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Personally, I think the most exciting part of Neuralink and other companies working on BCIs is the fact that they're trying to keep these implants in long-term, and scale the deployment significantly. Most academic BCI research thus far has just been trials, without patients getting to keep the implants long term.
It brings me comfort to know that such a fallback will eventually exist, should I need one.
Note that specialists are saying that another promising drug from Scholar Rock [3] would probably prevent any further weakening if used in conjunction with my current treatment. Unfortunately, the FDA takes a long time to approve new medications and I have heard this one is particularly special because there is potential for abuse by athletes.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spinal_muscular_atrophy
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nusinersen
[3]: https://scholarrock.com/our-pipeline/spinal-muscular-atrophy...
Neuralink has now achieved product market fit
- These types of BCI are effectively an array of switches. You typically map a motor thought eg. "Move your arm up" => Moving the cursor up. This maybe how then you control a game such as chess if it has keyboard shortcuts. Eye movement could be done in the same way but there are easier ways. Interestingly to measure these motor commands you dont really need intracortical BCI. You can do it with surface EEG. Sticking it inside your head - closer to centres where you can measure intentional thought makes the signal cleaner and more reliable
- The big breakthroughs is really making this intracortical stuff safer and long term. Its getting there. But this isnt it
The big wins out there - are in speech BCI. Thats hardcore. Even the two main studies doing this - each of the participants requires a LOT of training time to make a Machine model work efficiently.
This makes me very excited! I have Spinal Muscular Atrophy type 2 [1] and I have lost most of my physical capabilities save for 2-3 fingers and of course speech. Although I am now on Nusinersen [2] treatments I am still becoming weaker over time, albeit extremely slowly. It brings me comfort to know that such a fallback will eventually exist, should I need one. Note that specialists are saying that another promising…
As soon as you can stimulate tactile impressions it's over. You can put on your VR Headset and be in a completely different world. Eventually the interface for eyes and ears will improve, but tactility would be a huge step towards being in a completely virtual world.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
like?
They are referring to Tesla promotional FSD videos being heavily edited. https://www.pcmag.com/news/tesla-faked-autopilot-video-engin... While not an Musk company, it is worth remembering Theranos demos being convincingly faked as well. I don't know if it is happening here but it does happen.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
They are referring to Tesla promotional FSD videos being heavily edited. https://www.pcmag.com/news/tesla-faked-autopilot-video-engin... While not an Musk company, it is worth remembering Theranos demos being convincingly faked as well. I don't know if it is happening here but it does happen.
Doesn’t have to be faked either, I remember the Emotiv made similar claims and had similar demos where to the best of my understanding eventually people figured out it wasn’t really reading your brainwaves but rather facial muscles or something (a friend of mine works in brain computer interfacing and explained it to me once but I don’t remember the details — it wasn’t that they were actively trying to mislead necess…
But it may be fake in the sense that it's not viable for a long term use and / or necessitates a very controlled environment. That would indeed match the pattern for Musk companies - articulate a grandiose vision, show a working demo to amaze the world, then show progress on some scale but without disclosing the issues that actually would make to product not viable or not financially viable in the long term, and sell the hell out of it to investors.
If you look closely, all his companies work like that. Yes, including Tesla ! Their car business is at the point where they may start loosing money again - competition, slowdown in EV subsides, but also factors that allowed them to reach an apparent profitability - for example, their service is nonexistent, while it used to be great. Basically they sold millions of cars, while their service centers are still scaled for thousands, not millions. This will a big financial liability, but not really visible in their financial for now.
But hey, they already transitioned to another business that promise to make even more money in the future with other promising tech ! AI anybody ?