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Neuralink 'Participant 1' says his life has changed

fortune.com

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Re: Neuralink 'Participant 1' says his life has changed

#321

Post by notarobot123 »

rc5150 wrote: post #233
ckemere wrote: post #227

I think that the negativity here is unfortunate. The reality is that it’s very hard to see a normal VC level return on the $100M+ Elon and friends have invested here. And don’t let anyone fool you - this is the fundamental reason the BCI field has moved slowly. If Neuralink proceeds to a scenario where quadriplegic patients can get reliable (ie lifelong) control of their computers for less than $100k that will be a h…

The unfortunate part is that your first thought went to return on investment rather than the humanitarian angle, which I think is the common perspective; optics and money. Then there's the pessimists, like me, wondering how long it'll take to Neuralink to turn their army of computer connected paraplegics into some Mechanical Turk-esque Grok clean up.

It does kinda feel like there's an accidental attempt to LARP the plot of Kurt Vonnegut's The Sirens of Titan (if you squint hard enough) - richest man in the world, brain control, Mars colony, attempted coup on Earth... all the plot points are there!

Re: Neuralink 'Participant 1' says his life has changed

#322

Post by positron26 »

lynx97 wrote: post #313
positron26 wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By commercializing open source technology development so that the paying non-programmer and the ecosystem dependent SME's and Fortune 500's can meaningfully drive development of what they need. You can see my gloriously broken prototype at PrizeForge. Currently between iterations and still not quite viable enough to properly operate.

Well, Sun Accessibility Office already did great work from roughly 2003 to 2008. Then came 2008. And Sun AND IBM terminated their Accessibility work. From then on, Orca was basically kept alive by a single developer for roughly a decade. I am not 100% sure if she has given up by now, but I'd be surprised if she didn'.t So, giving this job to Fortune500 companies is demonstratably not sustainable. A single higher up c…

You read my comment, but you are missing that I'm building to tools to bundle the work together, which is the way to make a strong enough open foundation that things like open accessibility technologies can have more ground to stand on.

Scratching our own itch works better when coordination means we can bundle together a whole lot of itch. There is no such thing as individual incentive to cooperate without a means of coordination. Anything else is just the volunteer's dilemma, and so only small itches get scratched.

Not everything can be handled using death by a thousand cuts. In the Rust in 2021 blog [1], the importance of depth versus breadth was pointed out. Depth comes from dedicated, full-time, paid work.

[1]: https://matklad.github.io/2020/09/12/rust-in-2021.html]

Re: Neuralink 'Participant 1' says his life has changed

#323

Post by JumpCrisscross »

rc5150 wrote: post #233
ckemere wrote: post #227

I think that the negativity here is unfortunate. The reality is that it’s very hard to see a normal VC level return on the $100M+ Elon and friends have invested here. And don’t let anyone fool you - this is the fundamental reason the BCI field has moved slowly. If Neuralink proceeds to a scenario where quadriplegic patients can get reliable (ie lifelong) control of their computers for less than $100k that will be a h…

The unfortunate part is that your first thought went to return on investment rather than the humanitarian angle, which I think is the common perspective; optics and money. Then there's the pessimists, like me, wondering how long it'll take to Neuralink to turn their army of computer connected paraplegics into some Mechanical Turk-esque Grok clean up.

> unfortunate part is that your first thought went to return on investment rather than the humanitarian angle

It’s just a pragmatic take on sustainability of innovation. If nobody—no person or government or non-profit—would find value in the future of the work, it merits questioning why do it versus something else.

Re: Neuralink 'Participant 1' says his life has changed

#324

Post by JumpCrisscross »

distortionfield wrote: post #287
bluefirebrand wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Things have costs so we should be ok with a society where the wealthy exploit poor and desperate people?

Exploiting? I’m lefty, but this dude volunteered for the procedure and was fully reimbursed. I’m having a really hard time seeing “exploited” on this one.

> this dude volunteered for the procedure and was fully reimbursed

And it worked! The animal subjects were exploited. This man was not.

The only way I can square this circle is with the hypothesis that everything a billionaire does must be exploitative of the poor. (Which holds about as much water as its balancing hypothesis on the far right about leftists being good for nothing more than whining.)

