Elon Musk’s Neuralink wants to boost the brain to keep up with AI • Hacker News Board

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

#211

Post by kybernetikos » Tue, Mar 28, 2017, 9:38 AM UTC

baq wrote: post #184

RangerScience wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh. Brain stem, reptile brain, mammal brain, primate brain, neocortex, cybercortex. Half my mind is already in cyberspace, why not make it half my brain, too? Edit: Dystopias don't come from technologies, they come from people being shitty.

we can invent new technologies, but we can't stop people from being shitty. (OTOH we're talking about a technology that could potentially directly modify human psyche, so even that isn't clear anymore :))

> we can invent new technologies, but we can't stop people from being shitty.

Since it's this that is the primary reason that all of the next generation of technologies are incredibly dangerous existential risks, and is related to why other mitigations for existential risks are underfunded compared to the grand projects of being shitty to each other, it seems to me that fixing this should be the main priority of human research.

It involves coming up with at least workable answers to a lot of difficult questions and is a bit of an ethical minefield, but if you believe, as I am inclined to that the alternative is extinction, it seems pretty important to at least make a stab at it.

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

#212

Post by Tepix » Tue, Mar 28, 2017, 9:41 AM UTC

erikpukinskis wrote: post #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 aro…

Despite the quite high bandwidth of the human eye, we only use it for serial input.

Despite being a massively parallel processing unit, it appears that there are only a few queues for data input.

Applying the awesome pattern matching power of the brain to a lot of data simultaneously (in parallel) is not something our brains appear to be capable of. Perhaps it would require too much energy and get too hot?

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

#213

Post by dave_sullivan » Tue, Mar 28, 2017, 10:00 AM UTC

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #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 c…

I post this periodically, but I think this is the most compelling and intuitive vision of the future I've heard (and simultaneously a solution to the Fermi Paradox): http://accelerating.org/articles/transcensionhypothesis.html

Read the full original paper, summaries fall short. But briefly, due to always finding use for more power/computation, primary gains coming from increasing density, and the speed of light limiting galactic colonization, intelligent civilizations that don't go extinct eventually find themselves living in a computer in a black hole leaching energy directly from a companion star or on a course to merge with other black holes.

There's a lot more to it though, hence my suggestion to read the full paper.

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

#214

Post by throwanem » Tue, Mar 28, 2017, 10:01 AM UTC

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #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 c…

Every Western faith has its eschaton.

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

#215

Post by throwanem » Tue, Mar 28, 2017, 10:04 AM UTC

inimino wrote: post #125

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #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 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".

Only ten? Bostrom must not be in your sample!

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

#216

Post by inimino » Tue, Mar 28, 2017, 10:07 AM UTC

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #159

inimino wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First, I don't think any of those greats had such a specific vision as this as an inevitable future: "functionally merge with our engineered system in a symbiotic way and then probably see the extinction of the human species" You can probably find quotes that will confirm your belief, but from a neutral viewpoint there is no such consensus between these people about the future. Secondly, even if there was, we have 60…

There are many potential future outcomes, and it's reasonable to think about them and to try to mitigate certain possibilities. Let me rephrase then: If you evaluate the written history of humanity, there is the unavoidable trend that humans will create tools which replicate and obviate human actions in a more optimized manner. Stone Tool > Controlled Fire > Shelter > etc... to the point that the ultimate boundaries…

There are people like you trying to cure cancer, too, and trying to make money on Wall Street, trying to solve outstanding problems in physics, trying to make it to Mars, solve global warming, win wars, and so on.

The trend you identify is that there will be a breakthrough and everything will change, but we have no way of knowing what it will be. When it comes, it might make your field irrelevant. Arguing that the breakthrough will come from the field you happen to be working in is understandable but it doesn't carry much weight with anyone outside your field.

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

#217

Post by erkkie » Tue, Mar 28, 2017, 10:07 AM UTC

XorNot wrote: post #172

erkkie wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine thinking about something and having it appear on your brain interface HUD vs typing a google search on your phone and reading it from the screen. How is that not a bandwidth problem?

Wrong paradigm: imagine being able to have perfect recall of information you looked at once. Or being able to check point your active memories and recover that state of mind at will.

If I'd had to guess and theorise, and it's highly likely I'm wrong, making thoughts available semantically for an computer to parse requires more bandwidth than (once command+control is figured out) recalling of information + presenting it. The latter could be directly tied to the visual nerves only perhaps? Still all part of the same paradigm to me though.

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

#218

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Mar 28, 2017, 10:15 AM UTC

Quenz wrote: post #176

komali2 wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why's this guy being downvoted? There are plenty of capable people out there that can run a given Muskventure. He's got enough money to spitball an idea, spend a good bit of time hiring the right people, choosing a CEO, and letting it ride. The only issue his it seems like his ideas won't make much money - how can you sell Neuralink when the technology doesn't exist to make it feasible? But give it 15 years and Neura…

Since when can you downvote on HN?

[deleted]

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

#219

Post by throwanem » Tue, Mar 28, 2017, 10:18 AM UTC

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #163

nradov wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Transhumanism in terms of belief in the coming of AGI / immortality / mind uploading / genetic enhancement / etc is just a new secular religion. They're taking it on faith that those technologies will arrive soon without any hard evidence. Surely the Messiah is coming soon, right guys? Right?

I think this claim would be more credible if there were the any other characteristics of a religion present. Namely: Doctrine, rituals, totems, prayer, and above all it would require that there is some credulity to a higher power/state such as heaven/nirvana that will never be seen by humans. I'd be interested to see some of those as I haven't yet and I've been in the community for a while. What I will grant is that,…

> I'd be interested to see some of those as I haven't yet and I've been in the community for a while.

Never been to Less Wrong, eh?

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

#220

Post by lawless123 » Tue, Mar 28, 2017, 10:33 AM UTC

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #163

nradov wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Transhumanism in terms of belief in the coming of AGI / immortality / mind uploading / genetic enhancement / etc is just a new secular religion. They're taking it on faith that those technologies will arrive soon without any hard evidence. Surely the Messiah is coming soon, right guys? Right?

I think this claim would be more credible if there were the any other characteristics of a religion present. Namely: Doctrine, rituals, totems, prayer, and above all it would require that there is some credulity to a higher power/state such as heaven/nirvana that will never be seen by humans. I'd be interested to see some of those as I haven't yet and I've been in the community for a while. What I will grant is that,…

>I think this claim would be more credible if there were the any other characteristics of a religion present. Namely: Doctrine, rituals, totems, prayer, and above all it would require that there is some credulity to a higher power/state such as heaven/nirvana that will never be seen by humans.

It doesn't have those, but it does need lots of money, just like religion.

Not that i'm against the idea