Elon Musk’s Neuralink approved to recruit humans for brain-implant trial

MicroWave@lemmy.world to News@lemmy.world – 119 points – Elon Musk’s Neuralink approved to recruit humans for brain-implant trial
theguardian.com

Company is seeking people with paralysis to test its experimental device after getting green light from independent review board

Elon Musk’s brain-implant startup, Neuralink, said it has received approval from an independent review board to begin recruiting patients for its first human trial. The company is seeking people with paralysis to test its experimental device in a six-year study.

Neuralink is one of several companies developing a brain-computer interface (BCI) that can collect and analyze brain signals. But its billionaire executive’s bombastic promotion of the company, including promises to develop an all-encompassing brain computer to help humans keep up with artificial intelligence, has attracted skepticism and raised ethical concerns among neuroscientists and other experts.

Last year, the Food and Drug Administration denied the company’s request to fast-track human trials, but in May approved Neuralink for an investigational device exemption (IDE) that allows a device to be used for clinical studies. The agency has not disclosed how its initial concerns were resolved.

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Personally, I think I'll be avoiding anything that starts with "Elon Musk's..."

Yeah, I certainly won't use any product associated with that muskrat.

Things would have to seismically change in the tech/business world for me to trust any company enough to put something in my brain. That said, if I was forced to buy one the last two I would consider letting near my brain are Musk and Zuck

Personally, I think I'll be avoiding any device that can control my brain directly and has internet access, regardless of the owner.

This is the one he cooked all those monkey brains for? Pass.

1,500 animals died, including 280 sheep, pigs, and monkeys. Sounds really reliable.

i mean its likely not reliable but i bet some animal deaths are inevitable when developing a new implant. 1500 sounds way too high though.

He ignored his employees saying that the device wasn't ready and forced them to try it on the animals

You can totally trust the guy who ran the biggest social media company into the ground within less than a year to surgically implant you with a device that has a 21% fatality rate.

Musk: "Scumbags of the world are welcome on my platforms!"

Also Musk: "Let me put this device in your brain."

It'll never get into testing...

Everyone that would volunteer, doesn't have a place for the implant to go

i would say i don’t get it for the low hanging fruit troll, but fuck that. they really are just that stupid

I'd feel bad if this was the only option for those who are paralyzed, but it's not.

The tech has existed for decades. Musk is just trying to shrink it so it's less noticable, he's just doing it before the tech is ready

Where's this independent review board so we can strip them of all authority? The crimes and abuses this project has committed against animal subjects should have gotten it shut down a long time ago and the PI brought up on animal cruelty charges. I do not envy the neurosurgeons and trauma surgeons who are going to have to try to save any of the human participants.

Do you have any more info about the crimes/abuses you mentioned? Interested to read on it

There have been some news pieces put out, but most importantly

... the Physicians Committee (PCRM) said records it obtained for the 23 monkeys used in the experiments reflect a “pattern of extreme suffering and staff negligence.” The committee said that the letter to the USDA is based on nearly 600 pages of what it calls “disturbing” documents released after the committee filed an initial public records lawsuit in 2021.

Now, CNN did link to Nueralink's site, but not to PCRM. That, to me, says a lot about who you they're supporting.

If you want to read PCRMs report, it's here. Because reading the sources is always a good idea.

https://www.pcrm.org/ethical-science/animals-in-medical-research/pcrm-response-neuralink-claims

From the article posted in anothers comment:

Animal 11”: They were killed in a terminal procedure at UC Davis on March 15, 2019. Prior to this procedure, the monkey had a cranial implant surgically placed inside their brain on Dec. 3, 2018. Following this procedure, the implant became chronically infected. The monkey began to have a depressed appetite.

October 2018, UC Davis staff noted that the monkey was “missing multiple digits [on] both hands, [right] foot,” possibly from self-mutilation or some other unspecified trauma.

On Dec. 18, 2018, staff decided to “prophylactically or conservatively start [antibiotic treatment]” for the monkey after observing that “the skin was eroded” surrounding the implant. In the following two months, there are frequent observations of the monkey having a bloody, infected head wound from the device experimenters attached to their skull. The monkey was prescribed several types of antibiotics during this period. In January 2019, staff observed that the monkey had a “bloody head…dried blood around base at cranial implant.”

If people haven't figured out how to mitigate rejection of implants to at least 99% they shouldn't even be attempting this kind of nonsense.

https://www.reuters.com/technology/musks-neuralink-faces-federal-probe-employee-backlash-over-animal-tests-2022-12-05/

A couple of excerpts here:

The first complaints about the company’s testing involved its initial partnership with University of California, Davis, to conduct the experiments. In February, an animal rights group, the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, filed a complaint with the USDA accusing the Neuralink-UC Davis project of botching surgeries that killed monkeys and publicly released its findings. The group alleged that surgeons used the wrong surgical glue twice, which led to two monkeys suffering and ultimately dying, while other monkeys had different complications from the implants.

