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Monkey MindPong

neuralink.com

211–220 of 291 posts

Re: Monkey MindPong

#211
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…

Would it be possible to control an extra arm somehow? Or brain plasticity doesn't go that far?

The brain is very plastic, it probably would adapt at any consistent input. A most interesting question is, what would you sacrifice?

Because the part that you would use to control your extra tentacle or whatever is probably currently used for something. If you are missing an arm is obvious what part of your brain you would use, otherwise, some sacrifice probably have to happen.

Even reading, it seems, take the space that is used in people that can't read for some detailed visual processing (1).

Maybe you could add some extra processing in the extra arm, so it's more "cheap" to use.

(1) - I learnt that in "Reading in the brain" by Stanislas Dehaene.

Re: Monkey MindPong

#212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

>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. Pretty much this on a different and somehow related note I would still try to check if the algorithm does not just trick us into thinking that it is doing what the monkey wants it would be nice if they post some…

How would it know which direction to move in if the position of the goal was not part of the input to whatever control algorithm they're using? The part of the code that detects the overlap of the cursor and the goal should be completely separate from the part that is translating the implant inputs into x,y movement so I don't see how it could be driven by anything other than input from the monkey.

Re: Monkey MindPong

#213
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 they handle the software anything like they do for the tesla this will b a massive net negative.

Re: Monkey MindPong

#214
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…

One of the neuralink innovations is having the electrodes installed very precisely via a robot surgeon, which supposedly allows them to make things easier/better/more precise -

https://www.dezeen.com/2020/09/02/neuralink-elon-musk-brain-...

Previous discussion of surgical robot https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24311152

Re: Monkey MindPong

#215
post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious - does taking a signal straight from the brain reduce reaction times? Is there a big loss of time sending the signal down to the arm, or is the reaction time mostly cognitive anyway?

Yes. Nerve signals travel at about 50-60 m/s through the limbs, so it takes about 20-30ms for a signal to travel from brain to the hand muscles. Source: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nerve_conduction_velocity

Still better than Sonos Multiroom Speaker sync (70-75ms).

Re: Monkey MindPong

#217
post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious - does taking a signal straight from the brain reduce reaction times? Is there a big loss of time sending the signal down to the arm, or is the reaction time mostly cognitive anyway?

Yes. Nerve signals travel at about 50-60 m/s through the limbs, so it takes about 20-30ms for a signal to travel from brain to the hand muscles. Source: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nerve_conduction_velocity

So Neuralink have a large secondary market of FPS players!

Re: Monkey MindPong

#218
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…

It's not hard to imagine them implanting Neuralink-type devices in humans to make Minority Report a reality. And that's just read-mode. With write-mode, I bet they could easily figure out a way to make wrong thoughts physically impossible to think. It's only a matter of time before certain governments start alpha-testing this type of technology in places like Xinjiang or Myanmar.

If they haven't been already for 10-15 years.

Re: Monkey MindPong

#219
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…

Would it be possible to control an extra arm somehow? Or brain plasticity doesn't go that far?

Absolutely. The first test subjects of this technology were chimps who weren't paraplegic, just controlling extra arms.

Re: Monkey MindPong

#220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>plenty of medical progress was made via Nazi and Japanese experiments on live subjects during the second world war [citation needed]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_cover-up_of_Japanes... http://www.bu.edu/articles/2019/learn-from-nazi-medical-rese...

Plenty of unethical experiments. What was learnt? What progress was made?
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