Live data from Hacker News

Monkey MindPong

neuralink.com

241–250 of 291 posts

Re: Monkey MindPong

#241
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?

I thought the ctrl-labs guys did that.

Re: Monkey MindPong

#242
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..

I think you want to read Gil "the arm" Hamilton stories by Larry Niven

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Known_Space_characters...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flatlander_(short_story_collec...

Re: Monkey MindPong

#243

I don't understand how you can gather such a targeted signal by sticking wires in just a few places. Like, you can't just tape a metal coat hanger to an iPhone and start getting text messages through it. But somehow you can put some wires just as few mm into the surface of a brain and extract fine motor signals??

The most interesting thing here is not the mind reading, it is the miniaturization of computing and sparse data transfer. Neuralink off-loaded the computation to the sensor, sending back aggregate data snapshots. Usually you will need massive ASIC/FPGA computation banks with a lot of messy to handle the data transfer and readout but they took a shortcut bye sending only counts of spikes that exceeds a certain thresho…

*messy cables

*a shortcut by

Re: Monkey MindPong

#244

Its projects like these that makes me wonder that what the actual heck am I doing with my life.

Same feelings, I started to think about dropping current ordinary app dev job and humbly get back to science. In 20 years world is going to be a completely different place.

Re: Monkey MindPong

#245

This particular exercise could've been done with EEG. Where Neuralink excels is in having a much higher possible bitrate. Pong is the absolute POC. Neuralink will most likely be able to achieve higher differentiability and thus be able to complete tasks of higher complexity, so stay tuned for even more impressive tasks. EEG can't get past pong; it's limited by physics itself. The solution is to put the electrodes in…

But can it run Doom?

Re: Monkey MindPong

#246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I don't think we necessarily have to sacrifice something. We learn new skills and knowledge all the time. Using the new limb could be a skill. Maybe it's not as dexterous as the motor cortex and real hands at first, but there might be some benefits over natural hands.

I think that you sacrifice something when you learn a new skill. The brain have a finite capacity and it just forget not used facts or skills, and the reason it's forgetting is because it's always learning.

For instance, I'm learning German and I can feel how is messing with my English, specially with the spelling (English is not my first language).

Re: Monkey MindPong

#247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Also part of why voice interfaces didn't take off for complex tasks, talking about performing the task interferes too much with the mental process.

Re: Monkey MindPong

#248

Absolutely horrifying. A digital interface to the human brain is the most dangerous thing to possibly exist. Thank god I was born early enough that I'll die before this technology becomes widespread. I hope.

Don't worry, after you die they will insert probes into your dead brain and resurrect your mind, and you can live in hell forever!

Or you can revive your whole family and friends, and enjoy heaven.. Is the glass half empty or half full?

Re: Monkey MindPong

#249
post #14

Our brain interface tech is so primitive, but it holds incredible promise if we're able to solve it. Imagine being able to virtualize consciousness, back up memories, live forever... The problem is how invasive it is, and how little reward there is initially. We have to solve the chicken and egg problem, but unfortunately cracking open the skull and sticking electrodes into the brain is not something one typically wa…

Digitizing consciousness is a much harder problem, because we don't really understand how much of the brain works, the areas involved with conscious thought in particular, and the exact learning mechanisms the brain employs. The way we do deep learning these days is a very rough approximation of how the brain might work, and backpropagation is not really biologically plausible. So IMO, digitized consciousness is prob…

I would argue that there is one consciousness, which is split into differing perspectives. I call that the multi-perspective being. This solves the teleport paradox (if you clone someone then where is the consciousness). The consciousness is everywhere, but split into differing perspectives.

Re: Monkey MindPong

#250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think we necessarily have to sacrifice something. We learn new skills and knowledge all the time. Using the new limb could be a skill. Maybe it's not as dexterous as the motor cortex and real hands at first, but there might be some benefits over natural hands.

I think that you sacrifice something when you learn a new skill. The brain have a finite capacity and it just forget not used facts or skills, and the reason it's forgetting is because it's always learning. For instance, I'm learning German and I can feel how is messing with my English, specially with the spelling (English is not my first language).

But if it has a finite capacity, when does it fill completely and with what? I guess it's entirely possible that only kids who are growing up can learn to use the extra limb and adults won't be able to.
Post reply on HN