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Inside Elon Musk's New Company Neuralink Which Aims To Fight Brain Conditions And Help Humanity Survive in the Age of AI (waitbutwhy.com)
Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk has confirmed plans for his newest company, called Neuralink Corp, revealing he will be the chief executive of a startup that aims to merge computers with brains so humans could one day engage in "consensual telepathy." In an interview with explainer website Wait But Why (36,000-word), Musk said Neuralink aims to implant tiny brain electrodes that first would be used to fight brain conditions but later help humanity avoid subjugation at the hands of intelligent machines. From the report: "There are a bunch of concepts in your head that then your brain has to try to compress into this incredibly low data rate called speech or typing," Musk said. "That's what language is, your brain has executed a compression algorithm on thought, on concept transfer. If you have two brain interfaces, you could actually do an uncompressed direct conceptual communication with another person." Musk says he expects the project to take eight to 10 years before being usable by people with no disability. He anticipates tons of regulatory challenges in his way.
Have a nice day.
So the goals of the technology have been outlined. However, I don't think the totality of how this will be used can be guessed at outside of a flying leap. I suspect the outcome will be stranger than it's stated goals. Here is my flying leap, brains for hire:
Imagine shifts running around the clock where all you do is come in and be rendered unconscious so your brain can be linked with thousands of others to perform massive computational tasks. After being revived you go about your business until your next shift.
Philosophical problem: Can you be sure you ever actually woke up, or are you still sitting there in a dream that your are awake while your brain is still crunching numbers?
Brought to you by Carl's Junior.
That's when it's killbot time. The natural end-state of unrestrained capitalism is the killbot-powered genocide of at least 99% of the human population. It will make communism's death toll look like a rounding error. I, for one, would like to avoid this.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
The parts of the brain that most of us would like to be technologically enhanced - memory, facial recognition, mental math - are very poorly understood. Even if we had a device allowing us to fire neurons on command, we have no idea how to write a program that helps with these problems.
Musk is smart to focus on medical applications, where even an implant that functions poorly is much better than the alternative. It's a lot easier to make a pacemaker than to perform a heart transplant, and the same holds true for the brain.
The cure (drum beat) ... is an advanced form of ultraliberal socialism in a post-scarcity society.
'Ultraliberal socialism' is an oxymoron.
'Liberal' implies individual freedom. 'Socialism' implies subjugation of the individual to the collective. They're opposites.
From Venezuela to China, from the USSR to Burma, and even now in Cuba, societies advance towards post-scarcity when they're highly liberal (in the real sense of the word) and individuals can organically save for and invest in the capital goods that enable higher production. When they go in the direction of socialism (e.g. Venezuela) they lose the capacity to produce even the essential goods of life.
Have a look at the article linked on the other post today about neural lace for more on productivity or the recent Freakonomics episodes on Earth 2.0 for current thinking on such topics as production and organic growth.
The net is that to achieve post-scarcity you need a) high productivity and b) high-wealth, and capitalism (cf. crapitalism), as demonstrated empirically by every society that has tried either or both.
A post-scarcity society is a laudable goal, so don't shoot yourself in the foot on the path there.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
I am thinking of capitalists and not your strawman progressives.
They're not killing off customers because people who the economy doesn't need work from can't pay for goods. If the 1% are doing nearly all of the producing (through ownership of robotic factories) and consuming (because they're the only ones who have discretionary income), and the 99% is just surviving on welfare and fuming at the 1% for hoarding everything, what do you think is going to happen? The 1%ers who produce things for mass consumption like food, energy and housing will have to take a hit to their business, but I'm sure the 1%ers could work out a compensation scheme among themselves...or just pool those 99%er-dependent services into the hands of a few fall guys and take them out first.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel