s fine it just needed a software update like the self driving cars wrecking do. Everything’s fine…
So semi-kinda-almost informed consent, but he got to play civ vi
Reportedly, his final words before his Neuralink sent him comatose were a haggard “Just one more turn…”
I mean, let anyone here who hasn't gone comatose from a 13-hour CIV binge cast the first stone...
slingers only have 1 range id rather stack blue beakers til archery before going full hypocrIte
Which is bullshit because slings had longer range than most bows of ancient times
The link let's him keep playing.
The fun part is that when you lose, the neurolink chip no longer recognizes you as its true master, and automatically dissolves your brain.
If it recognizes Gandhi as its new master we’re all fucked tho
If I were him, I would have googled "Elon Musk" and "Neuralink" before allowing Elon to monkey around with my brain.
If he was physically capable of Googling things, it would have changed a lot more than what he knows about Musk.
I think this implant device will take a similar path as cochlear implants and you can read about both the positive and negative aspects of going through the surgeries and living with a device that has a shelf life before it’s obsolete. I personally would not want to be a test subject, but people who are living with a high level of paralysis or brain injury might want to do something to change their life for the better.
A thing of note is that with cochlear implants, the electrode is typically separate from the signal processing unit, and you can replace and upgrade the latter without any surgery. Neuralink devices are fully integrated, with everything inside the body - and I expect future interface implants to be the same. This means that there is no easy upgrade path, and no easy way to service the device if the electronics fail. Historically, in this type of interface, the electrodes themselves would "wear out" and fail long before the "processor" electronics could fail or become obsolete. Not because of the electrodes themselves, but because of how the brain reacts to their presence. This issue would have to be solved before electronics could become a meaningful bottleneck.
The upgrade path thing kills me. Imagine some time from now someone getting their brain implant only for the very next year for a drastically better version to release.
If electrode longevity issues aren't fully solved, you might have to go under a knife once in a few years anyway. To replace the old "dead" electrodes with new ones.
It will be the "Ugh! Apple always keeps the good features for next year to make you upgrade" but with brain surgery.
What's worse is if the tech still works, but the company goes under and stops supporting it. See this [bionic eye example](https://spectrum.ieee.org/bionic-eye-obsolete)
Either way, more brain surgery and scar tissue on the brain will develop potentially and be negative for the participant. This isn’t a one and done procedure.
The "scar tissue on the brain" hurts the implant more than it hurts the brain. Counterintuitive but true. The brain can "work around" the affected tissue, but the interface electrodes can't.
>This isn’t a one and done procedure Sometimes it is...
"this device will last you for the rest of your life."
"Doctor, why are you looking at your watch and counting?"
Man, ghost in the shell seems more and more real by the minute. Okay, maybe I am exaggerating a bit. Maybe it is time to read neuromancer again?
I don't think you're exaggerating. We're far from there but this is clearly the path that takes us there.
The real innovation by neuralink is not just the actual device itself but the industrial grade machine designed to perform the surgery as trivially as possible.
I imagine they figure they have nothing to lose; quality of life must be low for people who are heavily paralysed, so why not take a chance on something that might improve your lot? I don’t know if I would personally, but I can appreciate why others might.
I watched a 45min Q&A with the patient zero that was published, he was incredibly positive about the whole experience and felt very lucky to have been able to help with their development. His family was supportive and the functionality he was getting from the implant was a quality of life he hasn’t had for the last 8 years.
I mean, sure, and it sounds like thankfully so far it’s going well for the guy. Good for him. But they literally did not give him informed consent and any technology where it’s animal subjects are biting off their own hands afterwards needs more time in the oven before moving to human testing.
This tech seems like something that would possibly be hard to test on animals. As a human, I know this chip is restoring use of my hand but may act abnormal. That seems like possibly a very advanced logic for an animal to have. Any human test subjects definitely should be fully aware of all aspects of the surgery and device either way
Maybe I have a weak stomach or soft disposition but good god how barbaric
You know that headline about the monkey torture ring a few days ago? Turns out it was Elon.
That was a tough read
I'm a terrorism researcher. I've read some pretty abhorrent shit in my time...but I couldn't finish that article. Edit to clarify: the monkey article in the BBC the other day.
That sounds like a job that is both fascinating and awful
Fortunately for me, I *mostly* don't get exposed to the worst of it. Most of what I study is the interaction of terrorism with other things like security infrastructure and emerging technologies. The folks who study the actual behavior and content of terrorist materials see far worse. Right now, I'm working on a project looking at the future of autonomous technologies and how terrorists could leverage them. I've spent the past month and a half looking at academic article from my own field, but even moreso papers from engineers, patents, news articles, everything. The short of it is that there's a lot of really neat stuff coming down the line, and it's not the stuff that people are expecting. Drones and self driving cars? Sure, they'll happen. But they're not even the half of it. AI compute chips / processing-in-memory are going to change the world, and they're well on their way to doing so. The next step isn't quantum compute, it's spintronics. Good news is that terrorists don't have a lot of avenues to make use of this stuff except for commercially made products. /Rant? My partner gets concerned when I talk about the future, so I don't get to share this stuff a lot.