A note about Musk's use of propaganda in the face of truth (emphasis mine):

Neuralink executives have said publicly that the company tests animals only when it has exhausted other research options, but documents and company messages suggest otherwise. During a Nov. 30 presentation the company broadcast on YouTube, for example, Musk said surgeries were used at a later stage of the process to confirm that the device works rather than to test early hypotheses. “We’re extremely careful,” he said, to make sure that testing is “confirmatory, not exploratory,” using animal testing as a last resort after trying other methods.

In October, a month before Musk’s comments, Autumn Sorrells, the head of animal care, ordered employees to scrub "exploration" from study titles retroactively and stop using it in the future.

There's lots more in there and I highly recommend reading the whole article. It is from December of last year, but I'd find it hard to believe that things would have improved in the past 9 or 10 months....certainly not enough to excuse the shoddy work and unnecessary suffering caused early on in the project.

I wonder if he’ll later say he only implanted people who were already dying with the devices.

4 more...

How long before Musk decides to charge per thought?

For $8, you get to be able to have basic motor function. For $10 a month, you get the rudiments of speech. For $15 a month, otherwise known as Neuralink Blue, you get free speech (free speech limited to what Elon approves of you saying).

He’s hoping to make your life pay to win.

It's already pay to win. They're trying to make it pay to live.

And Elon is going first right... right?

Actually... you might be on to something here. He may already have gone. Might explain the erratic behavior. The dumb shit he says and does looks an awful lot like brain damage 🤔

If you put any shit from this man in your head, you deserve what happens to you.

On the bright side, there will be a few less musk fans around after they are lobotomised.

Elon Musk’s Neuralink approved to recruit fools humans for brain-implant trial

Interfacing with the brain is easy, we've been doing it for decades. Let me know when we can leave an implant in for a decade without it turning into a scar tissue tumor.

Although hopefully I'll have died of old age before that happens. Being able to plug in people is the basis of more dystopian nightmares than I can count, and I have zero confidence in our species ability to prevent those horrors from being reality.

If it works then it will be the ultimate advance in human capability since the invention of the internet. But i don't trust Elon to respect anyone's privacy rights.

What?

We've had implants that can control a mouse and even type on a keyboard for decades now...

Neurolink is just a less obvious interface, the gains are nowhere near worth the setbacks.

Regular science gets thing working then shrinks it down. Musk jumped straight to shrinking it down, and he just fucking can't get it to work.

We've had implants that can control a mouse and even type on a keyboard for decades now...

I don't really know if we've had other companies that are crazy enough to pierce the blood brain barrier, just for a brain interface machine.

There have been plenty of brain interface machines, but most are just pieces of headgear that you wear. And they're just as useful as Musk's interface..... not very.

When you utilize a traditional mouse you are relying on both visual and proprioceptive data, which is interpreted in conjunction in real time by your brain. Without the proprioceptive sensation, your brain loses track of where the mouse is in the operational space. Meaning it takes a large amount of concentration to operate anything with just the aid of visualization.

The biggest problem is that they've essentially designed a meningitis machine. For my job we occasionally have to set skull pins for halo devices, basically a cervical immobilizing brace. These pins pierce the skin and are set into the bone of the skull, though we don't pierce through the skull or damage the blood brain barrier.

These pins are extremely susceptible to infection depending on the level of patient compliance. Because the scalp is not firmly attached to the skull it's is free to move against the pins and create a lot of skin irritation, which can lead to infections if not properly cleaned on a regular basis.

Without the proprioceptive sensation, your brain loses track of where the mouse is in the operational space. Meaning it takes a large amount of concentration to operate anything with just the aid of visualization.

There's already a "ping cursor" system in operating systems, but most would probably just move it in circles real fast so they see it like everyone else who forgets where their mouse cursor is.

And the more permanent something like this is, the more issues you get. We should be moving to something as easy to put on as a hat, not something that requires brain surgery to update

There's already a "ping cursor" system in operating systems, but most would probably just move it in circles real fast so they see it like everyone else who forgets where their mouse cursor is.

It's still not really going to help with the mental fatigue. Even when you know where the cursor is, it still fundamentally changes the way you interact with it.

For a mouse the process is (find cursor, move cursor from point A to point B) the proprioceptive sensation from your hand helps translate and guide the movements happening in 3 dimensional space to the 2 dimensional movement on the screen.

For brain interface machines the process is (find cursor, find point B, concentrate on moving away from point A towards point B) It sounds trivial, but without proprioceptive information it turns a leap from a to b into a step by step walk where you can't feel your feet. None of it is reactionary, it's all manual concentration.