Re: Neuralink 'Participant 1' says his life has changed

#325

Post by itake »

bluefirebrand wrote: post #254
SV_BubbleTime wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Things have costs so we should be ok with a society where the wealthy exploit poor and desperate people?

The problem here is what is the best use of our resources? Neurolink has raised a total of $1.29B USD.

Is funding a high risk project the right allocation of $1.29B that supports a tiny fraction of humanity or would $1.29B be better spent on cancer research, addressing childhood food insecurities (free school lunches), etc?

Re: Neuralink 'Participant 1' says his life has changed

#326

Post by JumpCrisscross »

positron26 wrote: post #275
ckemere wrote: post #227

I think that the negativity here is unfortunate. The reality is that it’s very hard to see a normal VC level return on the $100M+ Elon and friends have invested here. And don’t let anyone fool you - this is the fundamental reason the BCI field has moved slowly. If Neuralink proceeds to a scenario where quadriplegic patients can get reliable (ie lifelong) control of their computers for less than $100k that will be a h…

Probably a decent reason that all such augmentations need to be built on open technologies. If no provider can guarantee future support, only open strategies are even viable for users.

> decent reason that all such augmentations need to be built on open technologies

Open is a red herring. Mandate documentation and bonding for long-term support. If the cheapest way to provide those are through an open-source platform, great. If not, that’s also fine. Patient outcomes outweigh ideological preferences.

Re: Neuralink 'Participant 1' says his life has changed

#327

Post by JumpCrisscross »

michaelmrose wrote: post #175
dvt wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That is basically the textbook definition of unethical medical practice This is an extremely uncharitable interpretation of what was said. First of all, it's really hard to get malpractice here, as consent is implied (unless you'd think he'd purposefully do a bad or sloppy job). You could say it's irresponsible, and that argument holds more water, but when folks are in these terrible situations (i.e. terminally ill…

Being blind or disabled isn't anything like dying of cancer. We allow compassionate testing of therapies that might allow you to live longer because the alternative is an ugly death. Consent is never ever ever implied and you don't have to deliberately do a poor job to be liable. Just not having good evidence of the therapy is liable to improve their lot and doing it anyway or failing to impart an accurate picture of…

> Being blind or disabled isn't anything like dying of cancer

I think it’s presumptuous to conclude from afar where someone’s affliction lies on a scale of suffering.

People should be free to do with their bodies what they choose. To describe and act on their subjective experience of themselves as they see fit, not as a third party deems they ought to.

Re: Neuralink 'Participant 1' says his life has changed

#328

Post by ZYbCRq22HbJ2y7 »

devinprater wrote: post #59

I'll let other blind people go first, but I'm definitely some one that would love, love, love to be able to see. Driving, knowing body language, playing any and every video game out there, shoot yeah!

I hope that you get that opportunity one day.

Re: Neuralink 'Participant 1' says his life has changed

#329

Post by JumpCrisscross »

michaelmrose wrote: post #180
drdaeman wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure whenever it's a good idea to cheer for lack of life-changing technical progress just because it's ran by a company governed by an ethically problematic person. The person is temporary, the progress is permanent.

It is if 99.9% don't need the tech and face worse outcomes in real life because of Musk

> It is if 99.9% don't need the tech and face worse outcomes in real life because of Musk

Everyone with motor dysfunction should suffer so we can stick it to a racist man child? Who’s the villain in that narrative?

Re: Neuralink 'Participant 1' says his life has changed

#330

Post by JumpCrisscross »

vjvjvjvjghv wrote: post #133
SilverElfin wrote: post #15

Neuralink is amazing technology and watching videos of participants who have completely different abilities and freedom with Neuralink implants is mind blowing. It’s sad that many want to dismiss these amazing achievements just because it’s an Elon Musk founded company. At some point you simply have to acknowledge his success (and his team’s), and hope they get further with all of this. For those interested in their…

It’s actually the other way around. Musk is getting a ton of attention even for stuff that’s inferior to what other teams are doing.

Isn’t that still a win for the field?
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