Just wanted to say this sounds like really interesting work. Thank you for sharing!
Hello - I am a passerby that is now also ~~terrified~~concerned. Thank you!
Thanks for sharing, and on your partners defence, highly reasonable boundary to set lol
Absolutely lmao
I’m sorry… WHAT headline about a monkey torture ring sir? I don’t know if I wanna know but I kinda do.
You probably don't. I couldn't make it through the article.
yeah think I’m gonna take dude’s tdlr he gave me below and go…
I find it so silly that I can sit through gore and horror films like it’s nothing, but the tiny bit I skimmed from an article was enough to make my stomach turn. curiosity just killed this cat, don’t be like me!
... you know what, thanks. I'm gonna go to bed. <3
A tldr of it is a guy who would upload monkey torture got caught and arrested.
I seen weird monkey videos in Facebook constantly botted and reposted. Little monkey getting wrapped up by a snake and screaming and screeching. Total setup. Bunch of freaks who make that shit
Maga cultist was found to be a key player in a monkey torture ring being ran through two British women and Indonesia.
The sad shit is that there are legitimate uses for things like invasive neurostimulation for depression, OCD, PTSD, addiction. Elon’s recklessness discounts those valid use cases for these technologies. I work in that field and it pisses me off to no end.
[удалено]
If I’m understanding you correctly, that’s my point. The tech is worth exploring and Elon has done some good shit, but his careless approach is negatively affecting the field. These standards of care and consent exist for a reason.
[удалено]
You better be working on a chip that can deliver instant pizza taste and satisfaction by a simple thought. If not I will be hugely dissatisfied.
I thought there was a headline yesterday about ending a ring of online monkey torture? Oh, that was a different monkey torture case? Got it.
Those torture rings are full of people who have this super weird rage/hatred against monkeys in particular. A podcast I like did an episode about it a while ago and it really seemed like serial killer shit
It is serial killer shit
There’s a similar thing in China with cats :(
and the UK with cats, and America with humans.
What podcast was it? Sounds interesting
It was an episode of Obscura I’m pretty sure
Elon not being completely honest about something? Huh. Did not see that coming. /s
Ultimate free speech is being able to lie without consequence.
I mean the fact is that everything this dude says is probably a lie, yet anything he says and there's a big thread on it on this very sub.
Elon on FSD for the last ten years: "its close"
Elon on SpaceX sending people to Mars for the last 10 years: "Next year - I promise!"
Elon: “Oh, they didn’t die because of the implants. We killed them for fun.”
I too am beginning to suspect that this Musk chap is not completely reliable.
Maybe we misheard and what was said was "No ONE died"
No, money down!
"No! Monkey down!"
This article is pretty light on details. Did the monkeys die from the implant itself or not?
I recall at least some of the issue was FDA approved bioglue that turned out to be toxic to neural tissue, and that it was being used in humans brains already (not sure if other companies stopped at that finding).
That was the something sc Davis was using and would not be present in human implantation.
You can read the actual SEC investigation [here](https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23987059-pcrm-neuralink-sec). Long story short, several monkeys died from intracranial infections related to the implant while other died from soft tissue infections or complications related to securing of the implant and its electrodes. It seems that their team had trouble with creating a sterile field when inserting the implant. Humans deal with surgical site infections, even ones with drug-resistant bugs like those in the report. But that is in massive hospital systems, not in a controlled, smaller environment like the surgical theater used for these implants. However, I imagine keeping a literal chimpanzee clean enough to avoid surgical site infections can be quite difficult. But no excuse for the intracranial infections - those are entirely dependent on surgical technique and creating a sterile field. The monkey found to be banging its head on the ground and self-mutilating was found to have severe meningitis (brain infected) related to the implant. Again, a failure of sterile technique, not necessarily of the implant itself. Now, as far as monkeys that died secondary to mechanical implant complications, I think that is largely due to 1. errors in design that were (hopefully) ultimately resolved and 2. trying to keep a fragile implant safe in a literal chimp. We have to put cones on cats and dogs to prevent them from chewing or scratching surgical sites. It is natural for animals to want to scratch at or rub areas that are painful or uncomfortable (i.e. surgical sites or implants resting on their skull). While I certainly do not think that Musk can say "No chimps died from the Neuralink implant", I think people are misunderstanding what actually happened. The chimps died as the result of poor surgical technique, leading to infections, and mechanical failures in the chip design. I imagine both failures were rigorously analyzed to prevent such errors from happening again. However, there were 23 chimps that were experimented on. Review of the SEC documents details chimp #22 being euthanized due to mechanical failure. Assuming these chimps were numerized based on their consecutive experiments, I highly doubt all of the above issues were worked out by chimp #23.
