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Monkey MindPong

neuralink.com

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Re: Monkey MindPong

#151

Post by the_dripper »

nexuist wrote: post #146
the_dripper wrote: post #137

I know I'm conforming to a stereotype by saying this, but I cant stop thinking about how this could be the premise of a Black Mirror Episode. I also think we should restrict such technology. Without restrictions we can play God, and I am in no way approving of doing anyhting similar to that. The part about pairing the monkeys NeuraLink Device "like you do with a speaker" made me laugh. Not becuase it's funny, but bec…

A lot of people are focusing on the Bluetooth aspect of this which seems to be the most inconsequential part of it. Of course you need to connect to the brain device remotely; what do you want, a USB port on top of your head? Or should we go back to PS/2 or parallel ports and everyone can hide a 2in thick wire in their ponytail? If we want the brain to be an input device then we must treat it like an input device. Th…

I wasn't saying that using Bluetooth is absurd. The Absurd part, in my opinion, is treating the brain as an "input device". Ones brain should not be tinkered with.

You can not compare VR Headsets and airpods to a chip that is, literally, implanted IN your brain. - These devices generate Extrinsic Stimuli. The Neuralink however directly READS the Neuron Activity (as I understood it).

Re: Monkey MindPong

#152

Post by cblconfederate »

cyrux004 wrote: post #127
dlg wrote: post #50

This 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…

Can somebody who is knowledgeable in this field of work explain how/if neuralink is better to the previous approaches and if its easier to "scale" this tech compared to previous works ?

The article describes how it has advanced: it's wireless and reads relatively more electrodes. Producing the device is something that can probably scale up easilt . 1024 electrodes is still nowhere near enough to decode precise movements imho. These pong experiments have been done in humans since 20 years ago, but real fluidity seems very difficult to achieve , because signals are noisy, the brain adapts, distractors are always present etc. The article doesnt mention how long it takes until the device needs recalibration. OTOH brain surgery is not something easy to scale and i doubt people will accept surgery for implanting 2 devices just to play pong. Such a device should be precise enough to allow using a robotic arm effectively.

I think the applications of this are going to be in research for years, not as implants that paralyzed people can readily use.

Re: Monkey MindPong

#153

Post by etrautmann »

cyrux004 wrote: post #127
dlg wrote: post #50

This 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…

Can somebody who is knowledgeable in this field of work explain how/if neuralink is better to the previous approaches and if its easier to "scale" this tech compared to previous works ?

This is primarily an advance in the systems integration required to make such a sensor fully implantable abs capable of wireless transmission. It also ~10x’s the number of channels of the Utah array, which is the primary point of comparison as a product that can currently be used in human patients (in an investigational context as part of clinical trials). The Utah arrays do not have any active electronics however, and pass a bundle of wires through the skin, which has obvious disadvantages and scaling limitations.

NL’s approach is scalable due to their robotic insertion system which can implant a (multi-channel) thread every few seconds. It should be possible to hit a few thousand channels within the window of a few hour surgery. They do face the same challenges with size, weight, and power that everyone else does, which forces trade offs on the bandwidth, ability to isolate spikes from individual neurons, and number of active channels.

The primary limitation of this approach is that the needles cannot easily insert deeper than the outer layer of cortex (to my knowledge). This limits the application space to anything with recording or stimulation targets on the surface. Motor prostheses and gaming are perfect for this due to the anatomy, but many other medical applications require deeper targets, which their sensor cannot readily hit at the moment.

Re: Monkey MindPong

#154

Post by rkachowski »

anonytrary wrote: post #82
anonymouse008 wrote: post #32

Here is the ultimate question.... What smoothing algorithms did they use to guess the 'certainty' of the 'intended' movement in a Y-Plane game vs. the X,Y grid they learned from? Having researched in this space, you don't get better results from 'training' on a X,Y space and reducing that training to a Y-grid predictor. There is a ton of smoothing going on in the video... or the metal conductor plays a huge role in t…

> or the metal conductor plays a huge role in the electrical signals they get from the implanted electrodes I highly doubt that, you must be talking about non-invasive electrodes such as EEG. When the electrodes are inside the brain and thus in the cranium, they are effectively protected from outside EM activity since they're in an effective Faraday cage, so your signal has much higher fidelity.

The skull works as a Faraday cage in such situations?

Re: Monkey MindPong

#155

Post by anonytrary »

the_dripper wrote: post #139
gibolt wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're right. This monkey gets to earn banana smoothies all day. I'm sure it is quite happy. Much less happy are the animals we eat, those confined in zoos, and many of the pets people lock in tiny spaces.

