Neuralink has implanted a chip in its first human brain. But it’s pushing a needlessly risky approach, former employees say.
  • Kokesh@lemmy.worldEnglish
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    8 months ago

    He should grow balls and be the first person to have neurolink implanted in his brain.

    • elrik@lemmy.worldEnglish
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      8 months ago

      Advertisers would absolutely love to augment your reality with ads or even just the ability to accurately confirm you’ve actually watched a traditional ad along with how you “felt” about it.

      At that point people would absolutely sign up for free implants so they can access ad supported services that may otherwise become unaffordable within a society further strip mined of wealth by the then trillionaire class.

      • kromem@lemmy.worldEnglish
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        8 months ago

        Advertisers would absolutely love to augment your reality with ads or even just the ability to accurately confirm you’ve actually watched a traditional ad along with how you “felt” about it.

        Your reality is already augmented with ads most places you look, and advertisers already do have significant ability to accurately identify how a sample feels about the ads.

        Most don’t bother because they don’t actually care, and because it’s easier and cheaper to just run an ad mix self-optimizing around sales results or conversions than to try and over-engineer the advertising impact.

        Anyone betting on neural implants to make money because of ‘advertising’ is going to lose a lot of money themselves.

        • elrik@lemmy.worldEnglish
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          8 months ago

          You may be underestimating the role of targeting in conversion optimization, and I’m not sure how you could better target individuals than based on what they’re thinking at any given moment (literally).

          For instance, it’s not hard to imagine a future where gen-ai inserts product placement for a drug like ozempic into your favorite show, just for your view, while you’re actively paying attention, even though you didn’t realize at that moment you’re still a bit upset about a negative comment someone made about your weight earlier that day. An advertiser didn’t have to select this scenario, but instead you were targeted by an ML algorithm at that moment based on brain activity correlated with others who ultimately were successfully nudged to have a conversation with their doctor about their weight. Simultaneously, another ML optimized the product placement generation to minimize viewer disgust while maximizing its visibility. Your behavior becomes immediate feedback to further optimize these algorithms, as you’re tracked for how much attention you paid to the placement, what was your emotional state before and after, did you schedule an appointment with your doctor over the next 3 days, were you prescribed ozempic, etc.

          That is just a simple example which isn’t that far removed from advertising approaches today. I’m certain there are plenty of clever techniques to turn your thoughts and perceptions into conversions far more effectively once advertisers have real-time access to your brain.

      • Dizzy Devil Ducky@lemm.eeEnglish
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        8 months ago

        Knowing advertisers, at least here in the US, they would bypass confirming you watched ads by just beaming them straight to your implant and making it impossible to get rid of the ads.

    • WaxedWookie@lemmy.worldEnglish
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      8 months ago

      Why would anyone want the cybertruck? Yet at present, it’ll take them over a year to clear their backlog.

      Some people are just dumb - that applies doubly for those that love Musk because he speaks the Nazi conspiracism Truth™.

  • Halcyon@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
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    8 months ago

    He’s obviously desperately trying to revive the image of being a genius again. But everybody knows what kind of charlatan he is.

    • erwan@lemmy.mlEnglish
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      8 months ago

      It’s too bad, if he stayed off Twitter (not just not buying it but not twitt either) people who still believe he’s a genius.

  • Echo Dot@feddit.ukEnglish
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    8 months ago

    Oh just want we need, a hive mind of morons. Together they may be able to reach average

  • Ænima@lemm.eeEnglish
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    8 months ago

    If anyone is dumb enough to put anything from that dude into their head, that brain was already damaged!

  • AutoTL;DR@lemmings.worldBEnglish
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    8 months ago

    This is the best summary I could come up with:

    Of all Elon Musk’s exploits — the Tesla cars, the SpaceX rockets, the Twitter takeover, the plans to colonize Mars — his secretive brain chip company Neuralink may be the most dangerous.

    Former Neuralink employees as well as experts in the field have alleged that the company pushed for an unnecessarily invasive, potentially dangerous approach to the implants that can damage the brain (and apparently has done so in animal test subjects) to advance Musk’s goal of merging with AI.

    The letter warned that “AI systems with human-competitive intelligence can pose profound risks to society and humanity” and went on to ask: “Should we develop nonhuman minds that might eventually outnumber, outsmart, obsolete and replace us?

    If the intravascular approach can restore key functioning to paralyzed patients, and also avoids some of the safety risks that come with crossing the blood-brain barrier, such as inflammation and scar tissue buildup in the brain, why opt for something more invasive than necessary?

    Which perhaps helps make sense of the company’s dual mission: to “create a generalized brain interface to restore autonomy to those with unmet medical needs today and unlock human potential tomorrow.”

    Watanabe believes Neuralink prioritized maximizing bandwidth because that serves Musk’s goal of creating a generalized BCI that lets us merge with AI and develop all sorts of new capacities.

    The original article contains 3,312 words, the summary contains 220 words. Saved 93%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!