We should be moving to something as easy to put on as a hat, not something that requires brain surgery to update

Im a provider specializing in orthotics and prosthetics, and have actually worked with some psych/philosophy professors on a similar topic, namely the similar interface problems found in prosthetics and in VR.

I personally think brain interface and the vast majority of VR projects are and have always been a failed technology. Mainly because the tech people whom pioneer them have wild misconceptions on how the brain and body function as a whole. Most perceive the brain as a processor that you plug information to and then it dictates reactions to its attached hardware.

In reality there is no separation of body and the brain, in fact according to psychologist specializing in embodied cognition, our cognitive abilities are formed by the dynamic interaction between our actions and the environment around us. Meaning, separating a persons perceptive abilities fundamentally inhibits our ability to function in any given environment.

In a paper I co-wrote we were comparing the similar interface problems with high end VR, and Life like prosthetics. In VR as graphics improved and moved from simulacrum to simulation people began to experience more problems with nausea and motion sickness. In prosthetics as limbs became more lifelike, we began to see patient compliance worsen, and reports of disassociation from the limb.

In both cases it's proposed the tech became good enough to fool the brain into attempting to interfacing with it as an extension of reality, instead of interfacing with it as a tool. As the brain begins to except it as "real" it has a hard time orienting the perception it receives that does not align with its new "reality"

Sorry for wall of text, I guess I don't get to talk about this aspect of my research enough!

Jesus...

You think Musk's product is going to work like the Matrix and someone has full body control in VR?

I have zero idea why you want on that giant rant about it.

And you have no idea what the learning curve is even just for a physical videogame controller. People don't think "now hit the X button to crouch" they just think crouch and their thumb hits X. It doesn't take long.

Neurolink only does mouse/keyboard.

It takes an afternoon of training for this kind of interface, as pointed out in this article from literally decades ago. And over a decade before Musk every "thought of" Neurolink. None of what he's doing is new, except 20 years ago it worked better

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2002/03/020314080832.htm

You think Musk's product is going to work like the Matrix and someone has full body control in VR?

I think you misunderstood what I was saying. I was stating that a matrix like scenario is a impossibility dreamt up by sci-fi.

My critique was that tech bros like to pretend that you can separate the mind from the body. When in reality they are entirely codependent, and when you try to bypass that codependency with something like neuro link people end up not being able to utilize it.

It is never going to be as simple as putting on a hat. Hair really gets in the way of picking up brain signals and you're not going to get the sensors in the right place.

EEGs are about the most advanced thing we have for monitoring the brain from the outside of the body without climbing into a machine. That requires a technician using special conductive glue to hold sensors on the scalp and then wrapping it all in gauze to keep it all from coming off. It takes about 15 minutes to put them all on and after it's taken off, you really want a shower to wash the glue off your scalp.

never

I might say "never in our lifetimes" but not "never".

And these are for paralyzed people, I'm sure a non significant amount wouldn't mind shaving their head over brain surgery for a chip that will be obsolete in a decade. It wouldn't have to be one size fits all either, it would be custom fit to it's user.

A couple decades after that, maybe we'll have it for consumers

It cannot "work". Even if it succeeded technically speaking, you cannot expect such a device to be secure (as no device is, and certainly not one made by Musk).

Now computerised cars are already an increasing risk in giving new ways to commit murder without being caught, but if you directly put a security risk in your brain, I am pretty sure that many people will jump on the occasion.

Even if it were secure, what happens to all the gen 1 implantees when gen 2 comes out? or when Musk decides to no longer support certain models? Imagine having a 2007 iphone stuck inside your brain, forever. Or I guess people could get brain surgery every few years. That seems reasonable.

Even if it works completely as intended, that's also terrible under capitalism. You think advertising is manipulative now, wait until it comes in the form of literal mind control.

We can worry about privacy after he stops melting brains.

I just hope the poor human test subjects don't end up like those monkies.

I’m going to take the opposite stance here and hope some of his most devoted sycophants end up even more brain damage.

We’re way past being polite about this Nazi and his enablers.

We can't even get VR and AR right ans we don't even really know what to do with it. What are we going to use neuralink for? Turning off our TV with our minds?

What? Vr, while still a developing tech, has come a long way in capability, reliability and affordability.

"come a long way "

Sure, I agree. But it's not "there" yet. I've had headsets since the DK2. I love VR but it still needs a few years and there's no real killer app yet. AR is the same if not worse. The Apple headset is interesting but it;s still not close. I'm looking forward to see where it will go.

I'm sure Musk will weep for anyone who dies in these experimentations. He's totally not a sociopath, you know?