The first invasive brain chip that Neuralink embedded into a human brain has malfunctioned, with neuron-surveilling threads appearing to have become dislodged from the participant’s brain, the company revealed in a blog post Wednesday.
It’s unclear what caused the threads to become “retracted” from the brain, how many have retracted, or if the displaced threads pose a safety risk. Neuralink, the brain-computer interface startup run by controversial billionaire Elon Musk, did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Ars. The company said in its blog post that the problem began in late February, but it has since been able to compensate for the lost data to some extent by modifying its algorithm.
I can’t believe anyone willingly got this after the monkey testing thing. They have to be taking advantage of people not fit to make decisions for themselves.
The patient became quadriplegia in a car accident, I wouldn’t call it unfit for decisions but definitely someone desperate to find a sense of normalcy.
Wait, is that what these brain chips are for? Well now I can’t hate on them as much as I used to if they’re meant to help people learn how to walk again. I thought it was just supposed to help you process thoughts more quickly or something, like a math coprocessor in an old 90s PC.
It’s one use, I’ve heard their designs described as opening the brain’s io processes. Once the “data lanes” are available, it’s then the “applications” implement the uses over it. That could mean adding a math coprocessor, or correcting vision issues, or getting tweets beamed into your mind. Roll the dice on a musk project 🤷
There’s a ton of potential uses for the tech, if they can get it functional, but it’s going to require too much trust for me to realistically consider it.
I thought the goal was to reconnect the brain to the spinal cord though.
But dude is still stuck in a wheelchair, and so far it’s basically been just a fancy experimental mouse cursor? Installed in his brain? And already failing?..
I don’t really keep up with Elon moon shits, but I think the idea is to substitute the brains neurological commands. Research is still on the “read” stage, like knowing what information the brain is requesting. Eventually neurolink will also need to discover how to relay those signals back to the nervous system in a way it understands, engaging muscles and such, effectively rebuilding the bridge that was damaged. Or robot legs or whatever, but the key is first getting the information into a format they can act on. But I’m not smart, this is just how I understood it.
And they already killed how many monkeys testing this stuff? Last I heard was that they tested 15 monkeys or so, and 13 of them ended up dying or having to be euthanized after only a few months.
They already admitted they had problems with their brain electrodes corroding after a few months or so…
I like to keep my noodle intact thank you very much. Even if I was a vegetable, I wouldn’t want a chip in my head that’s known to have corroding wires.
See the corroding part scares me. Actual electrodes planted in the brain should never corrode. The company I work for actually makes brain implants(no, not nueralink) so I know it’s possible.
That stuff is EXPENSIVE though … So he must of cheaped out with a cheaper metal and that’s why it corroded.
Well that’s the main issue isn’t it? It’s not that the idea is bad, it’s all the cut corners on safety and quality. Same reason I won’t be getting into one of Elons cars or rockets.
I hope he chose to cheap on monkeys because they’re viewed as expendable in the eyes of many, and hope he actually used the good stuff on people.
He’s the type of psycho to say no to expensive implants on the monkeys because they’re “just monkeys”
Indeed. Hell, I’m no expert in the field, but haven’t they had reliable Parkinson’s brain implant devices for decades?
Yes, and those are the ones I make.
Watching his videos he’s a clever snd self aware guy more than capable of thinking for himself. Hate Elon but you don’t need to shit on the disabled by acting like being in a wheelchair means you can’t think for yourself
You totally missed my point. I wasn’t shitting on the disabled fella at all. I was 100% shitting on the Neuralink chip, which is supposedly being developed and promoted as a way of fixing paralysis.
The fact that the man is still in a wheelchair means that Neuralink has achieved 0% of it’s ultimate intended goal. It’s just a fancy mouse cursor (and probably keyboard) so far.
Guy has nothing left to lose really, I don’t blame him for taking this risk considering I would strongly consider it myself were I in his situation
Yes, infortunately this is the case. In an article I read the guy was able to pay chess and Age of Empires with his thoughts and the chip, quite impressive tech indeed, it’s just that you absolutely cannot trust anything near Musk
OCZ back in the day (2008) had a brainwave game controller… didn’t need surgery for that.
