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It does not even matter if it will be ready in a few years or not. Musk is adding to the hype of brain technology. In the past few weeks I have seen the number

It does not even matter if it will be ready in a few years or not. Musk is adding to the hype of brain technology. In the past few weeks I have seen the number of articles, even on HN, about the brain skyrocket. This has been a trend for the past two or so years, but since the announcement of Neuralink it has exploded. Braintech is becoming a topic that people are actually talking about. This will hopefully stimulate people to go out and work on related technology instead of letting it sit in obscurity as it has previously.

jtraffic 10y ago
> It does not even matter if it will be ready in a few years or not. Musk is adding to the hype of brain technology. I suspect Musk agrees with you and that his figures have a 30-50 year margin of error. With Hyperloop, he caused a stir and moved on, and now someone else is working on it. I realize that's not a perfect comparison (he never indicated much intention to work on Hyperloop). He often claims that Tesla's main purpose is to get other car manufacturers to act. Musk is good at using leverage, but with social capital instead of financial capital.
- skummetmaelk 10y ago
  At this point Musk's MO seems rather clear. He realizes that our current societal structures are too prone to corruption and too slow to act before it is too late. So instead of waiting for politicians to force the use of green energy he makes everyone want to drive an electric car. If that fails, he makes sure that, at least some of, humanity can escape to another planet. Now he is tackling the existential problem of AI. I believe this was already touched upon in the waitbutwhy article, but it has obviously been clear for quite a while now and Musk has been rather open about it. He proved himself with Tesla, even though there were extremely close moments. Now he is leveraging the Tony Stark image to make people interested in whatever ideas he throws out there.
  - komali2 10y ago
    I remember way back in highschool there was a kid like this. We had a river that was just utterly disgusting, and there was a group at our school trying to do bake sales and shit to raise money to get it cleaned up, or they once went to city hall to petition the mayor, etc. He joined up and that weekend just... went to the river and started picking up trash. Alone. The next weekend the whole student org came, the weekend after that the local channel 9 showed up, and so on. Within the month the mayor was announcing plans for bringing in a dredger or something, I don't remember all the details, just the lesson I learned - if nobody else is doing it, just fucking do it, others will follow.
crawfordcomeaux 10y ago
I think it's funny how the majority of braintech things I see are all related to digital technology when we haven't really figured out how the analog tech works. I also predict this will be the year when we start figuring that out in a generative, systematic way.
- r3bl 10y ago
  The second part[0] of Wait But Why's article (that this article seems like a poor response to) explains what we know and what we don't know about the brain in the great details before actually going to the whole braintech topic. [0] http://waitbutwhy.com/2017/04/neuralink.html#part2 http://waitbutwhy.com/2017/04/neuralink.html#part2
  - crawfordcomeaux 10y ago
    Thanks for this link. I really enjoyed how they broke down the concepts.
petra 10y ago
I think that it's also the other way around: Functional Mri(fmri) is currently,maybe the best brain diagnostic device we have, by far. We've done some crazy shit(at the early research stage) with it,like reading dreams, treating depression/anxiety, increasing empathy, and training people to achieve very deep meditative states, which takes mediators decades of training. But Fmri is extremely expensive and unaccesible, even to researchers. Just think of a few min. mri test costs hundreds/thousands - while for fmri neurofeedback training you probably needs some tens of hours, per person, and a minimum of tens of people, at least, for statistically meaningful research. But recently, Mary Lou Jepsen has started working on a $100, personal, wearable(?) fmri device. This could be the equivalent, in a few years, to jumping from mainframes to the iPhone. So if you're in Musk/Zuckerberg's place, if this explodes, it would be kind of nice to be in the field.
- skummetmaelk 10y ago
  There are many criticisms of the effectiveness of using fMRI to tease out brain function. It measures blood flow as a proxy for neural activity in a region, but this is not necessarily accurate. It depends heavily on many other factors.
  - petra 10y ago
    Is there some measurement modality that is more accurate/better that doesn't require physical access inside a person's brain or using meds etc ? because i don't think those are realistic for non-medical uses.
    - skummetmaelk 10y ago
      Unfortunately no. Nevertheless, fMRI is unsuitable for what Neuralink is trying to accomplish. It would be lile trying to communicate by wiggling your ears. Possible, but slow.
      - petra 10y ago
        As a general purpose goal, beyond helping people with the most severe disabilities , This doesn't seem like that useful of a goal(especially compared to other possibilities) , why is there such fascination about direct brain communication, even among really smart people ?

