18 ms·

A skeptic’s take on Neuralink and other consumer neurotech

109 points by hhs 6y ago

ctdonath 6y ago
Overwrought criticism. Yes, we’re at that wildly imaginative stage where a small & hard step down a long road of undeveloped technology gives rise to hopes of what the end of that decades-hence goal will achieve. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try, and doesn’t mean we’ll give up tablets for brain implants next year. Yes those leading the way give impassioned speeches about what might come of their work - that’s ok, really.
- kelnos 6y ago
  The article doesn't at all suggest we shouldn't try, and explicitly points out that there will likely be a lot of benefits to science and neurosurgery due to this influx in funding. The point is to remind us that all of the hype around this is just that: hype.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- Taylor_OD 6y ago
  Kinda sounds like the same type of criticism someone would have given when musk talked about spaceX...
sschueller 6y ago
What Musk is pedaling is pure science function. [1] Eventually all of this will catch up with him and he will fall very hard. [1] https://youtu.be/BvmA_gQ-95c https://youtu.be/BvmA_gQ-95c
- chrisweekly 6y ago
  "science function" - maybe a freudian slip, vs "science fiction"? (and it's "peddling" as in "selling", not "pedaling" like riding a bike)
  - devindotcom 6y ago
    "science function" is actually pretty great.
    - chrisweekly 6y ago
      agreed! I enjoyed the comment on a couple levels :)
- JoshCole 6y ago
  Notice, for the first few minutes of that video, it shows a mounting degree of credibility on the part of Nueralink as PhDs with expertise on relevant topics are noted, but then quite abruptly the tone shifts and it plays a comedy sketch [1]. Why? Apply common sense and skepticism to that question and you will be enlightened. I'll give you a hint: common sense does not indicate, like the YouTube channel implies, that the richest person in the world gets there by providing absolutely no value to the rooms he enters. In order to have that implication a resort to a different rhetorical technique than that of reason is necessary. The creator of the video understood this and employed such a technique. The video tries to argue that Elon Musk is trying to steal credit for founding the company [2]. He doesn't actually quote Elon Musk when he accuses him of stealing credit. Why does he circle text on Wikipedia rather than quote Elon Musk? If you go to the Wikipedia article and check the citations for that claim you will discover Elon Musk does not state the thing which the liar in the video states that he claims. Why does he lie about what Elon Musk actually said? Apply common sense and skepticism to that question and you will be enlightened. I'll give you a hint: he is working backward from a narrative, not forward from the facts. Alternatively, want to do a long bet for $10k that in 10 years Musk will still be a millionaire despite the contents of the video you linked? Void of bet in the event that some other cause leads to misfortune. [1]: https://youtu.be/BvmA_gQ-95c?t=155 https://youtu.be/BvmA_gQ-95c?t=155 [2]: https://youtu.be/BvmA_gQ-95c?t=185 https://youtu.be/BvmA_gQ-95c?t=185
  - sschueller 6y ago
    The video may be a bit off but doesn't change who Musk [1] is. Arrogantly dictating his way around like a child will eventually result in push back. Maybe not in the US or China but the Germans don't play the same game. [2] [1] https://elonmusk.today/ https://elonmusk.today/ [2] https://www.spiegel.de/wirtschaft/elon-musk-tesla-gruenheide-das-heuchlerische-gerede-des-tesla-chefs-a-4d9d9b7e-81c6-424c-9311-b9a6b6ecd294?sara_ecid=soci_upd_wbMbjhOSvViISjc8RPU89NcCvtlFcJ https://www.spiegel.de/wirtschaft/elon-musk-tesla-gruenheide...
    - JoshCole 6y ago
      That new link is pretty pathetic as a justification for derision. I'll take one and only example because if I did as many as I could do I would come across as an apologist when really your sources are just absolute garbage. They are full of straw men and fallacies. Don't get me wrong - you can point to one that is reasonable. It's just that as a wall of argument that is full of garbage is a gish gallop. It's a technique of rhetoric not reason. So I'm not going to treat your sources as something I should be reasonable with, since they are unworthy of the effort. > 2,291 days since Elon Musk tweeted tat Tesla was developing a charger that automatically connects to cars. (12/31/2014) > "We are actually working on a charger that automatically moves out from the wall & connects like a solid metal snake. For realz." > https://elonmusk.today/#snake-charger https://elonmusk.today/#snake-charger Here is the metal snake charger it claims doesn't exist: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sWXIZMtxB6Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sWXIZMtxB6Q
modeless 6y ago
> I doubt we will have accurate, mind-reading consumer devices in the near future I'm not sure Neuralink would disagree. Their first applications are medical, not consumer mind-reading. They're open about their bigger vision being farther away. > Neuroscience is far from understanding how the mind works — much less having the ability to decode it. We don't necessarily have to understand everything about the brain to communicate with it. And we'll learn a lot in the process. > a neurotech device would have to add significant value for a consumer to get one implanted in her skull. Again, I don't think Neuralink would disagree. I guess the disagreement is in whether an implant could provide that significant value. And nobody really knows yet, of course. A lot depends on how well the brain can adapt to a new form of I/O. > Consumer brain-recording devices have been on the market for roughly 15 years Yeah but the technology is totally different and quite lame honestly. Existing devices have fundamental limitations that are not shared by an actual brain implant. Not a strong argument IMO. > Helmets and other headgear face an uphill battle to adoption The external hardware for an implant can get pretty small. Much less obtrusive than the given example of Google Glass. > It may be more taxing to control a device with a BCI than without it Pure speculation at this point. Honestly it is wise to be skeptical. But mostly I am skeptical of the timeline, not the eventual usefulness of the product. Neuralink is likely too early, but one day useful consumer brain implants will be possible.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- dumbfoundded 6y ago
