Neuralink says US OKs human experiments with Elon's brain chips Neuralink, the brain-computer interface startup founded by tech billionaire Elon Musk, has said the US Food and Drug Administration has given permission for its first human clinical trials. The clearance is a critical milestone in the development of its brain implant after Neuralink had struggled to obtain official approval …
After you've read that article (which is very much worth a read, brilliant stuff) just compare one oh-so subtle difference between the two:
From the device that is demonstrably working to help someone walk: "The implants ... sit on top of the dura mater – the protective membrane around the brain – so that they're not actually directly contacting the gray matter"
From the N1: "This sensor chip has attached to it 1,024 electrodes that pierce the brain's gray matter to connect with biological neurons"
Which one sounds like a riskier proposition?
"Oh, but you'll get a cleaner signal if you go right inside!". Hmm, which to pick? Needing better signal processing or better anti-infection and anti-rejection medication? Hot silicon or hot neurons?
Yes, I *know* that you need the direct confections to get signals back into the brain, *and* such implants have been around for decades, but come on, which group are you going to trust? The "slow, plodding, we'll build it up slowly and carefully under the guidance of the medical ethics board then publish all our findings in the journals and conferenced" lot or the "throw money at it, say we can do it faster and we'll publish on Twitter first" bunch?
Addendum:
> you need the direct confections to get signals back into the brain
Unless the "God Helmet" is actually demonstrated to work. Which I *really* hope doesn't happen, as externally influencing the brain won't lead anywhere we want to go: Niven's "tasp" would be the most acceptable version of that.
Just imagine: retweet Musk and he'll "make your day".
Alternative headline for you.
Neuralink reportedly under investigation by Uncle Sam for 'animal welfare violations'
Rushed 'hack job' surgeries cause monkeys, pigs to needlessly die, staffers claim
Sure he is intergalactic - his mind has moved into the cold, empty void between the galaxies, with reality a faint glowing spiral close to the limits of his perception.
How did he there, you may wonder? It turns out that Dark Energy[1] is actually the force of
Ego and his grew so large that it finally went 'ping' and he shot away like a grape seed squeezed between your fingers.
[1] in case you aren't sure, Dark Energy is the repulsive one; Dark Matter is the one that exerts a gravitational force and is composed mostly of Hyperloops and other promised Musk deliverables: intangible to all our instruments but exerting a massive pull felt most strongly by the densest of human brains.
Once I've been downloaded into the internet I'll make skynet look like a rank amateur.... also I'll copy myself a few 1000 times for backup.
Although someone will eventually come up with a plan to stop me... activate all 1000 backups at once and feed in a monty python script or two
"Ohhhhh I'm a lumberjack and 'm ok......"
The positive value of self-awareness is that it lends to beneficial self- programming that can counter environmental pressures , authoritative structures, and social dogma created to bind and subjugate an individual to an external will.
The negative value of self-awareness is that a person who has not yet objectified the social conditioning they've grown up with, can intuitively abuse themselves through comparison and subsequent disappointment regarding themselves vs dogma
Much closer to downloading than to uploading. Someone is running those systems you could be uploaded to, and I'm guessing their spam prevention system will be pretty strong unless they're owned by a social media company, in which case you will no longer own yourself after uploading.
"We are already cyborgs in a way that your phone and your computer are extensions of yourself,"
Elon considering his phone a digital extension of himself might explain why being seen on twitter it that important to him.
I consider my phone and computer to be tools i use to get very specific jobs done and they are not part of my identity.
"Bard, is Bluetooth capable of charging a device?"
- No, you cannot charge devices via Bluetooth. Bluetooth is a short-range wireless technology that is designed for data transfer, not power transfer. The amount of power that can be transferred over Bluetooth is not enough to charge a device. -
Something doesn't smell right.
The usual confusion between one short-range comms mechanism and another; they didn't actually mean Bluetooth.
What they meant was NFC.
Soon, as you go through the Tube stations, not only will you be able to use the implant to receive updates on the train schedule, but if you hold your head on the reader you'll get an extra 7% charge up. This is fine for the outer zones, with those standalone units, but will be a pain at Leicester Square as all the late-night revellers are fighting to hold their heads against the exit barriers.
But the nutter on the bus will be ecstatic: all these years he has been telling you to wear a tinfoil hat because the checkouts at WHSmith are trying to read your mind...
"Soon, as you go through the Tube stations, not only will you be able to use the implant to receive updates on the train schedule, but if you hold your head on the reader you'll get an extra 7% charge up. This is fine for the outer zones, with those standalone units, but will be a pain at Leicester Square as all the late-night revellers are fighting to hold their heads against the exit barriers."
"But the nutter on the bus will be ecstatic: all these years he has been telling you to wear a tinfoil hat because the checkouts at WHSmith are trying to read your mind..."
Sounds more and more like John Lumic's Pete's World. Daily downloads direct to the brain.
Musk apears to be a retarded version of Lumic in our word. I could easily see Musk pushing the advantages cyberconversion. These implant might be your deposit on a Telsla silver suit :) I can easily the legions of Musk fans stomping around spouting demented nonsense about upgrades - I think they already do.
The nutter on the bus should have submitted his resume for CEO role at Twitter. Looks like being a raving loony is a prerequisite for leadership roles in US newtech companies.
What he dimly imagined WHSmith would want from the contents of his or anybody's mind - they are stationers are they not? What brand of ink you use in your fountain pen?
> Something doesn't smell right.
Yeah you asked a stupid chat bot which gave you the wrong answer.
"Bluetooth can be used for wireless power transfer."
Source: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/7992312
That page even demonstrates power over NFC.
Most of the rockstar founders have left the company likely encouraged to run away after Elon's dog and pony shows where he touts capabilities that nobody has any clue about how to implement. Of course, there's still that one founder left that had Elon's twins. The company is also supervised by Elon's henchman, Jared Birchall. That dude is scary and he keeps himself wrapped in shadows.
Between the rather gruesome results from some of the animal trials and the inherent danger in mucking around with the brain, what could possibly go wrong?
Yes, less of the dumb yank parochialness, please.
Only people in the USA (less than 4% of the world's population), or visitors to the USA, know how big a 'quarter' coin might be, so it's a mostly unhelpful comparison, whereas (one Wikipedia search later) everyone in the world knows how big a "roughly 2.5 cm sized" (or, as a supplementary measure, if you really must, "roughly 1 inch sized") thing is.
The Register has an international audience, and if you'd like to keep it that way, you need to remind some of your US columnists to stop being so inwards looking (your esteemed colleagues elsewhere in the world are smart enough not to stoop so low).
And shouldn't the ethics of human use look at the companies and people involved too? Isn't that at the heart of the problems these companies keep creating.
Of course this will become a new source of human oppression, the thin-skinned mantrum factory backing it owns a social media company.
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