jtraffic 10y ago

> It does not even matter if it will be ready in a few years or not. Musk is adding to the hype of brain technology. I suspect Musk agrees with you and that his figures have a 30-50 year margin of error. With Hyperloop, he caused a stir and moved on, and now someone else is working on it. I realize that's not a perfect comparison (he never indicated much intention to work on Hyperloop). He often claims that Tesla's main purpose is to get other car manufacturers to act. Musk is good at using leverage, but with social capital instead of financial capital.

skummetmaelk 10y ago
At this point Musk's MO seems rather clear. He realizes that our current societal structures are too prone to corruption and too slow to act before it is too late. So instead of waiting for politicians to force the use of green energy he makes everyone want to drive an electric car. If that fails, he makes sure that, at least some of, humanity can escape to another planet. Now he is tackling the existential problem of AI. I believe this was already touched upon in the waitbutwhy article, but it has obviously been clear for quite a while now and Musk has been rather open about it. He proved himself with Tesla, even though there were extremely close moments. Now he is leveraging the Tony Stark image to make people interested in whatever ideas he throws out there.
- komali2 10y ago
  I remember way back in highschool there was a kid like this. We had a river that was just utterly disgusting, and there was a group at our school trying to do bake sales and shit to raise money to get it cleaned up, or they once went to city hall to petition the mayor, etc. He joined up and that weekend just... went to the river and started picking up trash. Alone. The next weekend the whole student org came, the weekend after that the local channel 9 showed up, and so on. Within the month the mayor was announcing plans for bringing in a dredger or something, I don't remember all the details, just the lesson I learned - if nobody else is doing it, just fucking do it, others will follow.

crawfordcomeaux 10y ago

I think it's funny how the majority of braintech things I see are all related to digital technology when we haven't really figured out how the analog tech works. I also predict this will be the year when we start figuring that out in a generative, systematic way.

r3bl 10y ago
The second part[0] of Wait But Why's article (that this article seems like a poor response to) explains what we know and what we don't know about the brain in the great details before actually going to the whole braintech topic. [0] http://waitbutwhy.com/2017/04/neuralink.html#part2 http://waitbutwhy.com/2017/04/neuralink.html#part2
- crawfordcomeaux 10y ago
  Thanks for this link. I really enjoyed how they broke down the concepts.

petra 10y ago

I think that it's also the other way around: Functional Mri(fmri) is currently,maybe the best brain diagnostic device we have, by far. We've done some crazy shit(at the early research stage) with it,like reading dreams, treating depression/anxiety, increasing empathy, and training people to achieve very deep meditative states, which takes mediators decades of training. But Fmri is extremely expensive and unaccesible, even to researchers. Just think of a few min. mri test costs hundreds/thousands - while for fmri neurofeedback training you probably needs some tens of hours, per person, and a minimum of tens of people, at least, for statistically meaningful research. But recently, Mary Lou Jepsen has started working on a $100, personal, wearable(?) fmri device. This could be the equivalent, in a few years, to jumping from mainframes to the iPhone. So if you're in Musk/Zuckerberg's place, if this explodes, it would be kind of nice to be in the field.

skummetmaelk 10y ago
There are many criticisms of the effectiveness of using fMRI to tease out brain function. It measures blood flow as a proxy for neural activity in a region, but this is not necessarily accurate. It depends heavily on many other factors.
- petra 10y ago
  Is there some measurement modality that is more accurate/better that doesn't require physical access inside a person's brain or using meds etc ? because i don't think those are realistic for non-medical uses.
  - skummetmaelk 10y ago
    Unfortunately no. Nevertheless, fMRI is unsuitable for what Neuralink is trying to accomplish. It would be lile trying to communicate by wiggling your ears. Possible, but slow.
    - petra 10y ago
      As a general purpose goal, beyond helping people with the most severe disabilities , This doesn't seem like that useful of a goal(especially compared to other possibilities) , why is there such fascination about direct brain communication, even among really smart people ?