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The fundamentals of this idea are so shockingly hand-wavey, that I find this to be something of a hazard to Elon Musk’s reputation. It’s far enough afield, tha

The fundamentals of this idea are so shockingly hand-wavey, that I find this to be something of a hazard to Elon Musk’s reputation. It’s far enough afield, that as blue sky projects go, this is farther away from us now, than cold fusion was in the 1980’s. Hint: we’re still not sure if cold fusion will arrive very soon. It’s great to see caution in light of powerful technologies, but this blue sky concept is thrown into the mix as if to say “try anything to make it work” and in so doing, leaves the overall prophetic narrative in the realm of AI dominance as inexorable. To hear this idea floating around is like saying: So, let’s do something to our brain. Anything. Sprinkle wires on it, and maybe those wires will help. What’s in them? Who knows! But golly, anything to gain an edge because the who knows! But yeah, AI is already here to stay, and there’s no controlling it, so just route around it. There’s no plan here. Just add in the “make-brain-smart-wires” and pray. No one explains how we’ll be smarter, which is especially bothersome, given that we can’t quantify subjective experience, motivation and emotional reaction. Are terrible people, criminals, dictators,and third world war lords getting these things too? Why will it make them do good? Why is it better to make an evil person more powerful than an artificial entity which we fear?

nefitty 9y ago
AI, like any other militarily-beneficial technology, will advance whether some societies want it to or not. Nuclear weapons, drones, armored vehicles... These are all similar examples where being the ethical "sucker" is extremely hazardous to the survival of your state. The access people have to possible neural enhancements will be dependent on the rules of their society: Chinese social ratings, US economic status, Russian political connections, etc. Will a criminal have a harder time getting neural enhancements in China or the US? Our definition of what a criminal is will be wildly different in edge cases. I think an interesting, current corrolary is nootropics and meditation. These are not going to inherently make you a "good" person,and they are easily accessible to anyone who wants them. If you want to train your brain and increase your self-control, it's ultimately up to you what you do with those advantages. Formal consequences emerge when new behaviors are perceived as detrimental to society. In terms of how neural enhancements will.make us smarter, does it really matter? If the output is what you intended, at what point do you need to focus on how you got there? Anyways, pick a challenge and put an enhanced and unenhanced human head-to-head. We'll discover our new capabilities through experimentation, just as we always have.
tylerjwilk00 9y ago
I don't think it's quite as far fetched or far out. The fundamental point of the neural lace is increased bandwidth OUTPUT from the human mind so that it can be INPUT for some other process. Bare with me... Right now I am using 2 thumbs to output this message. Not very efficient. I could hop on a keyboard and up my output bandwith to 10 fingers. That would be faster but still bottlenecked on the mechanics of my hands. Sure I could use voice buts it's loud and mostly words only. Not great for quiet rooms or coding with special characters. Now imagine an integrated set of circuits directly connected to my brain. It wouldn't have to be many. Let's say 10. Now with training I could learn to activate each circuit. Even if the training was only for a digital signal of 0 or 1 that's 2^10 unique signals. Not to mention these could be modifiers of other outputs. And the real kicker is this signal generation happens at the speed of thought. Imagine coding in an IDE at that speed! I didn't touch on the whole AI threat but the point is simply that if we need to be defensive or offensive against an AI we need to be able to output meaning quicker than running to the server room and unplugging HAL.
- aroman 9y ago
  Even getting reliable and useful output from the brain is still much much harder than you think it is. > Now imagine an integrated set of circuits directly connected to my brain. It wouldn't have to be many. Let's say 10. 10 circuits connect to what, exactly? How? Where? Attaching electrodes to existing cells is invasive and uncomfortable (to say the least), and temporary because scar tissue forms and severs the connection in time. But suppose you developed some way of reliably, durably, and non-invasively attaching external artificial neurons into your brain (to be sure, a huge jump). Where would you put these neurons, exactly? What would they synapse to? Just one or two particular neurons? How would you locate them during "install time"? How would the user access them during "run time"? Most brain-machine interfaces use motor neurons because they're easy to access. Maybe that'd be a good route, but again, doing this reliably and non-invasively is really hard, especially if there isn't a clear feedback loop. I don't know why, but a lot of people seem to think that neuroscience is a lot closer to being "solved" than it actually is. Truth is, we barely have any idea how the brain works, let alone how we can meaningfully augment and interact with it.
pnloyd 9y ago
Elon musk has talked a bit about this company. The goal is to develop a device which will help increase our low output "bandwidth", not make us smarter. Has the feasibility of such a thing even been explored before? I wouldn't be so fast to dismiss it, I know some types of information have already been decoded from the brain, at least parts of their goal have been proven to be conceptual possible. https://thenextweb.com/artificial-intelligence/2018/03/06/mind-reading-ai-isnt-science-fiction-anymore/ https://thenextweb.com/artificial-intelligence/2018/03/06/mi...
lsc 9y ago
> The fundamentals of this idea are so shockingly hand-wavey, that I find this to be something of a hazard to Elon Musk’s reputation. The rest of the comment implies that you aren't joking.
maaark 9y ago
>Hint: we’re still not sure if cold fusion will arrive very soon. I thought cold fusion was confirmed nonsense?

