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Elon Musk Launches Neuralink To Connect Brains With Computers (businessinsider.com)
At Recode's conference last year, Elon Musk said he would love to see someone do something about linking human brains with computers. With no other human being volunteering, Mr. Musk -- who founded PayPal and OpenAI, thought of Hyperloop, is working on a boring company, and runs SpaceX, TeslaX, SolarCity -- is now working on it. From a report on WSJ: Internal sources tell the WSJ that the company, called Neuralink, is developing "neural lace" technology that would allow people to communicate directly with machines without going through a physical interface. Neural lace involves implanting electrodes in the brain so people could upload or download their thoughts to or from a computer, according to the WSJ report. The product could allow humans to achieve higher levels of cognitive function. From WSJ's report (paywalled): The founder and chief executive of Tesla and Space Exploration Technologies Corp.has launched another company called Neuralink Corp., according to people familiar with the matter. Neuralink is pursuing what Mr. Musk calls "neural lace" technology, implanting tiny brain electrodes that may one day upload and download thoughts. Mr. Musk didn't respond to a request for comment. Max Hodak, who said he is a "member of the founding team," confirmed the company's existence and Mr. Musk's involvement.
seems like it would just amplify the bullshit drivel already in society
Find out how many times you can ghost dub an augmented cyberbrain before the owner becomes catatonic.
Elon Musk is nothing but a front for DARPA, just like Amazon, Google, et all
Elon Musk personally has not invented SHIT. never forget this
You act like there's something wrong with bullshit drivel.
Original article: https://www.wsj.com/articles/e... (WSJ paywall)
Other coverage: http://www.businessinsider.com...
Worked great for the user
so the ship to Mars will be like a Borg cube?
We can't even secure our non-brain-connected computers, devices, vehicles, etc, from outside intrusion, why in the world would I want to open the door for someone to hack my brain through a computer? Thanks, but no thanks. I'll leave my brain standalone and air-gapped from computers and the internet. The last thing anyone needs is some script-kiddie deciding to brick someone's head for the lulz. Also this would potentially redefine what a 'botnet' is. Nope, nope, nope.
Kudos for starting, but it's a long long road from reading electrical signals from implanted electrodes to:
A) an implant that you would actually want to live with in normal life (relatively free of complications, side effects, long life, replaceable when it malfunctions, etc.)
B) a quality of communication that exceeds simple demonstration of concept low bandwidth gimmicks
These types of bio-electrical neural-computer interfaces are starting to bear fruit for the profoundly blind, deaf, and amputees - cases where they have nothing and anything is an infinite improvement. Moving from that (today's) stage to improvement over normal function will take decades of development, and investors who don't care for much resembling profits or ROI in the meantime. Patents they might file today will likely expire before the patented idea generates any profits.
Again, kudos for starting, we've already got the Hollywood take on what this tech might do, and we can tell from our (currently crude) cellphone interfaces to the web what a small sliver of the potential could be. It will be awesome when it gets here - but I might require major advances in life extension if I'm going to see it get "better than normal."
April is a few days early this year.
for this thing to BSOD
"I'd just like to emphasise that taking a million years isn't a metaphor here..." -Rich Bradshaw
I really hope this isn't related to the boring company. :(
https://docs.google.com/docume...
Ono Sendai to Mitsubishi adapters?
'nuf said
With over 2000 billionaires in the world now.. It's sad only one of them seems to be spending their money on interesting things... Actually involved and goal oriented.. Everyone else at that stage just seems to be obsessed with power and more money.
I'm 40 now, I hope my expected retirement savings could buy a one way ticket to Mars.... Not bloody likely but if it was available, I'd do it just to see what could be built there for the remainder of my time.
IMO humans should be focused on expansion out/throughout space. If there is a future for man, it is ultimately there. How car could we get if the trillion a year spent on military was on space and research.
Neural lace involves implanting electrodes in the brain so people could upload or download their thoughts to or from a computer
Isn't there enough porn already?
I mean, if you thought my Rule 34 fan fiction was bad, just wait until I can simply upload my thoughts.
And immediately afterward, they say:
So it's pretty clear that not only is there a physical interface, the electrodes, but this interface is pretty darn invasive because you have to have it implanted in your skull.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
I need a Sino-logic 16, Sogo 7 Data Gloves, a GPL stealth module, one Burdine intelligent translator... Thompson iPhone.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
with scatter-shot associative activations
isn't it much better to just have the computer listen to what's on our mind after we've focussed it into a coherent intent or action-story.
In other words, isn't it better to just have the computer listen to us speak, and sense our intentional motions. Yes, trackpad, touchpad, haptic glove I'm talking about you.
