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this post was submitted on 30 Jan 2024
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Do people think this is new? We have been able to do this for decades. I'm a lowly PhD student and even I get to work with humans whose brains we are actively recording from (although I don't put the electrodes in there myself).
Just another instance of Muskrat talking about things he doesn't know. I used to think he was a genius when he was talking about rockets, then he started talking about things I know (neuro & AI)...
Elon never invents anything new. He finds a complex concept, scuffs off at it's complexity and announces it's actually really simple. Creates company that over-simplifies things.
Sometimes his project fails enough times that it starts working (space x).
He has so much money that he can keep doing it. And hire the best in the field - there's no money in academia so of course they'll go. And then he'll take credit for their hard work eventually of course.
That's just the process of engineering that's not an Elon thing that's just an engineering thing. No one knew how to make reusable rockets that land on the launch pad so of course it was trial and error. The reason NASA would never do it is because it's trial and error and Congress don't want NASA blowing rockets up.
The Soviet space program was exactly the same and remember they got into space first.
Screw Elon, but to be fair...that's most business and science. You try, fail, adjust, try again, rinse and repeat until you find success.
So what are actually useful applications that might be feasible soon for this kind of stuff? I could google it but I'd mostly get a bunch of sensationalist BS that is meant to generate clicks.
Basically three things -
BCI - Brain Computer Interface. This can allow people with disabilities to control prosthetics using their brains. For example, this one from 20+ yrs ago. They are in clinical trial stages now - lot of data over 20yrs showing it's pretty safe. There are some differences like BrainGate uses "Utah" electrodes which sit on the brain rather than go inside the brain.
Medical diagnosis - Some patients (with things like epilepsy) get their brains recorded like this to find the region of the brain that is malfunctioning. Then sometimes this region is removed and believe it or not it actually helps! Edit: DBS is another option sometimes like the other commenter said but that needs "stimulation" also, not just passive recording.
Understanding the brain - these recording data can help make sense of the brain. We still don't understand much of how the brain works so this data can help and maybe help with treatments in the future.
For all of these currently we only have patients (because "healthy" people wouldn't want metal electrodes in their brain). But neuralink's promise is to make these electrodes so thin and dense (so that you can record more) while keeping SNR high that it might be possible to put it in healthy people without brain damage. I wouldn't hold my breath for that, though.
I'm hoping so hard for a brain/computer interface. I have a chronic condition that makes me a walking repetitive stress injury generator. Being able to control a computer with my noggin would be a game changer. I currently use an eye tracker combined with a camera head tracker, plus speech recognition, but it's not the best. It certainly killed my (non-existent) computer programming career.
Well you're in the wrong place to talk about BCIs, this is for Elon musk hate only.
Literally everywhere is for that. BCIs are fair game.
Thanks! So how far away are we from something like this:
Both of them can be done shitty-ly now. But to do it with quality that even healthy people will voluntarily get it? That would need several breakthroughs.
We can stimulate some neurons now; to be able to stimulate enough neurons to do either of those in good quality will be hard. Cutting edge stuff can stimulate ~1000 neurons (only monkeys not even humans) but the human optical nerve is more than a million fibers. So we probably will need 3 orders of magnitude improvement and somehow do it in humans safely.
Wow let's wish for those handful of best case scenarios for sure, and hope it isn't then adapted for mass consumer use like keeping track of your friends and family, and emails, and assets of various sorts, it might even come with emojis!
If you thought it was hard deleting your Google Photos...
https://www.epilepsy.com/treatment/devices/deep-brain-stimulation
Didn't the team he put together at least come up with better miniaturization of a BCI, with denser/more numerous electricodes, and a more advanced implantation process to minimize scarring?
You probably won’t be worried about scarring after you die of a brain bleed so that might not be the best selling point.
It's a current limitation with all BCIs from what I understand, so one hurdle for them is to try to eliminate it from ever forming at all. Not sure where his thing is at, but I guess no one here knows anything about it.
Elon musk is a fucking moron, but he is paying a team of actual neuroscientists and surgeons to develop this.
Yes you are right, they are trying to improve on what exists. My response was more for the "OMG musk is doing a sci-fi" - recording spikes is not really new or hard.
(patent pending)
It's like the Titan sub all over again except this time homeboys brain arteries implode
The neuralinks are actually built by scientists though not random billionaires who just think they know what they're doing. It's not like Elon Musk himself has anything to do with this, he's just funding it.
Actual scientists built a lot of less-than-great stuff throughout history.
So all those animals died for what exactly? A cheaper version of something that already existed?
Implying this is useless? Lots of cool stuff exist already but are too expensive to be useful.
Its no excuse for fast and loose research with so much loss of life.
Disabilities shouldn’t bankrupt people no matter the price. Government are rich enough to provide this sort of thing if they want too.
Totally agree. But your previous comment is implying that there were no gains, not that the costs are too great for the gains, and that's the part that I'm disputing.
A genius? I figured he was a visionary or just a bloke who, ugh, "aimed for the stars" I guess.
Nope, just some rich Souf Effrican chode.
I disagree with Musk on a lot (especially wanting just cameras for self-driving cars), but, in the tweet he does say "from Neurolink" not "ever"