Submitted 6 months ago by Wilshire@lemmy.world to technology@lemmy.world
Not totally surprising, I feel bad for the person who was in a desperate enough situation to become a con man narcissist’s guinea pig.
It looks like we’re learning the lesson we already learned back when Bill Gates tried to mess around with the education system and faceplanted; just because billionaires made a bunch of money selling a fancy toaster they invented or whatever, doesn’t make them experts on anything else.
The Gates Foundation has been working in education for over two decades, and still is
And has produced mostly expensive failures which they simply abandoned.
This is because Bill Gates is just a guy who helped cobble together a computer in his garage with his dad’s money, he doesn’t know jack about education and has repeatedly ignored the advice of experts because it wasn’t what he wanted to try.
We place too much virtue on wealth in this country, just because someone has accumulated a lot of wealth doesn’t mean they should be allowed to tinker with our society and try out ideas they had in a dream or w/e.
Instead they should just pay their taxes.
No use of your body is a pretty desperate situation. Before the procedure he had to yell for his parents that he wanted to use the computer, they’d come sit him upright and put a joystick in his mouth, leaving him unable to speak. And he was often very uncomfortable in that position, so he couldn’t do it long. Now, he can use the computer fully laying down, without anyone’s help. The next logical step would be to have some robotic helper arms.
Anyway he can’t shoot himself. He can’t hold a gun or anything else. There’s little reason for this to be about Musk at all other than money. This is the culmination of decades of research from many medical professionals. It’s about a lot more than one person.
It’s 100% about Musk, yes, given his pursuit of tech even if it comes at a human cost. It’s a pattern of his specific companies.
What this situation demonstrates is that Musk is pushing the tech ahead before it’s ready and that the person recieving the implant is simply lucky that that negligence and haste hasn’t left them with brain damage or worse.
No one is saying medical devices shouldn’t be developed to help people, I’m saying Musks tech-cult attitude of “move fast and break stuff” should not apply when human lives and well being are involved.
Elon should buy an exo skeleton as a way to show his appreciation For the paraplegic man’s sacrifice to science
It’s about a lot more than one person.
yes, but Musk is pushing this way too fast way too early. That was clear even before the disgusting fiasco with the monkey test subjects. Musk is ultimately with majority blame here because he is the one pushing it just like he did cyber truck, full self driving, etc. except this time literal life and death is at play more directly than the risk of one of his cars self-driving over a child.
This? wired.com/…/elon-musk-pcrm-neuralink-monkey-death…
yeah, that is about one person making this happen.
Well, I’ve got good news, you can do both at the same time with the patented cyber-bullet! When it implants, it implants 100 percent of the time.
I’m excited to get more cyborg parts especially after laser ablating my eyeballs
The older I get, the more becoming a robot tiger seems like as good a retirement plan as I’m gonna get.
I dont feel bad for him. At all.
Literally everything he has experienced so far has been incredibly positive.
We can all call out elon for the shitbag he is, but until this guy who volunteered for this mad science experiment starts singing a different tune, im celebrating the hope for the future that might happen in our lifetimes.
I just buried my grandmother after living with her as one of 2 people to care for her as we sat front row to her descent into madness and insanity of alzheimers and dementia.
If this tech can be used to fight that monster its worth the risk as it stands at this moment. And i am aware this is some tenuous extreme “success” at the moment im not kidding or deluding myself, but after finding that most of the research on alzehiemers from the last many decades is now known to be junk science based on false claims and they pretty much have to start most of it all over again, this is hopeful.
Helping those who have been handed the worst lot in life gain access to some parts of the human experience they are denied is almost enough to make this bearded white middleaged cia male cry tears of joy for the first time in a long bloody time
Dont change your opinion of Elon because of this. Compartmentalize it and focus on the good. And fucking demand that Anthony Arbaugh and everyone else that is ever involved in trials is NEVER abandoned. Neuralink needs to be made responsible for maintaining the health of the patient and covering any and all costs to maintain this project for them even post bankruptcy. Complete care and support for the risk they are taking(even if its only anthony atm)
Ill shut up now but Ill leave you with this quote
I’m beating my friends in games that as a quadriplegic I should not be beating them in.
Anthony Arbaugh
About a month after surgery the implant started to perform poorly. They tweaked some software settings and now it’s running better than it did before the drop-off for a longer period, based on the actual blog post the story is talking about neuralink.com/…/prime-study-progress-update-user-….
This is obviously prototype technology with insane risk. The guy only signed up because he’s paraplegic. It’s not in any way remotely ready for normal humans and probably won’t ever be in our lifetimes. IMO this is like self driving technology, it’s easy to promise the world but hard to actually accomplish what they say.
I really feel conflicted about this. I hate Musk as much as anyone and think this experiment is a little irresponsible, but if I were going through what that guy is dealing with, I’d probably want to give it a try.
That is what makes this even more egregious. Musk doesn’t care about this guy in the slightest, except for the publicity that might help Musk raise more investor money. So Musk takes advantage of this desperation without any concern for long-term consequences. We know people left the company because of their ethical concerns. Those that remain probably just don’t care or aren’t on a position to do anything about the lack of ethics.
I have nothing but admiration for the guy willing to be the human experiment. He’s like an astronaut paving the way for a potential future for mankind.
Even if someone else finds the right way of doing it, this is driving us towards having practical man-machine interfaces. It’s really cool.
Also completely terrifying to think about being the experiment myself.
Ya think so??
I’m already a paraplegic, may as well just fuck my brain too!!