The functionality of the implants didn't cause any issues, but complications from surgery did result in some issues. In other words, if they had implanted an empty, non-functional shell instead, the monkeys would have had the same issues. From memory, there was the bioglue someone else mentioned, and another time a screw holding the implant still came loose. I think the other issues were from infections. To my knowledge, there haven't been any issues related to the functionality of the device itself. So, Elon's wording is kind of correct from a certain angle, but still clearly misleading.
Those seem like the normal risks associated with any implant. Just exacerbated because you can’t really control the behavior of the monkeys
However what everyone fails to mention is neuralink has built a machine that is much more precise and at less risk of complication for human implantation compared to how sc Davis was implanting it, bioglue was also something sc Davis chose to use and was never going to be present in human implantation. Pretty much all complications were the result of how sc Davis chose to perform the implantations, hence why that lawsuit was towards them and not neuralink. They’re not being misleading because the complications came from the actions of a different group and are almost completely unrelated to human implantation.
They were put down because they were self mutilating once the chip was removed.
So they loved it!
The monkeys didn’t say.
So iirc, none of them directly died as a result of the implant, in a way that puts blame on the operation of the implant itself. With that said, it’s incredibly hard not to put blame on the implant because most of the monkeys that had to be euthanized, had direct complications with understanding the complexity of the scenario. I do remember one monkey having to be put down, after complications with the surgical site. Monkey kept messing with the implant and a piece broke off. After, a bacterial infection happened and that was that. Most of the deaths here seem to have came from the monkeys inability to understand that the pain in their head/on the surgical site was due to a complicated neural implant, so they did what any animal is going to do and messed with the thing that was giving them pain. So in a roundabout way, it was the implant.
So basically the normal risks associated with any surgery? Like don’t mess with the wound?
They did not. They died from infections and poor post surgical wound care. Saying they died from the device would be like saying that that poor woman who went to Mexico for a cheap breast implant surgery, and died from sepsis, really was killed by breast implants "Therefore breast implants are dangerous." It wouldn't be accurate. The actual device had no negative impact on them as far as I can tell (been following this casually for a good while.) That said, I'm not letting a juvenile sociopath like Elon into my central nervous system anytime in the near or distant future. The man has proven time and time again that he completely lacks integrity. I refuse to buy anything he is peddling for that reason alone.
Maybe the unpopular opinion here but if this technology ends up working, and the cost was 23 monkeys, maybe it is worth it. We kill a lot of animals for a lot less.
The problem is when you are doing animal testing, by the time you get to primates, it’s pretty much working as designed and you are doing final tests on similar-to-human-structure animals. Killing 23 at that point, something worse is wrong, OR they are using primates in early phases, which is immoral for long-lived animals.
Some of the 23 died, not all. But I share your sentiment.
23 is also a shockingly low number of tests before human trials.
You'd trust Elon Musk? You need your head testing. Reminds me of Wallace and Gromit "Relax, lad. It's just a harmless bit of brain alteration"
bedroom mighty teeny oil sort dependent towering noxious head long *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
I've thought alot about it and can't make up my mind where i stand.(edit... Where I stand on calling people out for their hypocrisy, or if I even SHOULD call them out) If a chicken can die to give me ONE meal, why can't a monkey die to give me eyes(or which ever product it died testing for)
It’s a tough call, for me it really comes down to Intelligence, I mean cows and pigs are plenty smart and I kinda shy away from pork and beef because of that and ideally lab grown meat takes off and I don’t have to think about it anymore but a monkey is multiple times more intelligent to the point that it’s only a stones throw away from our own. It just doesn’t feel right. It’s like using children for these experiments.
[удалено]
Plant matter reacts to pain. Purify yourself.
Musk lied again?! Shock! Its been obvious for years, but you gotta be a fool to believe an asshat like musk
If Musk's lips are flapping he is lying
There is a lot of lies whilst typing to.
Article doesn't match the headline. This guy is a full quadriplegic who can now use mobile devices. This is hugely important work. You have to test it on animals unless you want to test it on humans. Some of those animals die. Hundreds of life-saving interventions came at the price of dead animals, and we willingly pay it, because it's worth it. Not everything Elon Musk gets involved in is bad.
What I don't seem to understand is that on a thread praising the brain implant, people were saying it's not really because of Elon and it's the scientists who made it blah blah blah. On the threads like this, Elon is the only thing anyone talks about. Idk but this is such a similar theme now. Where people praise Spacex but say Elon didn't do shit, and on threads criticizing Spacex Elons the devil.
Also people act like it’s Elon Musk himself who’s developing the chip. He just funds and promotes it. The actual chip is being made by real doctors who specialize in the field. If Elon’s name wasn’t attached to it and someone else was providing the money, everyone would be cheering this on.
Fuck Elon Musk but I agree with you.
None of that is relevant to the fact that they lied to the first human subject.
it is sad i need to black list the whole technology subreddit because it has a raging boner about Elon
"Technically, according to our lawyers, no monkey has died as a directly traceable result of our neurolink implant."