If they're trying to say the computer could directly interact with the neocortex to provide additional associative memory capacity, I'm skeptical. The brain focuses stuff down and has specific I/O areas, and that's where you probably have to interact with it, to get manageable complexity.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
Elon Musk is clearly easily bored.
Starts cool things, but moves on to something else on a whim. Are investment analysts going to consider this a risk for his current main companies?
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
There is a MUCH bigger issue here than what someone might do with external computerized enhancements to the brain. Remember how just about everything is connected to the Internet? And how the Internet remembers everything? This means your thoughts will be recorded. And the Thought Police will arrive soon after....
Musk is very adverse to AI's doing these functions. Maybe neural laces will give humans enough of an advantage that they stop wanting strong AI.
This might be the most important article you read this week: http://www.vanityfair.com/news...
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Duh there's already an invention to stop that!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
_ _ _ Go for the eyes Boo! GO FOR THE EYES!
Remember when that Ph.D. connected Apple computers to paraplegics so they could walk again? Was in the late 70's or early 1980's, if I remember correctly. At the time, the Apple was on a dolly that followed them.
The guy who did it got his own lab at Wright State University and gave numerous talks. I remember discussing the technology of decoding the brain's signals back then. He said some Federal agency was VERY interested in decoding brain signals and gave him all the funding he wanted.
Maybe, but it isn't going to happen. Where this fool gets the money to waste on his bullshit is a real mystery. I've seen very few people that can fart through their mouths, he's elevated it to a bonafide artform. Now, THAT is exceptional. Whatever, yawn.
Breed people to be 2ft tall so everything lasts longer.
John Lilly: Altered States Jan 1983 Omni Magazine:
https://erowid.org/culture/characters/lilly_john/lilly_john_interview1.shtml
This is a good opportunity to loop the tape.
;-)
Christopher Walken fans know what I'm talking about.
They can take my LifeAlert pendant when they pry it from my cold dead fingers.
NerveGear
#DeleteFacebook
No. It will arrive soon befo
Have gnu, will travel.
Elon Musk in the time-traveling Jack the Ripper from the future who fled backwards in time to us.
Now he needs the technology to build his own time machine and does this step by step by 'inventing' the necessary parts.
Nice report; for what grade?
I'd be more worried about a hacker threatening to shut down my brain I don't transfer all my money to their account immediately. Or a bored teenager just shutting down people's brains for the fun of it.
This space intentionally left blank
could Tony Stark I mean Elon Musk just admit the truth that an Iron Man style armored suit is his end game?
I read somewhere about a theory that Elon Musk is actually an alien stranded on Earth and he's trying to advance human civilization to the point where he can build a spaceship and return to his home. I'm beginning to believe it.
this project helping a woman locked in by ALS.
Hooking up a bunch of electrodes is not that simple. You might have hundreds, maybe thousands of points to connect, just to start to get things going. (That is, if you could figure out where they are)..And even if you could map the neural pathways of a human brain. Are the paths all the same in each brain? General paths? Yes. Individual paths? I doubt it. Due to brain plasticity it would make things even harder. A brain is not a mass production motherboard.
I remember a long time ago a person I used to know had an uncle who needed brain surgery. The surgery went fantastically well. But he died from brain fungus. You are at risk, any time you open the skull. I did a search on Google to see if they have solved the problem, but the results were very discouraging. One was quite unnerving! http://www.livescience.com/477...
As others have already indicated, I suspect its a lot easier to start a research division/company than creating, packaging, and supporting such a complex system, in mass production, for general consuption.
I think it is cool, ambitious, and laudable. I just don't want to provide the user support. Nor do I envy the poor souls who will no doubt have to tease out all the legal implications of ownership and privacy of one's own thoughts. I can just hear the rationales now. "Your images are stored on our cloud, so we the company own those. Your blogs are stored there as well, and are similarly owned. Now your thought are stored there as well and so legally they are no different and are likewise owned by the company as well".
Yes I think our troubles with privacy are just getting started.
Some patient really need brain electrodes. For the others, it looks like a bad idea to introduce an alien substance that will increase the risk of microbes creating biofilms. As Wikipedia notes (with a reference): "60-70% of nosocomial or hospital acquired infections are associated with the implantation of a biomedical device"
There are serious technological and social problems that come with this.
Firstly, security on one's brainwaves is critical. While current technology allows pretty coarse-grained analysis of brainwaves, that will change. When it does, those coarse-grained waveforms will be reanalyzed to delve deeper.
