3 ms·

No, but the language certainly is. Imagine a computer interface capable of actualising the conceptual structures that you are imagining. Imagine that this int

by yarg 7y ago

No, but the language certainly is. Imagine a computer interface capable of actualising the conceptual structures that you are imagining. Imagine that this interface had a feedback mechanism simulating a virtual eye allowing you to perceive a full three dimensional rendering of that concept in real time. Now think of an arraylist, think of how it responds to changes, visualise the corner cases. You just wrote the code.

tastroder 7y ago
Can we please not adopt this as a potential use case for this topic though? Real applications look more like this: Imagine a movement. Follow an intense training protocol many times for each possible movement so that the signal processing component actually gets meaningful data it can differentiate and is certain enough that you want to trigger something. After multiple hours of training it might actually get good enough. Input dimensionality for that method would likely be simple action triggers (at least less than a traditional keyboard) instead of a complex concept abstraction. Alternative: Stare at a board of visual stimuli, repeat for a few hours in order to train the system to your brain. Stare at board of visual stimuli again in order to actually use the thing. Again, slow paced and limited input dimensionality. While these invasive models produce better signals than non-invasive BCI, they do not include a feedback mechanism and have far less throughput than using a keyboard. Which is great if you have a medical need for the technology and thus cannot use traditional interfaces, everything else is sci fi. I'm not trying to say that this isn't cool but we should really refrain from painting it as some miracle tech, otherwise we cannot really complain if media adopts that image and misrepresents the whole field again.
- trevyn 7y ago
  Except that Neuralink clearly stated that they have ambitions for all of this, which is unusual for a company developing a medical device. Also, wouldn’t the stim abilities count as a feedback mechanism?
  - TeMPOraL 7y ago
    Because Neuralink wasn't started in order to develop a medical device, it was started with an explicit goal to develop a BCI to ultimately improve the cognitive capabilities of healthy humans.
  - tastroder 7y ago
    According to my 1990s graphics card packaging I have a dragon in my bedroom. I wouldn't expect a Musk company to produce underwhelming marketing claims but marketing departments don't change the state of the art in research. Making this sci-fi levels of usable and getting it to consumers are both pretty unrealistic claims. I'm pretty sure you still couldn't get invasive research BCI past an ethics board around here if the patients skull isn't opened out of medical necessity anyway, doing so for fun isn't analogous to getting a piercing or tattoo, it's analogous to chopping off a limb to get a robotic arm.
    - yarg 7y ago
      Sure, it's not like a Musk company ever broke the mold before. The man's not perfect, he's a PR nightmare and his estimates tend to be far enough off to give cause for concern regarding financials. But he's brought us reusable rockets and very usable electric cars in what is still a staggeringly short time frame. What he's doing here makes me nervous, but there's no fucking way I'm betting against him.
      - tastroder 7y ago
        Sure, I didn't want to imply that they won't make money on this. Just trying to give a bit of perspective versus their marketing :) No matter what I think of the feasibility, a Musk-backed commercial player in the field will likely stir something up. With the pace of progress in the field over the last decades, that might just be a good thing.
        yarg 7y ago
        I'm certainly not saying that what he's doing is all good either. The idea that this is going to be controlled with anything other than a direct connection to an air-gapped computer scares the shit out of me.
hooande 7y ago
This has little to do with how code is written. It's so much more than "visualize an array". The gap from brain reading thread to what you described is like the gap between DeepMind and AGI
- yarg 7y ago
  I disagree. We're already close to replacing the eyes as a source of visual data. We've already used brain waves to directly control input to a computer. What I was talking about was essentially computer aided design with an integrated computer. And I know how code is written, on many occasions I've known almost completely the structures that I'm going to spend the next two and a half hours translating and typing out. The minutiae of the code that emerges as I'm typing is often an exception, but I generally have a fair idea of where and what the corner cases are going to be. The biggest bottleneck by far comes in translating the internally visualised structure into an English derived programming language.
sjg007 7y ago
Imagine an infinite loop
- yarg 7y ago
  Sure, it's a box with an arrow that goes from the box to the box.
- Will_Parker 7y ago
  So, a loop?

