This is gonna end up like those people who got an implant to be able to see, and when the company went under, they lost support and their eyesight
That’s the first thing I said when this was first posted, all those people who had the implants that enabled sight are left with no parts and no support since the company went under.
There should be laws in place stating these companies will provide support and parts for the entire life of the users. Anything less is criminal.
Better to mandate open hardware and software standards, so if the company goes under others can make parts or even upgrade the devices.
If nothing else, mandate the opening of the standards must coincide with the end of support. I realize it would mean a service blackout while another company tries to pick them up, but it would be a lot better than nothing and it doesn’t hit the bottom line if a company operating now quite so much which would make it more palatable.
Inching closer to cyberpunk every day
we are already here
I would add open plans and open source so that if anything happens with the company another company can come in and pick up support easily.
How do you go about enforcing this when the company goes under? (Almost like healthcare shouldn’t be private lol)
Open Source required when going bankrupt for all biomedical companies?
Doesn’t help if no one picks up the ball on manufacturing spare parts. Manufacturing medical devices is really expensive, even more so when you have to do small batches of niche hardware, and requires fairly special manufacturing capabilities so it’s not easily done by anyone.
Yes. The licensing approval for things like this need to include a plan for continued support if/when the company goes belly up. That would have to include the govt agreeing to pick up the slack, which would require some kind of trust fund for each individual implant to cover a lifetime of maintenance. Or, you know, nationalisation. But this is the world we live in … so even the most basic solution won’t happen because it might get in the way of some rich fuckers turning people into money.
Be careful what you ask for and how any laws are written. I knew a guy who became a paraplegic after a helicopter accident. He actually walked away from the accident but months/years later damage to his lower spine caused a blood clot that rendered him largely unable to use his legs.
He was wheelchair-bound when I met him, but one day a few years down the line I walked into a room to find him standing & walking. He told me he had even been able to climb a ladder to replace a light bulb. He’d been on a medical trial that was clearly promising. Unfortunately side effects piled up, he had to stop the trial, and he again ended up in a wheelchair.
Granted this wasn’t the same as a medical implant trial, but if strict laws are enacted that required companies to support medical devices, drugs, etc. then I’d be very afraid of the impact it would have on research and trials like these. No company is going to want to risk lawsuits, etc. so they’ll just stop innovating, or at least cut back a huge amount.
I work as a disability support worker, I have clients in wheelchairs and traveled the world with them doing sport. I am fully aware of what cutting edge tech can do to better lives, and I am even more aware of what the effects of not having access are.
That said, your argument is nonsense. These companies have more money than they know what to do with, and the trials of these products in humans are intentionally small. They have an obligation to do no harm, and that includes supporting their patients til the end of life.
If that requires slower trials, or special insurance the company pays to cover these things, or careful standardization so the torch can be passed on should the company go under, so be it.
The people who got the ocular implants are going blind again one by one because the company that gave them vision went under. They cannot get support or parts.
Can you imagine having your sight and therefore independence again, only to have the cold fear every night that you’ll wake up and your implant won’t be working?
https://spectrum.ieee.org/bionic-eye-obsolete
Ah money… is screws you one way or the other.
Is this perhaps a different thing than the one that had 2 patients with basically VR glasses similar to Geordi from Star Trek and the doctor running the research died? IIRC, the company is still around and the patients only lost major support in the fact that the lead researcher, who knew all the ins and outs of the project, died.
This is fantastic, but I am extremely worried about it being in the control of Elon Musk.
You should be much more worried about the propensity for in-brain devices to cause life threatening infections no matter whose hands it’s in.
How would it be any different than a knee or a hip replacement when it comes to infections?
Because the blood-brain barrier makes your body far less effective in responding to infection of the breath.
Much higher rates (4-13% of implants) and much more severe consequences (more impactful on overall health and less innate ability for immune response).
Well now I’m worried about both.
And now we wait. Quick reminder about the Monkeys, which still haunt me.
Yeah, all of this news sounds cool, but I’m skeptical when all we hear is good things, especially after such tumultuous monkey trials.