The only thing he could lose is only a few important brain functions, if something truly does go wrong. Nothing major. /s
I mean, in that position I’d probably be willing to gamble with my life. Not with Musk involved, but if there was a similar opportunity without his involvement. It would be an honorable death, too, as long as it didn’t result in a halt on the research.
If I could fully trust the ones doing it, there is a certain % of death risk I’d be willing to take as a healthy person once the tech is more mature. The possibilities of such technology are endless, especially as the tech becomes more interactive rather than just observing and acting on those observations. I’m not sure if I’d want to live in the Matrix, but I’d love to at least visit it or play VR games based on that tech. Altered Carbon would be interesting, too.
Sure, the possibilities are endless, so the first thing we’ll get that has any research money and effort put into it is how to turn it into an advertising platform and then maximally enshittifying it as soon as there’s a market share to speak of.
Yeah, that “if I could trust it” is pulling a lot of weight there. Like I decline fucking website cookies. Tech like that has way more invasive potential. Maybe they wouldn’t even need to advertise and could directly make you just buy things or give them free labour. You’d just need a module to make a person act like a normal happy person and then with that could potentially do anything “under the hood” without being detected. The possibilities are endless in the dystopian direction, too. Realistically, “if I could trust it” isn’t a requirement that can be met.
Oh, they’d never do anything as sinister as that. That may still be illegal (if the ultra-rich lobbying hasn’t taken care of that obstacle by that point).
Instead, they’ll just make sure that whatever essential core service they’ve built a monopoly in by just muscling the poorer competitors out of the race will cease to be offered to you if you refuse to hand all your money over to them.
See also: insulin, hospital treatment, etc. This is just a new playing field to find old prey in.
Not many options I guess. Sucks to have to gamble on the crazy billionaire with a lot of faulty shit.
I can believe people took up on this offer. As the saying goes drowning man will reach for straws. Issue is they probably oversold reliability and safety.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Neuralink, the brain-computer interface startup run by controversial billionaire Elon Musk, did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Ars.
The goal is for the threads to be placed near neurons of interest so that signals detected by the electrodes can be recorded and decoded into intended actions, such as moving a cursor on a computer screen.
On January 28, the company announced that it has surgically implanted its brain-computer interface into its first clinical trial participant, 29-year-old Noland Arbaugh, who developed quadriplegia after a 2016 diving accident.
It remains unclear why the threads moved from their placement, but one hypothesis that sources told the Journal is that there was air trapped inside Arbaugh’s skull after the surgery, a condition called pneumocephalus.
However, the company reported that the retraction of the threads lowered his bits-per-second (BPS) rate, which is used to measure how quickly and accurately a patient with an implant can control a computer cursor.
The Journal reported that the company has told the Food and Drug Administration—which regulates clinical trials and granted approval for Neuralink to test its device in humans—that it believes it has fixes for the problem.
The original article contains 596 words, the summary contains 193 words. Saved 68%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
Oh god I was worried they killed him horribly this is actually probably fine and almost an expected setback.
For a technology that could someday help a quadriplegic interact with the world fully and independently again I’m willing to tolerate some hitches. There’s a reason they didn’t pick some full on walkie talkie for their first human trial, and there’s a reason that kid looked motherucking hyped to have brand new technology that he’s the first human to even try installed directly into his fucking brain. The problem is abled people thinking this is fundamentally for them. Bby no, they’re trying to help people walk again, even if the legs are robots. You’re looking at the wrong risk-benefit profile.
The concept is wonderful. I do not trust Elon with that concept. I worry that many folks with high hopes of this helping them will just end up used and hurt.
a yes helping quadriplegic, definitelly something that elon want, not making shit tons of money
yes, screw the quadriplegics so you can feel good about staying on your moral high ground. Your hill to live and die on takes much higher priority than people who can’t shift their own body weight developing holes in their ass I can fit my fist in but still not be able to see the bone because it’s covered in maggots. Yeah there need to be guardrails in place to keep him from doing silly shit with it and make sure it’s affordable for the people who need it, but a) the technology is still in it’s infancy b) how about you put all this piss and vinegar towards political action to beef up the FDA (who are already regulating this situation per the linked article?). While you’re at it the CDC could use a little more money and public backing too. How about you go out into the world and encourage people to trust scientific institutions more? There are about a thousand different ways you could be expressing these morals in a way that actually helps people instead of just making you feel better about yourself.