nefitty 9y ago

AI, like any other militarily-beneficial technology, will advance whether some societies want it to or not. Nuclear weapons, drones, armored vehicles... These are all similar examples where being the ethical "sucker" is extremely hazardous to the survival of your state. The access people have to possible neural enhancements will be dependent on the rules of their society: Chinese social ratings, US economic status, Russian political connections, etc. Will a criminal have a harder time getting neural enhancements in China or the US? Our definition of what a criminal is will be wildly different in edge cases. I think an interesting, current corrolary is nootropics and meditation. These are not going to inherently make you a "good" person,and they are easily accessible to anyone who wants them. If you want to train your brain and increase your self-control, it's ultimately up to you what you do with those advantages. Formal consequences emerge when new behaviors are perceived as detrimental to society. In terms of how neural enhancements will.make us smarter, does it really matter? If the output is what you intended, at what point do you need to focus on how you got there? Anyways, pick a challenge and put an enhanced and unenhanced human head-to-head. We'll discover our new capabilities through experimentation, just as we always have.

tylerjwilk00 9y ago

I don't think it's quite as far fetched or far out. The fundamental point of the neural lace is increased bandwidth OUTPUT from the human mind so that it can be INPUT for some other process. Bare with me... Right now I am using 2 thumbs to output this message. Not very efficient. I could hop on a keyboard and up my output bandwith to 10 fingers. That would be faster but still bottlenecked on the mechanics of my hands. Sure I could use voice buts it's loud and mostly words only. Not great for quiet rooms or coding with special characters. Now imagine an integrated set of circuits directly connected to my brain. It wouldn't have to be many. Let's say 10. Now with training I could learn to activate each circuit. Even if the training was only for a digital signal of 0 or 1 that's 2^10 unique signals. Not to mention these could be modifiers of other outputs. And the real kicker is this signal generation happens at the speed of thought. Imagine coding in an IDE at that speed! I didn't touch on the whole AI threat but the point is simply that if we need to be defensive or offensive against an AI we need to be able to output meaning quicker than running to the server room and unplugging HAL.

aroman 9y ago
Even getting reliable and useful output from the brain is still much much harder than you think it is. > Now imagine an integrated set of circuits directly connected to my brain. It wouldn't have to be many. Let's say 10. 10 circuits connect to what, exactly? How? Where? Attaching electrodes to existing cells is invasive and uncomfortable (to say the least), and temporary because scar tissue forms and severs the connection in time. But suppose you developed some way of reliably, durably, and non-invasively attaching external artificial neurons into your brain (to be sure, a huge jump). Where would you put these neurons, exactly? What would they synapse to? Just one or two particular neurons? How would you locate them during "install time"? How would the user access them during "run time"? Most brain-machine interfaces use motor neurons because they're easy to access. Maybe that'd be a good route, but again, doing this reliably and non-invasively is really hard, especially if there isn't a clear feedback loop. I don't know why, but a lot of people seem to think that neuroscience is a lot closer to being "solved" than it actually is. Truth is, we barely have any idea how the brain works, let alone how we can meaningfully augment and interact with it.

pnloyd 9y ago

Elon musk has talked a bit about this company. The goal is to develop a device which will help increase our low output "bandwidth", not make us smarter. Has the feasibility of such a thing even been explored before? I wouldn't be so fast to dismiss it, I know some types of information have already been decoded from the brain, at least parts of their goal have been proven to be conceptual possible. https://thenextweb.com/artificial-intelligence/2018/03/06/mind-reading-ai-isnt-science-fiction-anymore/ https://thenextweb.com/artificial-intelligence/2018/03/06/mi...

lsc 9y ago

> The fundamentals of this idea are so shockingly hand-wavey, that I find this to be something of a hazard to Elon Musk’s reputation. The rest of the comment implies that you aren't joking.

maaark 9y ago

>Hint: we’re still not sure if cold fusion will arrive very soon. I thought cold fusion was confirmed nonsense?