I’m just waiting for a whistle blower to dump a bunch of evidence a decade from now showing all the horrific Unit 731- esque shit they’re currently covering up in the name of science. But by that point we’ll be receiving all our news directly into our cerebral cortex using “Musk-X” brand implants, so it will never be seen or reported on. And yes, even the poors have them; their units are subsidized by the unavoidable ads being drilled directly into their subconscious.
All you folks with kids have such a bright future for them to look forward to!
“Musk-X”, dying monkeys… this is all sounding a little familiar…
I genuinely hope this works out for this guy, and everyone else who could benefit from it. This dude volunteered because basically he might as well risk dying in return for a meaningful quality of life. That’s an awful situation to be in.
But the fact is, Musk is a self absorbed narcissistic conman, and he has never taken his customers safety seriously in any of his businesses. You don’t beta test self driving cars on public roads if you care about people’s lives.
That’s probably not going to work out well.
This is CERTAINLY not going to work well. There’s NO benefit to having a chip inside people’s brains when we already have the tech to read brain patterns from outside the skull. They could’ve spent their time and money making the algorithms for that type of sensor better. Instead, they’ve developed a way to kill disobedient slaves.
That sounds chillingly similar to that episode in Fall of the House of Usher.
D:
Another quick reminder that what happened to those monkeys is actually pretty common for medical trials and not really out of the ordinary.
What they shown so far does not sound impressive. There is a twitch streamer that uses EEG device ans translates signals to button presses. She has beaten elden ring with that. From “achievement” point of view what they have shown here is not that special
We’ve all been playing Mario Kart with our minds already, using our mind to manipulate those fleshy sticks attached to our shoulders. It’s fuckin amazing.
The only usefulness this has is to help someone who can’t do that. And the fact that it’s attached to Elon and that all previous test subjects died and that it’s still been put in a human is pretty dystopian.
All previous animal test subjects died, including the majority that were euthanized at the end of the test period for dissection and study. There was a super high failure rate but let’s not misrepresent what actually happened.
I mean, it’s at the very edge of what science can do and realistically there’s not that much else you could do except test on relatively highly developed animals. You’d kind of expect that to happen, but I don’t see a viable alternative.
Working on the bleeding edge of scientific research does not relieve someone of treating animals with ethical consideration. A “move fast and break things” approach might be good for a startup and maybe even for a rocket company, but that approach isn’t okay if “breaking things” includes living, feeling animals.
What’s the alternative for brain related experiments? Just not advance ever?
I believe experiments like these should move slower and with more scrutiny. As in more animal testing before moving on to humans, esp. due to the controversies surrounding Neuralink’s last animal experiments.
The least they should do is make sure no animal suffers needlessly and no more animals than necessary are used for testing. I don’t have confidence in moral standards, when employees say the number of deaths is higher than needed because of demands of faster research.
Also there is some research on non-invasive ways to get signals from the brain. Why not try that before testing implants on animals?
Some people think 1 death is too many.
They did, it’s probably not as good tech, which is why they are looking for better….
Synchron has a similar technology and their death count appears to be lower than Neuralink’s in animal trials. Unfortunately, this article doesn’t actually show the death rate of the trials.
Use a fucking EEG device, instead of opening their skulls and messing with their brains.
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You can in fact test many of these devices in mice and even zebrafish.
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You repeat testing in animals (with modifications) til it is actually safe or you at least understand what the risk is and how to mitigate it to tell the people who are going to trial it.
- You can in fact test many of these devices in mice and even zebrafish.
So your solution to animal testing is other animal testing? Strange solution.
Nothing will ever be risk free, and most of the subjects stayed alive until euthanized to see the results. How else would you get the results?
Yes, but lower order animals. There are creatures with more or less intelligence and therefore more or less capacity of suffering.
Euthanasia is fine for an end point but as an implanted device is lifelong such a short time with the implant before sacrifice is not as useful as longer timepoints.
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We’ve had brain-computer interfaces for DECADES, which didn’t need to be inside the skull. This isn’t bleeding-edge research, it’s just a bloody edge used to kill research subjects.
EEG is an extremely limited tech, they are looking for a way to advance past those limitations.
We can’t just not advance ever since someone might get hurt, that’s just asinine.
Lol this is funny.
“Uh, why didn’t he just use his arms??? DUH”
The only usefulness this has is to help someone who can’t do that.
I can’t tell if you know that the patient is quadriplegic?