The company said in its blog post that the problem began in late February, but it has since been able to compensate for the lost data to some extent by modifying its algorithm.
Because that’s what people are worried about: THE LOST DATA.
When a computer reads some signal, the 0s and 1s in it’s memory is the data. The data must be processed so that the computer can understand it.
This computer is using threads to read neuron activity. It must necessarily receive data because if it didn’t it wouldn’t be reading neuron activity. They’re the same thing.
This data is processed so that the computer can make sense of the brain. Once it understands some activity it generates signals that can control external devices.
Here’s an example. Imagine a device that monitors the heart and does something to fix a problem. The device would get data on the heart and process the data so that it can perform it’s function.
Wouldn’t monitoring health concerns and mitigating data loss be extremely important in these scenarios?
The point is that this is the opening paragraph about something going wrong in human brain surgery, and the first thing they tell us is “don’t worry, the data’s fine”, rather than anything about the human. Indeed, you have to read to the last paragraph to find:
Arbaugh’s safety does not appear to be negatively impacted.
and the first thing they tell us is “don’t worry, the data’s fine”, rather than anything about the human.
I do agree it would have been more significantly more considerate to mention that the person is ok first, but I feel like you’re confusing data storage (ie something they’re collecting) with data processing (ie how the device operates). The data in question is the latter. In other words, they are explaining that the problems are being accounted for so that the device can still function in the human it’s attached to.
No, I understood that, I did read the article. I’m lambasting the fact that in an article about “brain chip gone wrong”, burying the “but human seems to be unharmed” at the end of an article is indicative of a set of priorities wildly different from my own.
TY! My first thought was he was this poor sweet guy who just wanted to play Civ and fell for this grifter
Can you imagine the marketing value?
The blog is obviously targeted towards advertisers. The future looks amazing and full of possibilities. Just think about how your 8 hours of sleep alone could be turned into product placement opportunities for nestle.
;_;
Futurama tried to warn us.
Well… that’s probably the most expected thing to ever be expected. It was never a matter of ‘if’, it was a matter of when.
No one could have predicted this totally predictable situation.
Well, that’ll happen if you don’t take your Neuropozyne. Their test subject should have budgeted for that before getting augmented.
This technology is amazing. I hope this turns out well for the volunteer.
If only someone could have predicted
How is this shit legal? Like, why is any company allowed to willy nilly fuck around with trying to implant computer chips into human brains?
Through consent. The guy probably either has terminal illness and is happy to contribute to research or is completely paralysed, that an operation like this could benefit both parties.
It’s an agreement and I’m sure the risks are expressed to the individual.
I’m saying the continued misuse of technology for unnecessary and dangerous purposes can be considered a threat to public health and safety in the long term. For far too long we have identified risks of certain technology, especially in the hands of amoral alt-whites like Musk (he spent $44 billion to amplify neo-nazis for fuck sake), but shrugged our shoulders at the idea of regulating or banning dangerous technology. I want to challenge people to envision a world where we don’t have to tolerate shit like this.
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DO NOT WASH YOUR BRAIN IN DIRECT SUNLIGHT
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Hmm, turns out the human body doesn’t like to be tampered with! Who could have predicted this? I’m sure this is akin to organ rejection but I’m definitely surprised that the brain has these kinds of mechanisms. Maybe to defend against ancient parasites?
I don’t know which company I would trust developing my brain implant, but it sure as hell isn’t Tesla. Their software and hardware history is less than stellar.
For stellar technology you need to go to SpaceX. You’ve been shopping at the wrong Musk store.
Musk store
Welcome to the Musk store! Go over to customer service and get your brain implant. Then you can start shopping and your Neuralink will know what items you put in your cart. The most convienent shopping experience ever! Just don’t shoplift, we’ll know.
It’s ok, there’s still other companies to choose from. Twitter can develop your brain implant instead!
Have you considered upgrading to the Ultra Premium Deluxe Version? For just 99.99- a month, you can actually use what you bought!
I mean it’s too early to trust anyone with this new technology
It’s all very well having a Tesla implant, until you stop at a junction and your brain catches fire.
What are we going to do tomorrow night Brain?
The same thing we do every night Pinky.
TRY TO TAKE OVER THE WORLD
