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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

#241

Post by JabavuAdams »

throwaway91111 wrote: post #84
JabavuAdams wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Well, the issue with the galaxy has more to do with general relativity than the number of stars. The issue right now isn't bottlenecked in any single place like that.

Can you elaborate? I don't think I got your point.

I'm intrigued by the difference between "understanding" a population, in aggregate, and having a fine-grained view of each individual while also knowing how each individual relates to the whole.

So, what might we learn about the galaxy if we knew what / where / when every single bright spot of star-ish size is, that we would not learn from an aggregated simulation? Rhetorical question, obviously.

I don't even know how many people live within 5km of me. How many are human-trafficked, held against their will? etc. We can make approximations, but there's a lot of interesting information at the margins.

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

#242

Post by TeMPOraL »

bpizzi wrote: post #188
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…

Looks like the vast majority of people calling themselves 'hackers' are digusted at the idea of merely hacking their brain. Shouldn't that be one of our main goal in life, as 'hackers'?

You have 'hackers' and the young code-me-a-website rockstars that are now also called 'hackers'. Those two groups have vastly different areas of interest.

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

#243

Post by JabavuAdams »

zzzzzzzza wrote: post #103
JabavuAdams wrote: post #82

The universities, companies, and individuals involved in this machine learning renaissance are a collective super-intelligence. It's amazing how fast we can learn now, fuelled by information-sharing over the internet. I'm literally forgetting the names of everyday acquaintances because I'm learning and retaining so much new stuff. The problem, from an individual's perspective is that, while you can stand on the shoul…

"In the moment when I truly understand my enemy, understand him well enough to defeat him, then in that very moment I also love him. I think it's impossible to really understand somebody, what they want, what they believe, and not love them the way they love themselves. And then, in that very moment when I love them -" "You beat them." For a moment she was not afraid of his understanding. "No, you don't understand. I…

Ender's catchy and interesting, but I don't think it would play out that way.

Imagine that at the moment you fully understand your adversary you also fully understand others like yourself. The hurt that lead to the desire to never be harmed again. The harm that this kind of mentality inflicts. All the victims of your proposed victory. ...

I mean, it's a hell of a quote, but at a certain point he just stops the recursion for bad-ass conclusion.

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

#244

Post by TeMPOraL »

Tepix wrote: post #212
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?

We're not using it efficiently, though. And the whole field of UI / UX actually now moves in completely opposite direction - towards how to make things least efficient and least information-dense, but more and more pretty so that it sells and addicts better.

I'd love to see some research into just how much data can humans really process if humans are properly trained and the data is cleverly presented.

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

#245

Post by Ygg2 »

bpizzi wrote: post #234
Ygg2 wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe because if hacking a brain, is as easy as hacking a toaster or a heart transplant, we're fucked - pretty much.

I get what you're referring to: 'don't brick the firmware' or 'don't mess with the MBR'. But we're talking about a device for which the main caracteristic is, arguably, its neuroplasticity. We can do better than blindly compare hacking a brain to hacking a piece of technology made in Taiwan (with all my respects to Taiwan).

Neuroplasticity won't protect you from someone generating 0.1A inside your body. You only need 4.5-5V battery to generate a killer current.

Also it can't stop someone from bricking your heart.

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

#246

Post by TeMPOraL »

toephu2 wrote: post #142
scardine wrote: post #48

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

Surprised you didn't mention the Westworld series which is related to AI and virtual reality and ironically Musk's ex-wife plays a minor character in it.

If you want to get a really serious treatment on AI (and probably the single one in the history of TV/cinema that actually makes sense), check out Person of Interest (ironically, by the same team which now makes Westworld).

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

#247

Post by TeMPOraL »

sixQuarks wrote: post #51

Elon Musk's "bold" ventures are the only things that excite me. Meaning, whenever I hear of a supposed "big idea" that's right around the corner (cough, cough - Magic Leap), I basically dismiss it. Except when it has to do with Elon Musk. He is the first to admit that his plans will probably fail, but he actually has an incredible track record over 10+ years.

Same here. I'm sceptical about most of the "big ideas" - most of them are marketing bullshit. Doubly so when it's a startup - the goal usually is to bullshit people so that they come on board and enable the founders to have their exit.

But Elon Musk I trust. He's shown time and again that he honestly wants to realize those ideas, and not pursue them for the money. He also has a pretty good track record there. I'm hoping there will be more people like Musk though; I think we desperately need them.

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

#248

Post by lithos »

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…

SV just can not be trusted with biology. The mottos of failure is OK, lawsuits are cheaper than following laws, move faster than the ramifications, force it to be all or nothing, and just ignoring the fact that there will be fallout. I don't want to be a plaything experiment of a Silicon Valley psychopath.

The brain has so many moving parts, no security, and just far too trusting of what's in it to start injecting thoughts and information into it.

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

#249

Post by TeMPOraL »

catenthusiast wrote: post #173
baq wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

he needs the money, but he doesn't want it. he's not playing the business game for the game's sake, he wants to advance civilization and the best way to do it is via billion dollar disruptive businesses, so that's what he's doing. i applaud him for keeping true to this after however many years of having access to that much assets.

Why is everyone so certain his motivations are noble?

Because so far he's staying true to the motivations as he described them; he's using business to help solve big problems - as opposed to other entrepreneurs, who use big problems to help their businesses. He's done nothing so far to make me personally doubt that his motivations are as noble as he says they are.

I'm not saying that he won't eventually turn into yet another selfish business baron. That would be a very sad day, though. We need more people with noble intentions and means to execute on them - and such people need to be encouraged, not constantly doubted.

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

#250

Post by TeMPOraL »

jameslk wrote: post #32

I've had a casual curiosity on why these billionaires like Musk who seem to care about world wide problems such as AI aren't working to solve the imminent issues with global warming. I'm not talking about reducing fossil fuels, but perhaps coming up with solutions with their resources that addresses a world that isn't so habitable by life in the future. I don't know enough about global warming to know why this might…

Forget about AI, which is something Elon realized to be an issue only relatively recently. Tesla Motors and SolarCity exist as his response to exactly the problem of climate change - the stated goal of Tesla is not "fast and sexy cars of the future", but "electrification of all transportation", exactly because the latter is an important way to fight climate change.

As for other grand efforts - I haven't heard of them either, and I'd damn love to hear about them. We need to praise and support people who're doing good work.

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