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Elon Musk’s Neuralink wants to boost the brain to keep up with AI

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Re: Elon Musk’s Neuralink wants to boost the brain to keep up with AI

#121
post #114

BAM - http://www.nature.com/nnano/journal/v10/n7/full/nnano.2015.1... AFAIK, it's the most promising technology for actually making the neural lace. TL;DR: If you put electrodes on an angled plastic mesh, you can roll it up, inject it, and it'll safely unroll. Also, brain cells like to grow into it.

This scenario scare the hell out of me. Is injecting/intercepting brain signals directly really the way forward? Do we really want to create monster human species? IMHO, future AI should be used to enhance human cognitives in a noninvasive way. Never in such a dystopian way as in the movie "The Matrix".

Why?

Re: Elon Musk’s Neuralink wants to boost the brain to keep up with AI

#122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty much what they said about reusable rockets and electric cars.

Eh, it's worth understanding the scale and scope of the problem. I've been thinking about this a lot, recently. The human brain has on the order of 1e11 neurons. The galaxy has on the order of 1e11 stars. Now, would we confidently predict that we could "solve" the galaxy in less than 100 to 500 years, say? And yet we make very, very aggressive estimates of how quickly we might unravel the secrets of the brain. Biolog…

I don't really understand this perspective. Are you arguing that we shouldn't try? Of course it'll be extremely difficult and the work will take place over decades, not months or years, just like Spacex and Tesla. Nobody's expecting Iain Banks's neural lace tomorrow. But if someone doesn't start working on it tomorrow, we won't have it in a hundred years, either.

Re: Elon Musk’s Neuralink wants to boost the brain to keep up with AI

#123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty much what they said about reusable rockets and electric cars.

True. But not every idea that is labeled as "too hard" is in fact useful (or even doable) idea.

You don't think being able to communicate with a computer by thought is useful?

Re: Elon Musk’s Neuralink wants to boost the brain to keep up with AI

#124
Everyone is so scared of all of this, but where do you all realistically see humanity in 200 years? Living like we do now? I mean do you realize how different things were in 1817 compared to now? Unfathomable to them [1].

I know HN hates techno groups, but this kind of thing is not new at all to folks who consider themselves "Transhumanists."

How is this not an obvious eventuality for everyone here? It seems pretty clear that the whole vector of humanity is to functionally merge with our engineered system in a symbiotic way and then probably see the extinction of the human species in (relatively) short order.

We're gonna go extinct anyway, so what's the alternative?

edit: Used a slightly different time horizon on suggestion.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1817

Re: Elon Musk’s Neuralink wants to boost the brain to keep up with AI

#125

Everyone is so scared of all of this, but where do you all realistically see humanity in 200 years? Living like we do now? I mean do you realize how different things were in 1817 compared to now? Unfathomable to them [1]. I know HN hates techno groups, but this kind of thing is not new at all to folks who consider themselves "Transhumanists." How is this not an obvious eventuality for everyone here? It seems pretty c…

Predictions that were "obvious" to small groups of people and not to anyone else have a poor track record historically.

That's not an argument against, but it justifies significant skepticism, and helps explain why your "but it's obvious" argument isn't going to convince anyone to take you seriously.

Poll ten transhumanists, get ten mutually incompatible futures, all "obvious".

Re: Elon Musk’s Neuralink wants to boost the brain to keep up with AI

#126

Everyone is so scared of all of this, but where do you all realistically see humanity in 200 years? Living like we do now? I mean do you realize how different things were in 1817 compared to now? Unfathomable to them [1]. I know HN hates techno groups, but this kind of thing is not new at all to folks who consider themselves "Transhumanists." How is this not an obvious eventuality for everyone here? It seems pretty c…

Everyone is so scared of all of this, but ...

This will be used for control. 50 pieces of senators want to sell you online thoughts already (internet history). And yet, you are willing to live in an alternate reality where this doesn't happen and it's all for good.

Re: Elon Musk’s Neuralink wants to boost the brain to keep up with AI

#127

The [Black Mirror][1] (British science fiction television anthology series created by Charlie Brooker) has a few episodes dealing with AI and brain-machine interfaces. It is very interesting to watch some of the emotional and social implications this kind of technology will bring. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Mirror

Please don't put URLs in code blocks, it makes them non-clickable.

Re: Elon Musk’s Neuralink wants to boost the brain to keep up with AI

#128
post #54

The [Black Mirror][1] (British science fiction television anthology series created by Charlie Brooker) has a few episodes dealing with AI and brain-machine interfaces. It is very interesting to watch some of the emotional and social implications this kind of technology will bring. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Mirror

Upvoted because even though that show makes me sick it does explain very important technological / cultural issues in a very, uh, visceral way.

Why or how does it make you sick?

Also are you regarding a specific season? the camera work? The ideas/stories themselves?

Re: Elon Musk’s Neuralink wants to boost the brain to keep up with AI

#130
Musk is wrong that input bandwidth is a limiting factor in intelligence. We don't efficiently use the megapixel our phones show us, let alone the several megapixels on our laptops.

Improving UIs will provide much more bang for the buck for many many decades to come. A neural lace is the equivalent of trying to increase the yield per square inch of the herbs in your window box when you have 100 acres of empty land around you.

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