I can’t tell if you know Musk wants everyone to buy his dangerous deadly crap.
Maybe, but that is not particularly relevant to the article, and
We’ve all been playing Mario Kart with our minds already, using our mind to manipulate those fleshy sticks attached to our shoulders. It’s fuckin amazing.
is quite an ableist thing to say when the subject at hand is a literal quadriplegic person playing Mario Kart.
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And blocked. Have a nice day.
Lmao blocking someone for criticism? Kinda cringe if you ask me.
Probably thinks that I’m a Elon Musk fan, when the exact opposite is true. Why denounce a Musk-owned company for improving the life of a quadriplegic person when there are a million more valid criticisms to be made?
There is no way I am putting proprietary hardware and especially proprietary software into my brain.
I agree, but years ago most of us would have said something similar when asked to carry around a device that will track your position everywhere you go. Now we all do that, because smartphones are just so convenient.
I use custom degoogled rom and custom DNS server on my phone, so I minimized the tracking to minimum.
Either way brain chip and phone are a lot different. One you can easily discard, other one you cant. I don’t want to dream coca cola ads at night. What happens when they stop supporting / updating it. There is probably something in their contract, where they can force you back on the operating table to take the chip back, if they don’t like something that you did, or they are running out of money etc.
Yep I agree with your agreement, I can totally see the next generations being amazed by viewing short videos without even having the fatigue of holding a phone.
If I have a shitty phone the worst case scenario is I throw it away…
A blind/paralyzed person might feel a bit differently about that. Healthy people getting brain implants for fun is quite far in the future. That is not the intended usecase for Neuralink at this time.
blind/paralyzed person might feel a bit differently about that.
Yeah, because they’re forced into that position due to circumstance.
Which is exactly why able-bodied people should be free to criticise this model and call for open source alternatives.
To protect people that have been rendered incapable of protecting themselves.
Sure but experimental technology is still pretty risky, especially with Musk’s companies tendency to cover up any issues. Ending up brain damaged on top of blind and paralyzed would be a nightmare.
A blind person? Sure - there are ways to “cure” blindness by inserting chips into the brain, so I’ll give them a pass. Paralyzed people, on the other hand, won’t regain control of their own limbs, only have external actuators respond to their thoughts - we already had that technology. We’ve had it for decades, without the need of a brain implant.
What if it was open source, like Threads? (☞ﾟヮﾟ)☞
No comment about the topic, im just stealing the emoji. (☞ﾟヮﾟ)☞
If you run windows then try 🪟+. (Full stop) To access an array of ascii emoji.
If you like that emoji then you’ll love this.
ʕ•ᴥ•ʔ This one is awsome :D Thank you!
(☞ﾟ∀ﾟ)☞
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emoticon.
Fair enough, BTW Sync for a Lemmy has some of these as a handy access, and I am pretty sure some other clients do.
How much is the subscription for ad-free thinking? Or is it free for non-commercial use?
Don’t worry you will only get ads in your sleep, no productivity from yourself will be affected 👍🏻
Imagine being an early adopter and every time you close your eyes it’s the same fucking ad where Kanye chants: “Elon macht frei” for hours.
I didn’t know about people, but there is no way I am getting a fucking electronic chip installed in my brain, no matter how cool it might be
It should only ever be imo used to help the disabled and that too without any involvement of someone like elon
Non invasive BCI capable of the exact stuff neuralink has demonstrated has existed for a while and its probably a much more viable way to help the disabled than cramming chips into their head.
What if it’s a suppository.
🤔 How girthy we talkin’ here?
Can it vibrate?
I mean, it is up to you.
I mean, it is up you.
Now this is what I signed up for.
This technology is evolving so fast it wont be long and a non invasive wearable will be able to do exactly the same.
Still around, too: https://www.gtec.at/product-configurator/unicorn-brain-interface/
$1,200 US entry price might seem a bit steep for a “fancy game controller/keyboard” to the able-bodied, but the QOL improvements for disabled people easily eclipse that.
If you search on PubMed, the same BCI was being experimented on in 1991. 1991!
I saw colleagues using a more robust device ~9 years ago, and it was bonkers. Completely puts Neuralink to shame.
