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Monkey MindPong

neuralink.com

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Re: Monkey MindPong

#171

Post by povik »

deanCommie wrote: post #143
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…

I think it's 2 things: 1) The deliberately soothing British voice does not come off as soothing. It comes off as insidious, and threatening. This is in part influenced by our own cultural context with media like Black Mirror, but the effect is there nonetheless. 2) The comparison points to "pair with your iPhone" feel WILDLY misaligned with the rest of the message. The premise of Neuralink is that this is a world-cha…

> Then all of a sudden you have a situation where a living sentient being is paired to an iPhone like some sort of bluetooth speaker.

I think you put your finger on why that part was unsettling.

Re: Monkey MindPong

#172

Post by KineticLensman »

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.

> 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.

Rhesus Macaques [0] have a lifespan of thirty years. Thirty years. Thirty years in a massively controlled environment, often sedentary, with limited opportunities to socialise with peers, and the simple pleasures of mutual grooming, lying in the sun etc. Lab animals that are rehomed in rehab centres / zoos etc are often overweight, in poor health, and have a range of nervous tics and social inexperience. Many adapt to the non-lab environment, but they tend to have underlying health problems and issues with acceptance by the alpha individuals because they lack the years of experience required to understand and fit into the complex group etiquette.

Animals may still be the best model for testing drugs / devices that will go into humans, but lets not understate the massive cost to the individual animals concerned.

[Source: personal involvement with a primate rehab centre]

[0] https://animalia.bio/rhesus-macaque

Re: Monkey MindPong

#174

Post by jdsalaro »

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…

I'm really interested in learning more about the process of putting existing research into practice as a process from an economics and innovation point of view.

Does anyone have book, talks and other material you'd suggest looking at?

Re: Monkey MindPong

#175

Post by lentil_soup »

mvzvm wrote: post #156
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.

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.

is that really always the case? do you have some data about it I can look into?

I stopped going to zoos because I didn't want to contribute to keeping animals like that, but would like to read information to the contrary if that's the case.

Re: Monkey MindPong

#176

Post by kweks »

nexuist wrote: post #136
anonytrary wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe pong has less entropy than the initial task of putting the cursor into the box. Pong is a 1D game with one degree of freedom, where you are effectively moving the cursor along the Y-axis. The previous task involved moving the cursor on the XY-plane, which involves two degrees of freedom. Therefore, pong is less impressive than the previous task.

This is difficult to say because pong involves moving components while the box stays still. In order to play pong the monkey must first estimate where the ball will go and then give the command to move the cursor. This indicates that Neuralink may be able to handle complex multitasking, i.e. you may be able to walk or drive and the system will still be able to decode you correctly.

If you watch closely, you can see the monkey is still "playing" pong with his right hand/paw. (He's pushing and pulling on the 'smoothie straw' in sync with the brain signals / on screen actions)

Re: Monkey MindPong

#177

Post by spurgu »

MperorM wrote: post #142
gitowiec wrote: post #140

Poor monkey. It should belong to the forest or other natural environment it was took from. I don't get it why there are still tests run on animals. The first what technology should bring is a replacement for every animal test subject.

we torture and kill so many more animals to eat meat and dairy, than we do to conduct science. While I share your view, I think it's important to point out that this really isn't the best place to start if you want to reduce animal suffering.

Precisely. This is on the contrary one of the least bad areas to conduct animal experiments. Humanity would be nowhere without all kinds of animal experiments and I challenge everyone who thinks it's cruel to think about how cruel it would be for humans to erase all the advances made thanks to them.

Re: Monkey MindPong

#178

Post by spurgu »

bufferout wrote: post #167

Human/animal ethics is a minefield of hypocrisy. Why are we mostly comfortable with performing these types of experiments on other lower-IQ species but would baulk at doing them on intellectually-handicapped children for instance? I believe our morality base for these types of decisions is mostly based on the religious traditions of humans somehow being 'special' in the scheme of things. Domestic pets also partially…

Out of all animal experiments this is the one where you take a stance? Or are you tooting your moral superiority everywhere?

Feel free to stop using everything stemming from animal experiments. They're more or less a necessity, at least until we can model the animal kingdom with AI. Maybe you should start trying to cope with the fact instead of fighting it.

Re: Monkey MindPong

#179

Post by nmca »

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…

I'd encourage anyone worried about the ethics of animal experiments in research like this to come up with prioritisation metrics over a number of animal welfare cause areas as an exercise. Surely a small number of well-cared for animals in high-upside experiments are lower on the list than say, pigs for pork sausages, which have worse welfare, smaller upsides and are more cost efficient to campaign against.

Re: Monkey MindPong

#180

Post by PetitPrince »

jonplackett wrote: post #168
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…

I had no idea these things were possible. Are they currently insanely expensive / only experimental? How available are they?

IIRC this is only experimental. The most reliable/interesting stuff are relying on ECoG (== put electrodes on the surface of the brain), and this means you have to perform a surgery.

For human applications, most of the time the researchers are using patients that requires several brains surgery (e.g severe epilepsy) so that they can do some sort of fly-by experiments (several surgery are needed so that they can also remove the electrodes).

I studied this at uni; my knowledge is probably not up to date.

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