Secondly, what protections exist for biometric data? In a world where the state is trying to *reduce* encryption, protection of biometric information (ESPECIALLY brainwaves) is critical. It doesn't get much more intimate than that.
Thirdly, the social dimensions that come with such security is significant. As Europe pushes for the right to be forgotten, why can I not push for the "right to remember", even if that means recording everything I experience digitally? Technologically, we're chimps with calculators...We can barely handle the tech we have, but Musk wants to boldly push ever forward...I support him, but such a move has to be done carefully and deliberately.
You are assuming that your thoughts are worth recording. A lot of people seem to think that.
If Elon Musk volunteers to be the first to get that chip implant surgery. No? You don't want to have the surgery Elon? Oh well.
Does anyone remember the movie "Brainstorm" (1983)? http://www.imdb.com/title/tt00... It was about a direct way to record and replay experiences to and from the brain with sensory input and everything else as a real memory. There was a scene where the executive is replaying a scene of a romp with two hookers. it was clear the dopamine (or whatever) addled high had completely broken him. As a 16 year old with a mattress full of Playboys, my first thought was "That's scary, not really sure I want that." I am not particularly perceptive, but it scared me a little...
Think of the SGU 'knowledge chair', but in reverse. Actually, the Egyptians were probably doing this exact thing with the skull drilling and thought 'hey computers break, lets skip straight to brain mangling" :/
The stress has obviously got to Elon. This is basically his way of saying "FML".
He does actually make a good point that we are already cyborgs, in a way. But why not leave the cybernetics at the keyboard or non-intrusive garments. People want their own biological limbs, not Terminator grapplers. Granted, powered prosthetics are a decent hold-over till the right solution.
But why doesn't he focus on getting us all in electric cars that we can ALL afford? >$30k?
They will transfer your money for you. You won't even mind.
Elon. Please. Don't.
And in not-so-far future we can expect a lot of sudden pornography, when user starts daydreaming
All human thoughts is worth recording, that is except yours and any other scumbags who think like you. Dealing with insulting people must be carried out in the same dark light as their own actions and thoughts.
Mankind already 'downloads' ideas. It's called "inspiration".
However, one may be able to register "THAT" the brain is activated in certain places, but NOT the nature (name) of the thought that is being thought.
It's called "mystery", because God chose before the world was to whom the highest abstract meaning, the 4th layer of spiritual wisdom, is being REVEALED.
Something can only be REVEALED, IF it is already there, but veiled, unless the brain has been strained by continual higher abstract thinking so that new channels and connections have developed.
For instance, nobody advances directly from addition and subtraction to calculus, or from learning the 26 letters of the alphabet to code writing.
In humans, it must be INNATE, as the elect "has an ear" to understand that which can be found between, above and beyond the written texts of scripture that reveal the hidden emblematic clues as to how to attain eternal life.
Technological processing speed and programming with that which is supposedly 'known' to humans do not lead to the crossing of the chasm that exists between ignorant hell and the all-encompassing big picture of wisdom.
I like most of what Musk does, but it's only a matter of time (probably not enough time to make it out of the prototyping stage) before the government demands backdoors on par with Intel's ME technology. That isn't even accounting for the fact that an interface in the early stages will almost certainly just be a hack akin to "think of blueberries to type X, think of rain to type Y, etc" and that is bound to cause destructive patterns in the neural network (i.e. the brain is designed to mix discreet sets of signals together and it takes about 25 years to be trained to do that well, if you change where those signals are going it will try to restructure itself accordingly and you will almost certianly lose information in the process.)
He is the only person that seems to be doing any real innovation.
In all the posts on this thread on slashdot...? Even when the Ghost in the shell movie is almost out?
The nerdom really has changed a lot on /.
make him watch Ghost in the Shell. Every single episode, movie, etc. See the proposed downsides, brain hacking, sensory hacking, false memories, copied and abused personalities, and all sorts of potential.
Then start any sort of "company" working towards direct interface.
bad enough that people externalize memory enough that "if its not on Google it doesn't exist", meaning simple deletion or lack of attention is enough for events and facts to simply "fall off" the search engine or go so far back in results that most will never check. Once memory is accessable and modifiable, the very opinions and attitudes of an individual can be controlled.
And as we've seen, anything that CAN be controlled, IS controlled. And more often than not, the control is NOT from the owner or individual possessing or using the device or service.
With no other human being volunteering, Mr. Musk -- who founded PayPal and OpenAI, thought of Hyperloop, is working on a boring company, and runs SpaceX, TeslaX, SolarCity -- is now working on it.
Now you know where the Borg come from.
Read this. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=998565