EEG can’t input analog inputs, neurololink is accomplishing an entirely different tech, so that’s quite literally impossible. Sorry.
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Then what is your plan to learn about upcoming things like the new pampers absorption technology 4.0.1?!
Wait until Nintendo’s lawyers hear about this. Pretty sure brain chip compatible Nintendo controllers count as illegal homebrew.
Honestly it wouldn’t surprise me, Nintendo barely like allowing people to play their games. Looking at them constitutes copyright violation.
Heads-up, there appears to be some astroturfing going around. This is not an impressive demo, I’ve seen better without brain implants. If anything, I’m more impressed that the test subject hasn’t died yet.
I’ve seen better without brain implants.
Yeah, I’ve heard that they have technology that allows you to play Mario Kart with your hands.
That’s a baby’s toy!
Holy shit did Lord Musk invent hand implants? I remember the Over-The-Arm Manipulators patent but I didn’t think that OTAM technology would go anywhere.
I’m using tilt controls !
Commenting to remind myself later because I’d love to check into this. My hands are achy from years of overuse, so an alternative to physical controls would be amazing.
At the end of the day this company is pouring a ton of money into a technology that could use it, I’m incredibly excited for the accessibility potentials but just so scared of the malpractices that might (and probably will) be going on. Sadly I think most of the “external” BCIs are in the “study” phase rather than any sort of production. If you do find something that is consumer available, please let me know!
Looks like the headset she’s wearing in that video (EPOC X - 14 channel EEG headset) is available from Emotiv for $1k, and the software she’s using to map controls (EmotivBCI) is something they provide for free. They have 2 and 5 channel headsets for cheaper and 32 channel caps that are more expensive. Seems pretty consumer-ready to me, but I’m sure your EEG activity data gets shared with Emotiv, which isn’t ideal.
I’ve seen better without brain implants.
Yes but I can drive a car without brain implants. Doing it with brain implants is the impressive bit.
Really not quite sure what your point is
We’ve been able to stick an electrode to the outside of your head and pull electrical activity data from your brain without invasive open-skull surgery for a couple decades now. Neuralink hasn’t actually accomplished anything new except making this same thing way, way more expensive and way, way more likely to end in death of the patient.
Those are all binary outputs, neurolink allows analog.
Totally different goals, so no nothing else exists currently.
Reading comprehension? It’s obviously implied that I’ve seen better with OTHER neural sensors, not someone just playing normaly.
Got a link to share? Nothing else can do analog inputs like neurolink can, so would love to see this tech that isn’t even been talked about yet that you’re spouting all over this thread.
Neuralink hasn’t address the security complications, hopefully their engineers know what are they doing
Spoiler: they don’t.
I hate Elon but love the idea of this. The utopian version, not the dystopian version obviously.
We are really going to have to make sure that regulation is solid if we want to go towards the positive utopian version.
There is no utopian version of this.
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No amount of regulation will ever make this safe or reasonable. You’re literally installing a suicide bomb in your brain which can be hacked at any point, or abused by any state. Regulation serves to discourage and punish undesired behavior - doesn’t stop it.
Bring back
audiobrain jacks!
Same, being able to do things with your mind would be wonderful but if it comes with cost of potentially handing your own killswitch to ketaminecrazed billionaire… (or anyone). If the device isnt 100% opensource so anyone can see how it works, there is no way to know what it can do. And even if we assume it wont be used in overtly malicious way, being able to physically affects someone’s brain( be it reading or writing) means being able to absolutely control of someone.
They’re not being manipulated, though. You can tell because 100% of Neuralink users feel they’re not being manipulated at all and that their absolutely fanatical devotion to the company is because it, and its founder Galactic President Musk, are just that great!
There is no utopian version as long as we maintain the capitalist system. How long do you think “regulations” can stand against the profit incentive of every conceivable greedy ghoul out there?
Ok, the solution is to abolish capitalism then, and I’m more than fine with that.
Yes, literally.
Without capitalism we would be free to build any cool technology we desire, with the only motivation being the benefit of humanity and improvement of our daily lives.
Capitalism is a wasteful and nonsensical system that will only guarantee the enslavement and annihilation of human life.
I agree 100%. It wouldn’t be easy though. Humans are inherently selfish and greedy. I believe a large minority are borderline sociopathic as well, whether its inherited or learned idk. We need a system that really punishes and limits sociopathic behavior.