The monkey probably won't be sad. I think it is entertained all day by the researchers. Playing its games, and drinking its delicious banana smoothie. As you say; Ignorance is bliss.

Perhaps it is blissfully ignorant of us to think of ourselves as free on this rock. Does the monkey have a better life now than before? I don't know. The monkey will not mate and likely does not have peers. I wouldn't be surprised if those things are required for happiness. Social and sexual needs are programmed in us.

I think it's a pretty tough topic in ethics but when I was younger, I didn't think much about it because we were doing science. I remember seeing my first rat die. I didn't feel bad at the time because we did it "humanely" with gas (and it's normalized and I was only 20) and they just sort of drifted off and defecated. It's an interesting and perhaps sad use of a life.

Re: Monkey MindPong

#156

Post by mvzvm »

gibolt wrote: post #103
anonytrary wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is nothing compared to what we were doing in lab several years ago. Neuralink is the least invasive of the invasive ways to conduct this research. I had to put animals down, because they would be defunct after trying to remove those bulkier devices. Neuralink is relatively humane, speaking as someone who has seen this technology in its infancy.

You're right. This monkey gets to earn banana smoothies all day. I'm sure it is quite happy. Much less happy are the animals we eat, those confined in zoos, and many of the pets people lock in tiny spaces.

Zoos are bastions of conservation. They are usually only filled by rescue animals, and their funds are often used in conservation and animal welfare programs.

Re: Monkey MindPong

#157

Post by Zecc »

elil17 wrote: post #150

For those who don’t know much about this field, this seems incredible. The reality is that this a tech demo that Neuralink is using to practice the basics. For other research groups in this field, this is tech from 20 years ago. The current state of the art is humans, mostly quadriplegic people, with chips which let them control robot arms with enough accuracy to pick up small delicate objects, play games, and type b…

Now imagine if someone could control an implant installed on a Mars probe.

Stupid speed of light, making it lag so much.

Re: Monkey MindPong

#158

Post by antoinexp »

lwansbrough wrote: post #75
quilombodigital wrote: post #56

"What better reward for a monkey, than a banana"? what about FREEDOM? I am not a vegan/whatever/animal activist, but maybe we should allow terminally-ill or death-row volunteers for this kind of experiment... With good money for the family, and I think some people would like to help mankind in the end. It is better than dying without accomplishing anything in life. So, you have at most one year with an inoperable tum…

You said you’re not a vegan, so to be clear your okay with factory farms crushing pigs to death but minimally invasive surgery on monkeys so they can play pong is too far? I don’t care about your stance on animal consumption particularly, but don’t you find that a little hypocritical?

Is your first statement not a kind of strawman argument? ( https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/strawman ) I mean, I am not vegan too but it doesn't mean I am ok with pigs crushed to death anyway. I think I see the point that you want to make though: somehow it should feel as if this minimal surgery ought to be "logically" more morally acceptable than killing animals to eat them. But don't you think morality could be just the name of a preference function deeply encoded in each individual brain and which doesn't require to be "rationally tuned"? (So that it can lead to weird irrational situations as in, I am ok with eating meat but I feel uncomfortable at the idea of killing animals)

Re: Monkey MindPong

#159

Post by alcover »

elil17 wrote: post #150

For those who don’t know much about this field, this seems incredible. The reality is that this a tech demo that Neuralink is using to practice the basics. For other research groups in this field, this is tech from 20 years ago. The current state of the art is humans, mostly quadriplegic people, with chips which let them control robot arms with enough accuracy to pick up small delicate objects, play games, and type b…

If the arm was in another room, he could feel around with it

This uncanny sentence is giving me dystopian vertigo. I picture a mob of derelicts home-invading a 130 years-old tech boomer, fighting his remote-controlled spare limbs from room to room..

Re: Monkey MindPong

#160

Post by bufferout »

syspec wrote: post #71
jm4 wrote: post #35

That 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…

The ends justify the means. You're benefiting from ages of actually cruel animal experiments, they got us to where we are today. Nobody loves them, but they're important in this case to help parralyzed humans maybe with ALS or some other disease communicate with loved ones

The assumption being that human lives are far more valuable than non-human lives.

Where it gets funky though is trying to quantify that to an extent: how many monkey disfigurements is worth fixing one human disfigurement? Ten? A thousand?

How many chimps would you blind in order to prevent humans being blinded by the latest lash extension cosmetic?

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