Tangent: Dating myself here, but this demo just triggered a childhood memory of the movie Project X (1987, starring Mathew Broderick).
Monkey MindPong
41–50 of 291 posts
Re: Monkey MindPong
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
The location of the electrodes aren't arbitrary. The region of implantation is likely the hand-motor cortex (which has thickness on the order of mm), the area associated with arm movements (check out somatotopy), so the signals acquired are actually targeted for the demo task. This relationship has been known in neuroscience for almost a century and has been validated in decades of brain-machine interface experiments…
Even outside of primary motor/somatosensory areas, 2D cursor control is a pretty standard BMI paradigm. Not exactly “Hello, World” but maybe “ToDo List App”.
Yeah their implant hardware is really impressive but "mind pong" is a pretty common starter project for at home EEG hacking, let alone legit BCI research. The internet is littered with examples of mind pong for the Muse like this one: https://medium.com/@nayvelt.lina/playing-ping-pong-with-my-b...
Granted it moves slower than actual Atari Pong, and takes a few minutes to get the hang of controlling the paddle. But IME it isn't much harder to control the up/down of the paddle with the EEG than it is to play a game like flappy bird, and that's using a couple random scalp electrodes from a consumer device.
So yeah thanks for bringing this up, because I feel some of the comments here are acting like this is much closer to "mind reading" than it actually is. Not that it isn't cool, but the overhyping kinda kills it for me lol. Is this how robotics people feel when Boston Dynamics releases a new video?
Re: Monkey MindPong
#43Anyone else feel a strange kinship with the monkey?
Absolutely. He is one of the first few through the breach for us with this tech.
Neuroscientists have been doing BCI with monkeys for years. Take a look at the work coming out of Byron Yu's and Steve Chase's labs at CMU for starters
Re: Monkey MindPong
#44That was difficult to watch. While the technology is impressive, it is sickening to watch. The part where they can pair the phone via bluetooth made me want to vomit. It is obviously unnatural, but I can't quite put my finger on it. Something about seeing that animal, oblivious to what's happening, and that implant with the ability to directly record thoughts and/or remote control. The whole thing doesn't sit well wi…
Yeah, it's not that hard to imagine the next bit where there's a captive warehouse of monkeys solving CAPTCHAS for food or something. It's a depressing video to be sure.
Re: Monkey MindPong
#45That was difficult to watch. While the technology is impressive, it is sickening to watch. The part where they can pair the phone via bluetooth made me want to vomit. It is obviously unnatural, but I can't quite put my finger on it. Something about seeing that animal, oblivious to what's happening, and that implant with the ability to directly record thoughts and/or remote control. The whole thing doesn't sit well wi…
Where is the Bluetooth pairing? I don’t see it. I’m watching the video at the top of the page... is it one of the other videos?
Re: Monkey MindPong
#46That was difficult to watch. While the technology is impressive, it is sickening to watch. The part where they can pair the phone via bluetooth made me want to vomit. It is obviously unnatural, but I can't quite put my finger on it. Something about seeing that animal, oblivious to what's happening, and that implant with the ability to directly record thoughts and/or remote control. The whole thing doesn't sit well wi…
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Re: Monkey MindPong
#47That was difficult to watch. While the technology is impressive, it is sickening to watch. The part where they can pair the phone via bluetooth made me want to vomit. It is obviously unnatural, but I can't quite put my finger on it. Something about seeing that animal, oblivious to what's happening, and that implant with the ability to directly record thoughts and/or remote control. The whole thing doesn't sit well wi…
I'm confused why you'd even feel that way? Neuralink goes into a LOT of effort for animals to feel good. Animal studies happen all the time for medical testing, and from what I hear Neuralink is much better than the average. As they said in the video, the animal is doing the activity of it of it's own free will. They don't harm the animal if it refuses to participate. Are you familiar with the term "luddite"?
I initially thought GP was being overly hyperbolic, but after watching the video I can't say I fully disagree. It's not so much the animal studies aspect, but rather the fact that they used bluetooth via a mobile phone to connect to the monkey.
That aspect of connecting via bluetooth from a phone is most conventionally used to interact with replaceable commodities such as wireless speakers/headphones, but here it's being used to interact with a _live_ monkey. This framing somewhat gives the impression that this living being has been reduced to the status of a replaceable commodity, a mere peripheral that one might connect to via bluetooth.
I agree that given how much modern society relies on animal testing that it's not really a rational response - maybe this reaction could have been mitigated somewhat if they had connected to the monkey via a computer or more involved process rather than simply just the conventional bluetooth pairing flow on a phone.
Re: Monkey MindPong
#48That was difficult to watch. While the technology is impressive, it is sickening to watch. The part where they can pair the phone via bluetooth made me want to vomit. It is obviously unnatural, but I can't quite put my finger on it. Something about seeing that animal, oblivious to what's happening, and that implant with the ability to directly record thoughts and/or remote control. The whole thing doesn't sit well wi…
I'm confused why you'd even feel that way? Neuralink goes into a LOT of effort for animals to feel good. Animal studies happen all the time for medical testing, and from what I hear Neuralink is much better than the average. As they said in the video, the animal is doing the activity of it of it's own free will. They don't harm the animal if it refuses to participate. Are you familiar with the term "luddite"?
For me, I find it unsettling because it's a reminder of how ultimately we're all just compositions of atoms with electric signals in our body. While I find this immensely exciting, it unnervingly reminds me of my mortality.
It's akin to what I imagine Neo would've felt when he learnt about the Matrix. I'd like to think I'd have without a doubt taken the red pill too (like I want this kind of research to be more successful) but anything that makes the Matrix more real is unsettling.
Re: Monkey MindPong
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm confused why you'd even feel that way? Neuralink goes into a LOT of effort for animals to feel good. Animal studies happen all the time for medical testing, and from what I hear Neuralink is much better than the average. As they said in the video, the animal is doing the activity of it of it's own free will. They don't harm the animal if it refuses to participate. Are you familiar with the term "luddite"?
I initially thought GP was being overly hyperbolic, but after watching the video I can't say I fully disagree. It's not so much the animal studies aspect, but rather the fact that they used bluetooth via a mobile phone to connect to the monkey. That aspect of connecting via bluetooth from a phone is most conventionally used to interact with replaceable commodities such as wireless speakers/headphones, but here it's b…
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Re: Monkey MindPong
#50This seems to be very similar to the early 2000s demos at Brown University/Cyberkinetics[1]. In 2008 they demonstrated it in humans[2] after lots of work getting FDA approval. The core difference here (from my non-expert reading) seem to be electrodes are along a thread rather than on a chip.
See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJJPbpHoPWo for a video of the pong demo in humans.
The motor cortex seems to have a clear, learnable signal though it is rather noisy sampling Mary Lou Jepsen at Open Water has ideas about how to do this non-invasively [3].
[1] https://www.braingate.org/publications/
[2] https://www.brown.edu/Administration/News_Bureau/2006-07/06-...
[3] https://www.ted.com/talks/mary_lou_jepsen_how_we_can_use_lig...