Unfortunately but accurately, capitalism rewards sociopathic behavior exponentially, to the point where you have to at least act sociopathic in your decision making to have a very large scale successful business, or at least never/rarely make altruistic decisions. Otherwise, you’ll be priced out by competition that does make the more sociopathic decisions (lower pay for workers, dangerous work environments, whatever to cut costs, etc.).
I dont know how we fix this, but it’s certainly time for capitalism to die or be reigned in significantly.
It’s an unfortunately common misconception that humans are inherently selfish and greedy.
Like you stated Capitalism rewards sociopathic behaviour.
Humans learn and adapt to the systems they live under.
Selfishness and greed is enforced under the capitalist system.
You should check our Peter Kropotkin’s ‘Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution’ for an alternate take which sounds like you’re already on board with.
even if it were completely F/OSS including the hardware I’m as afraid of a brain accident as I am of someone purposely doing awful shit to my brain. I want what you want too, it’s just that there’s no world in which that happens.
Something similar existed in 2013 already:
I keep reminding people that this technology was already in development, that Elon and is Neuralink isn’t a unique invention…
Literally every business he’s ever touched. He’s not an inventor he’s an exploiter.
Sure but everyone bought the iPhone, Steve Jobs was basically not a better person either.
Sure absolutely but also it’s a bad idea to be disingenuous just because Elon needs a dick. This technology is impressive because it’s fully internal. You don’t have to wear some massive hat, it’s a compact internal design. Does actually show some significant advancement
I would much rather wear a silly hat than have open skull brain surgery to implant a device that will stop receiving security updates in 5 years.
Go beat up on it it’s not at all the same thing. By being internal it allows for much better connectivity.
It’s a difference between having a sensor per nerve ending and a sensor that just checks average electrical activity. Completely different.
Bruh, are you really comparing a digital two input wearable device to an implant with fine analog control? This is the biggest leap in brain to computer interface technology, probably ever.
I hate that Neuralink is associated with Elon and the testing they did on animals as absolutely abhorrent, but this is crazy. The guy has been playing Civ 6 ffs.
Can you read?
Wearing a cap designed to measure brain activity players nod their head or blink their eyes, training the equipment to translate brain patterns associated with those motions into movement on-screen.
They only have a two input system because the experiment was made with two inputs in mind. I’ve seen a comercial wearable neural sensor in action ~9 years ago, being used in experiments by my colleagues. It can do a lot more than that.
I hope you’re right, an external system would be infinitely better; did your colleagues’ work go anywhere?
No idea, honestly. I know they finished and presented some demos related to detecting and classifying emotions, but I left a few months later.
No, which is why people are trying to find better tech.
EEG is limited, it’s why it went nowhere and people try to point to it as this big huge thing…. Technology won’t advance if we just continually stick with the limitations of old tech. Which unfortunately requires experimentation.
Yes, we’ve had related technology for a long time. I used one when I was a kid years ago to control a cursor through a maze, although with significant effort. And yet, I don’t recall seeing any of these systems reliably play complex games like Mario Kart or Civilization…
To say we’ve had something similar is akin to something like handwaving modern EVs saying we had EVs back in the 90s, but without mentioning they only went 50 miles per charge, took hours to charge, and had significantly fewer charge cycles. Like, why even do that?
I didn’t say there’s no difference in the technology used. But the results are quite comparable at the moment. Maybe that can be changed and further developed in future. But is much much more dangerous to implant than to put a cap on your head. So I say don’t be fooled by the marketing of Neuralink.
This is cool but they burned through a bunch of monkeys to get here.
Also, fuck Elon.
This shit has the potential to kill millions of humans, maybe even billions. I think it’s about time to burn them to the ground.
Jesus. I hate this dystopian present and everything, but c’mon, you’re exaggerating. Other things will “kill billions” before this neuro-stuff does.
Yeah and water has that potential too.
They say, on their mobile phone made by impoverished children they’ll never see the faces of…
I mean, fuck the entire Musk family. First in line to the woodchipper when the prols finally rise up.
But, perspective, ya know?
The same can be achieved with non-implanted BCI. Why get invasive surgery?