Not sure the logic checks out
It’s definitely morally complicated. Like paying life changing money for medical testing or organ harvesting.
On one hand, yeah he’s making a sacrifice for human advancement. On the other hand…
This is only logical if Neuralink is the only company doing this, but they are not.
Even the cofounder of Neuralink split off to make his own version of the company that puts safety first, and is working on a noninvasive (meaning doesn’t damage the brain by design) version of the same technology.
Did the implant eat part of the subject’s brain and then die?
He just lost his free will, nothing to important.
Before anyone gets too excited: some of their electrodes are no longer able to record a signal from the patient’s brain. They’re reprogramming their software to work with fewer electrodes. No one is being turned into a borg drone.
A software patch for a hardware failure.
Sounds like what they do at Tesla, too.
Well it’s also what NASA is doing. Only logical if you don’t want to dig it out again.
I was thinking more a vegetable than a borg drone.
That is still a pretty serious issue. It’s not something you should downplay
I don’t know. Even if the outcome is just that the implant just stop working, with no other issue, it’s looking pretty bad to me.
Since it required literal brain surgery just to be installed, which I assume is already a serious risk, it’s not something you want to potentially be useless.
The implant is already malfunctioning after a few months. Makes you wonder how many more of these threads will retract over the next following months.
Especially in less than 4 to 5 months. Damn thing was put in back in January and is already failing.
No one is being turned into a borg drone.
Yet.
You, too, will be assimilated.
No one is being turned into a borg drone.
Damn. I finally thought this would be the year :(
No one is being turned into a borg drone.
Yeah nobody is worried about this.
“We can’t control him and he’s currently on a rampage. We urge all citizens to stay indoors with the doors and windows locked and your curtains or blinds drawn.”
“…you now have five seconds to comply….”
From what I seen, I think I can win a fight against the guy by tipping him over.
Reaaaaaaaaaally??? Never saw this coming /s
You truly are a genius to realize that developing new technologies often encounter problems and it doesn’t always go smoothly.
wired.com/…/elon-musk-pcrm-neuralink-monkey-death…
it’s far more than just not going smoothly
You truly are a genius
DUUUUUH tell me something I don’t already know
Didn’t it die and they had to pull it out of RFK’s skull?
this dude can’t make a car pedal right what did you expect
He doesn’t technically make anything, tbf. He just takes credit for all of it.
the stupidest things are always made on his demand
Sounds like the brain scanner has dead pixels.
Literally WHO did not see this coming??
Did the fucking chimps begging for death not tip these people off???
Generally the World Health Organization doesn’t make a statement on procedures until results are shown. /s
This is coming from a company by the same guy who approved the cybertruck.
They just want to get a product out the door no matter the cost.
they killed a bunch of monkeys as part of that goal to get it out the door: wired.com/…/elon-musk-pcrm-neuralink-monkey-death…
I guess disabled humans aren’t shit either to elon
oh huh
just had a moment where I realized that this is a real prelude to SOMA and maybe .hack//SIGN
ooh this is a real bizarre feeling I’m currently having
The .hack// timeline had net Epos rivaling the likes of the Odyssey and Beowulf.
...Is that the problem? We need more epic poetry to guide neural interface and AI development?
Just let the AI create its own poetry about that. Ain’t they selling us the idea that it can do anything an humans are useless and deprecated now?
Hey what can I say we were overdue
It’ll be over soon, just wait
Was he throttled due to not upgrading to the latest model?
No, he forgot to put himself in car wash mode before getting wet.
😂
Did a worm eat it?
There are lots of parasitic bugs in this story, including Elon Musk
Sooo, is there like a certain knuckle-cracking sequence to turn it off and on again or what? Lol
He’s on the 2 gig plan
“Sorry guys, Elon is experiencing technical difficulties, please remain patient while we bugfix his Neuralink and then update it to Evil Overlord OS v0.2 alpha to his Neuralink”
Elon with some next level scumbaggery exploiting the disabled.
The guy volunteered for it, knowing the risk, and calls it a luxury that he uses all the time and has helped him “reconnect with the world.”
Don’t let your justified hatred of musk blind you to reality.
Also not much different from clinical trials. “All known treatment failed and you’re gonna die? How about testing some crazy shit?”
KISSmyOSFeddit@lemmy.world 6 months ago
I find the wording weird: The neuralink’s threads have retracted from the brain.
The threads can’t move or disconnect on their own. Neither can brain cells. All that can be measured is a loss of connection.
The far more reasonable explanation is that the brain cells at the connection point have died.
nyan@lemmy.cafe 6 months ago
I seem to recall that scarring around the electrodes, which eventually causes them to stop functioning, is a known failure mode of older experiments along similar lines. It’s one of the reasons I didn’t hold out much hope for this iteration.
I just hope the patient doesn’t take any long-term damage from the implant.
mjhelto@lemm.ee 6 months ago
If the moneys are anything to go on, that dudes in for an extremely painful death.
MartianSands@sh.itjust.works 6 months ago
In principle they could have pulled out slightly, if there’s jostling and tiny movements in skull then you’d expect them to work loose over time if they’re not securely anchored
just_another_person@lemmy.world 6 months ago
The patient was a paraplegic. I’m not sure how much they’d be capable of moving enough to dislodge the in-skull writing.
KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 months ago
i would assume the brain itself has retracted from neuralink.
I.e. The brain doesnt want fuck shit to do with it.
HelloHotel@lemmy.world 6 months ago
If im not 100% off basis here, “Electric meat is still meat, and we just stabbed it with little tiny forks”