Live data from Hacker News

Elon Musk’s Neuralink wants to boost the brain to keep up with AI

techcrunch.com

91–100 of 290 posts

Re: Elon Musk’s Neuralink wants to boost the brain to keep up with AI

#91
post #30

There's a "non-invasive" brain-computer interface on the market. It's a little less ambitious; targeted towards people who practice meditation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muse_(headband)

This just EEG which has been around forever. I wouldn't call that a brain-computer interface

EEG is a brain computer interface. There has been many BCI projects that uses EEG.

Re: Elon Musk’s Neuralink wants to boost the brain to keep up with AI

#92

Am I the only one surprised (and concerned) by how many ventures Musk start at the same time?

No.

An entrepreneur doesn't have to do the day to day heavy lifting. An entrepreneur hires and works with people who do the heavy lifting.

Re: Elon Musk’s Neuralink wants to boost the brain to keep up with AI

#93
post #71

Am I the only one surprised (and concerned) by how many ventures Musk start at the same time?

I imagine he can get away with a certain amount of name recognition w/o running the day to day of the company himself.

From the WSJ article:

> Mr. Musk has taken an active role setting up the California-based company and may play a significant leadership role, according to people briefed on Neuralink’s plans, a bold step for a father of five who already runs two technologically complex businesses.

Re: Elon Musk’s Neuralink wants to boost the brain to keep up with AI

#94
post #49
post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Humans are typically the weak link in a security strategy... so I think this would make them harder to hack.

We're easier to socially engineer, but so far humans are monstrously hard to hack; we're as likely to break unpredictably or not at all, as be broken.

I would argue that humans are quite easy to hack although perhaps not in the way you were thinking. Our perceptions are quite easily and reliably hacked even when we know it is happening, as demonstrated by the success of stage magic and optical illusions[1]. At one point, there was a great deal of fear that companies and adversaries could influence large groups of people with subliminal messages[2]. Although the efficacy of these techniques are somewhat in doubt, on a more mundane level, most people are used to attempts by advertisers and marketers to subvert our desires and preferences to buy certain products. A great deal of research and money has been spent on essentially hacking our desires and exploiting our brain's response to intermittent reward and social cues. This has brought us product placement in movies, celebrity endorsements and video games that produce changes in the brain not much different from those found in drug addicts. Scientists have engineered fast food to exploit our evolutionary desire for sugars and fats -- something that was good at one point but now serves only to make us and fast food executives' wallets fat. I would consider all of these a type of human hacking simply due to the reliability of their effect, if not on an individual level, certainly on groups of people.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_illusion [2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subliminal_stimuli

Re: Elon Musk’s Neuralink wants to boost the brain to keep up with AI

#95
post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I appreciate that, however I feel constraints give meaning to a task, you might argue that I can self impose them, I will argue that I wish those constraints to be imposed by society or by the conditions needed to advance science. To do that, eventually as AI's come online, I will have to stop being human.

So everyone should suffer, because you enjoy it?

That's not fair. The argument you seem to be advocating for is that we can make people happier by reducing scarcity, they are offering you a counter example.

'happy' is hard, it could very well be that suffering is an important part of happiness... who knows, but it's a valid line of argument.

Re: Elon Musk’s Neuralink wants to boost the brain to keep up with AI

#96

Am I the only one surprised (and concerned) by how many ventures Musk start at the same time?

No. An entrepreneur doesn't have to do the day to day heavy lifting. An entrepreneur hires and works with people who do the heavy lifting.

Why's this guy being downvoted? There are plenty of capable people out there that can run a given Muskventure. He's got enough money to spitball an idea, spend a good bit of time hiring the right people, choosing a CEO, and letting it ride. The only issue his it seems like his ideas won't make much money - how can you sell Neuralink when the technology doesn't exist to make it feasible?

But give it 15 years and Neuralink is the only product on the market that allows humans to be relevant in the face of A.I.... Smells like the kind of profits one would have if, for example, they dragged an asteroid to Mars and monopolized water, or weaponized Saturn's orbit and controlled the only port for deep space travel, etc. Seems silly now but guaranteed there's gonna be people wealthy on a scale we've never seen when these starts of things come through.

Or we'll all be dead. Whatever.

Re: Elon Musk’s Neuralink wants to boost the brain to keep up with AI

#97

The universities, companies, and individuals involved in this machine learning renaissance are a collective super-intelligence. It's amazing how fast we can learn now, fuelled by information-sharing over the internet. I'm literally forgetting the names of everyday acquaintances because I'm learning and retaining so much new stuff. The problem, from an individual's perspective is that, while you can stand on the shoul…

I just started reading the Nexus trilogy by Ramez Naam (http://rameznaam.com/nexus/). It's quite good so far, and explores some of these concepts from a sci-fi bent.

Re: Elon Musk’s Neuralink wants to boost the brain to keep up with AI

#98
post #34

forgive me if i am wrong, i don't know much about these matters. Just a quick thought. For me Elon Musks ventures seem a bit like angel-investors. Every company he founds has probability of making billions (car-company, rockets, tunnelling etc.), though they are also high risk. Of course he can't spread his risk as broad as a investor. But while risky, every venture seems to be very calculated, the opposite of crazy.…

he needs the money, but he doesn't want it. he's not playing the business game for the game's sake, he wants to advance civilization and the best way to do it is via billion dollar disruptive businesses, so that's what he's doing. i applaud him for keeping true to this after however many years of having access to that much assets.

We should be so lucky he's not purely profit-driven. Even on /r/futurology, supposedly a place of boundless imagination and hope for the future, I get attacked for suggesting that maybe it's not a bad idea to at least investigate the potential behind solar roads. Nope, those are stupid and a waste of money, fuck me for being an idealist.

My point is most of society is self-limiting for whatever reason (obsessed with profit, obsessed with status quo, etc). Luckily we've got folks like Musk who don't seem to give a shit and do what they think is right for humans. I'd love some other examples of people like this.

Another example: Zuckerberg took flak for his Internet.org idea, because clearly he's an evil Capitalist that just wants to profit off the advertising clicks of Indian goat farmers.

Re: Elon Musk’s Neuralink wants to boost the brain to keep up with AI

#99
post #30

There's a "non-invasive" brain-computer interface on the market. It's a little less ambitious; targeted towards people who practice meditation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muse_(headband)

What's the point of this thing? See if you're meditating right?

Anybody know if it works? Could be cool if I could meditate "good" or "not good" in order to turn a light on and off, or turn on my cat feeder or whatever lol

Re: Elon Musk’s Neuralink wants to boost the brain to keep up with AI

#100

Am I the only one surprised (and concerned) by how many ventures Musk start at the same time?

the guy has money, an incandescent drive to keep things moving and a connection to everyone of ability of connectivity or power.

You dont let opportunities slide with those boxes ticked.

Post reply on HN