Elon Musk’s Neuralink begins accepting human patients for trials of its brain implant

Technology@lemmy.ml – 62 points – 1 years ago

Elon Musk’s Neuralink begins accepting human patients for trials of its brain implant

Obligatory “What could possibly go wrong? /s”

For that thing that killed hundreds of monkeys? Yeah, sounds like a great plan.

"only" 15-17 monkeys, but thousands of other animals, insanely depressing. the more you read about it, the more you will start to actually believe that the death of one particular primate could indeed be beneficial for humanity ...

On several occasions over the years, Musk has told employees to imagine they had a bomb strapped to their heads in an effort to get them to move faster, according to three sources who repeatedly heard the comment. On one occasion a few years ago, Musk told employees he would trigger a “market failure” at Neuralink unless they made more progress, a comment perceived by some employees as a threat to shut down operations, according to a former staffer who heard his comment. Five people who’ve worked on Neuralink’s animal experiments told Reuters they had raised concerns internally. They said they had advocated for a more traditional testing approach, in which researchers would test one element at a time in an animal study and draw relevant conclusions before moving on to more animal tests. Instead, these people said, Neuralink launches tests in quick succession before fixing issues in earlier tests or drawing complete conclusions. The result: More animals overall are tested and killed, in part because the approach leads to repeated tests. One former employee who asked management several years ago for more deliberate testing was told by a senior executive it wasn’t possible given Musk’s demands for speed, the employee said. Two people told Reuters they left the company over concerns about animal research.

Is there no government oversight for "Uhh no you aren't?"

Given the recent animal testing results this seems like assisted suicide

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Ole Musky should step up and prove how safe it is. If he gets one, I'll definitely get one.

One implant to rule them all, one implant to find them, One implant to bring them all, and in the darkness bind them

He behaves like he already has one.

Oh shit, what if the purchase of Twitter, change to X, etc...etc...is all due to brain implant side effects... Someone get this conspiracy going!

So then the thing that killed the monkeys was the smelling their smug farts all day? It all makes sense now...

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Lol this guy can't even make a car that doesn't kill someone or have a bumper that doesn't fall off

I shudder to think what the human equivalent of "fully autonomous driving" or a launchpad explosion looks like.

Or even the human equivalent of a bumper falling off.

All cars kill people. Don't Tesla's have a pretty decent safety rating?

https://www.tesladeaths.com/

https://www.tesla-fire.com/

Okay, instead of posting rage bait can you show me that more people are dying in/from Tesla's then other vehicles per mile driven?

And just to be clear, I don't own a car. Nor do I care for Teslas. But you can't claim it's a dangerous car while not comparing it to the rest of the industry. Cars in general are really fucking unsafe.

First rule of technology: if the increase in complexity and decrease in reliability outweigh the added tangible value, don't implement it. This is why it's usually best to avoid "smart" appliances or, you know, brain implants.

A good rule of thumb with computers and software is to never touch/buy an alpha/version 1.0 of any system as its best to let someone else sort out the major bugs.

This is the dilemma people trying to create wetware (brain-hardware interface) face. There will be problems and how the hell any experiments to advance this pass an ethics board is beyond me.

And there's the question of support:

Their bionic eyes are now obsolete and unsupported

Holy shit that is beyond terrible. It reminds me of something William Gibson would write (tech wise) with the absurdity of Douglas Adams or Kurt Vonnegut mixed in.

And I can see this sort of thing happening again and again if this tech keeps developing over the next 50 years.

I would now revise this to never touch any wetware interface for the next 30 years and maybe by then it will be stable.

that is just terrifying, imagine just suddenly going back to being completely blind, and then learning noone's really out there to fix it anymore because the company behind it just went poof one day

If someone besides Musk was running things, I might be excited about the potential for progress… as it stands, though, I just can’t trust the guy.

Given what is coming out about how the animal test subjects were treated, you'd be better off letting a random dentist poke at your brain

Same.

Although I can't say I would trust one from a FAANG company much more.

I'll bet you need a lifetime subscription with that and get a blue verification mark on your forehead.

A 30 day lifetime subscription.

I can see how a quadrapoligic or someone with ALS would be excited for this trial. I hope it goes well. It could give someone that is trapped in their body a new way to communicate with their loved ones.