by yarg 7y ago

tastroder 7y ago

Can we please not adopt this as a potential use case for this topic though? Real applications look more like this: Imagine a movement. Follow an intense training protocol many times for each possible movement so that the signal processing component actually gets meaningful data it can differentiate and is certain enough that you want to trigger something. After multiple hours of training it might actually get good enough. Input dimensionality for that method would likely be simple action triggers (at least less than a traditional keyboard) instead of a complex concept abstraction. Alternative: Stare at a board of visual stimuli, repeat for a few hours in order to train the system to your brain. Stare at board of visual stimuli again in order to actually use the thing. Again, slow paced and limited input dimensionality. While these invasive models produce better signals than non-invasive BCI, they do not include a feedback mechanism and have far less throughput than using a keyboard. Which is great if you have a medical need for the technology and thus cannot use traditional interfaces, everything else is sci fi. I'm not trying to say that this isn't cool but we should really refrain from painting it as some miracle tech, otherwise we cannot really complain if media adopts that image and misrepresents the whole field again.

trevyn 7y ago
Except that Neuralink clearly stated that they have ambitions for all of this, which is unusual for a company developing a medical device. Also, wouldn’t the stim abilities count as a feedback mechanism?
- TeMPOraL 7y ago
  Because Neuralink wasn't started in order to develop a medical device, it was started with an explicit goal to develop a BCI to ultimately improve the cognitive capabilities of healthy humans.
- tastroder 7y ago
  According to my 1990s graphics card packaging I have a dragon in my bedroom. I wouldn't expect a Musk company to produce underwhelming marketing claims but marketing departments don't change the state of the art in research. Making this sci-fi levels of usable and getting it to consumers are both pretty unrealistic claims. I'm pretty sure you still couldn't get invasive research BCI past an ethics board around here if the patients skull isn't opened out of medical necessity anyway, doing so for fun isn't analogous to getting a piercing or tattoo, it's analogous to chopping off a limb to get a robotic arm.
  - yarg 7y ago
    Sure, it's not like a Musk company ever broke the mold before. The man's not perfect, he's a PR nightmare and his estimates tend to be far enough off to give cause for concern regarding financials. But he's brought us reusable rockets and very usable electric cars in what is still a staggeringly short time frame. What he's doing here makes me nervous, but there's no fucking way I'm betting against him.
    - tastroder 7y ago
      Sure, I didn't want to imply that they won't make money on this. Just trying to give a bit of perspective versus their marketing :) No matter what I think of the feasibility, a Musk-backed commercial player in the field will likely stir something up. With the pace of progress in the field over the last decades, that might just be a good thing.
      - yarg 7y ago
        I'm certainly not saying that what he's doing is all good either. The idea that this is going to be controlled with anything other than a direct connection to an air-gapped computer scares the shit out of me.

hooande 7y ago

This has little to do with how code is written. It's so much more than "visualize an array". The gap from brain reading thread to what you described is like the gap between DeepMind and AGI

yarg 7y ago
I disagree. We're already close to replacing the eyes as a source of visual data. We've already used brain waves to directly control input to a computer. What I was talking about was essentially computer aided design with an integrated computer. And I know how code is written, on many occasions I've known almost completely the structures that I'm going to spend the next two and a half hours translating and typing out. The minutiae of the code that emerges as I'm typing is often an exception, but I generally have a fair idea of where and what the corner cases are going to be. The biggest bottleneck by far comes in translating the internally visualised structure into an English derived programming language.

sjg007 7y ago

Imagine an infinite loop

yarg 7y ago
Sure, it's a box with an arrow that goes from the box to the box.
Will_Parker 7y ago
So, a loop?