Neuralink (not quite) live stream

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    Peracles, I listened to this painful but intriguing demo.  I think Musk should get a chip to help him speak better.  
     

    It is fascinating, but the demo was really not ready for prime time.  The pigs offered zero in helping to understand what applications might be, and if having them on was to prove that 'No Pigs Were Injured In This Experiment," well, that really was only proof that the ones we saw seemed fine.  If people had not asked questions at the end the point of the whole thing would have been left unaddressed.  That said:

    WOW!  It could potentially offer spinal cord patients hope.  The other applications also show great promise, including restoring memories and other functions lost to dementia.  It may remove crippling traumas and help with PTSD and depression.  The concern I had, though, is the control that the system can have over the brain.  Actually, pretty scary in the wrong hands.
     

    My good friend got a brain implant which is connected to a battery under the skin on her chest wall. She had "Essential Tremor," and was unable even to eat without spattering food all over the place.  She can do anything now with her right hand that she ever could do and only regrets not doing right and left.  But there is no feedback.  It is a one-way therapeutic system.
     

    The difference with Elon's contraption is that it is two-way.  
     

    Thanks for posting this.  Regardless of my whiny rating, it is thought-provoking and I will be checking back for updates.


    Actually I quite like that Elon doesn't speak like someone at a Ted talk, even though he's done some pretty amazing things. That said, yeah, pigs not the best performers - if it weren't for the treadmill...
    Anyway, here's a much better summary from 3 1/2 years ago:
    https://waitbutwhy.com/2017/04/neuralink.html

     


    Trying to catch up on the Neuralink story and Musk's involvement. Not so much interested in the nitty gritty details of how Neuralink is supposed to work as in Musk's involvement.

    So far I have learned that Musk has for years considered the development of AI an existential threat to humanity but since its development is inevitable he ventured much capital in a variety of AI enterprises, eventually setting up his own R&D inspired by the 'neural lace' in Iain Banks' The Culture sci-fi series. His stated long-term goal is to "achieve symbiosis with artificial intelligence". After all, if you can't beat them, might as well join them, right?  What could possibly go wrong?

    Seriously though, the idea of linking and/or uploading one's consciousness to a computer or network is a very old sci-fi trope. Some wannabe transhuman is bound to attempt it. I think it will fail. I know I hope it does. I'd prefer we finish expanding our consciousnesses the old-fashioned ways with chemistry, dreams, ecstasies, etc. to see where that leads.

     


    Because it's there and not as tough as people act. How hard is building an electric car? Easier than putting a man on the moon in 1969. Yet decades after Al Gore fretted over the ICE (and conservatives laugh) we're still piddle fucking around with climate conventions and dallying with extending electric grids. We have so little urgency for anything, even with technology bounding along exponentially. Even Elon's quotes in AI - the Chinese are using facial detection to lock up Uighurs and find moped drivers not wearing helmets - the moment Musk was worried about *is already here*. As Tim Urban notes, Musk is in the present - we're all in the fretting skeptical slow-witted past. 

    Remember when we used to use the phrase "avoid it like the plague"? We can't even do that anymore, we're so full of inertia, so conflicted.

    https://waitbutwhy.com/2017/04/neuralink.html#part4


    More Chinese ethnic cleansing - their brand of racist AI is winning, with Trump uninterested and the rest of the world weak.

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/sep/01/inner-mongolia-protests-ch...


    Maybe JetMan is a Musk-like spirit.

    The 1st video's pretty amazing.

    https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/36096/airline-pilots-landing-at-la...




    Elon in Deutschland: auto RNA?


    Robot love

    https://www.businessinsider.com/neuralink-and-woke-studios-ai-chip-impla...

     

    And that Elon/Germany link I forgot?

    https://www.teslarati.com/tesla-elon-musk-volkswagen-id3-test-drive-video/amp/

     

    BTW, I still think of all of this as an expansive Proof of Concept/Minimum Viable Product. All talk about what diseases or injuries might be dealt with, yadda yadda, are years away. Kind of like when they did CRISPR for gene splicing - just getting the actions & understanding *started* - intelligent, ethical applications nowhere close.

    But Elon has gotten rockets in space and solar adoption greater than before, so this neural implant PoC is likely to have a huge effect in terms of acceptability and practical exploration.


    Robot Blogging (I'm done here - I've been being assimilated 1 bit at a time, and now it's largely over)

    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/sep/08/robot-wrote-this-a...


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