  It's so far out in the future that numerous other advances may make the entirety of the approach useless. For example, maybe computers get so smart our need to interact with them diminishes and we interact with them rather passively. Maybe the opposite happens and we need even tighter coupling leading to a genetic engineering solution or a nanobot pill solution that crosses the blood brain barrier. The problem is everything is pure speculation at this point. I do hope they accomplish some of their goals but any business potential seems a total guess.
  - andbberger 6y ago
anonymouse008 6y ago
Man, I've spent too much time in this space... I can only sum it up like this - The mind is not a joystick. Throughput is not the measurement of a good BCI. BCI as a term should be abolished. Someone is going to make something so seemingly simple, but unbelievably meaningful, to rule this space.
- offtop5 6y ago
  Hypothetically, if I can hire a PhD candidate and give him a million bucks to tweak the sensors for my brain specifically. Could he or she then make this like a joystick. Is the issue that there's so much variation between people.
  - anonymouse008 6y ago
    That's more of a profession of faith in what a 'good' BCI will be, than a critique of the science -- There are many ways to get high fidelity 'joystick' level control out of a brain, especially if given one-on-one training. The problems for Neuralink will be the same with any implant - immune responses and infections - and in a sensitive area no less.
    - offtop5 6y ago
      No way in hell I'm letting anyone stick something in my brain, I thought there was a wireless way to do this. In a very dystopian way I could imagine shopping centers scanning the brain waves potential customers and taloring ads to them
      - mattkrause 6y ago
        Neurosurgeons live in a very weird bubble around elective surgery. I was at a conference where people were debating the merits of non-invasive vs. invasive neural interfaces. A surgeon argued that people would obviously never accept non-invasive ones...ON COSMETIC GROUNDS: EEG caps (and similar) look dorky. Many people do go to great pains to hide disabilities, but I was (and still am) really skeptical that this totally trumps fears around highly-invasive neurosurgery!
dadrock 6y ago
>I doubt we will have accurate, mind-reading consumer devices in the near future So what? Stop trying? Give up? What's the point of this statement? Why is the timeline you personally find realistic relevant to anyone else but you? I just don't get this attitude. It's such a sour grapes type of attitude. Either help out, or get out.
- perardi 6y ago
  I just don't get this attitude. It's such a sour grapes type of attitude. Either help out, or get out. It’s called “skepticism”. You read enough history, you realize the charlatans greatly outnumber the geniuses, and you do your due-diligence before you invest, or form some weird cult.
  - bpodgursky 6y ago
    If you read enough history, you realize that people who fail are forgotten, but the people who mock the people who end up succeeding are remembered and humiliated forever.
  - tokipin 6y ago
    Some skeptics remain skeptics up until the point that they've been proven blatantly and obviously wrong and people stop accepting their arguments, so for some "skeptics" at least it's more of a stubborn mindset backed by confirmation bias or other issues disconnected from the actual subject matter, rather than sound reasoning.
    - qayxc 6y ago
      In this case, however, scepticism is more than warranted. Just comparing the mission statement of NeuraLink (from their homepage) with the wild claims of their most prominent founder (Musk) should make you stop and think for a second. The actual goals are quite humble and achievable in the near term. What Musk says on Joe Rogen's podcasts and other public forums, however, is more fiction than science. Unfortunately most publications focus on the latter and ignore the former and way too many people fall for this and seriously believe that highly invasive and risky brain surgery will become routine in just a couple of years. We're talking about the same guy who said there could be "1 million full self-driving robo taxis on the road by 2020" during the April 2019 Tesla investor day [0]. The same guy, mind you, who's company two years later, in 2021 told regulatory bodies that their technology is only SAE level-2... [1] The technical press back then was very sceptical about the claim as well (and it turns out they were right to do so). Autonomous cars are on a whole different level than BCI, though, and there's no breakthrough science required to achieve autonomous cars. So in light of this I feel that scepticism has its place w.r.t. BCI and outrageous claims (e.g. streaming music directly into the brain or curing neurological diseases) about the near-term abilities and development stage of the technology. [0] https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/290029-tesla-well-have-full-self-driving-by-2020-robo-taxis-too https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/290029-tesla-well-have-f... [1] https://www.thedrive.com/tech/39647/tesla-admits-current-full-self-driving-beta-will-always-be-a-level-2-system-emails https://www.thedrive.com/tech/39647/tesla-admits-current-ful...
nabla9 6y ago
The biggest issue with Neuralink (for consumers) is the basic problem with artificial implants and their side effects. Teeth implants, knee implants they generate additional risk of low level inflammation in the body over time. Even generally unproblematic silicon breast implants that just hang there have scar tissue and can cause immune system reactions. Brain surgery is many times riskier. If Neuralink could create way to circumvent all these problems it would be huge breakthrough even without the BCI.
ALittleLight 6y ago
"Consumers have shown time and again that they are reluctant to adopt products that look funny (ahem, Google Glass)." I think this is misreading Google Glass. People didn't like or want to use Google Glass because there was no "killer app" for them. There was no useful app for Glass at all so far as I am aware. Had Google Glass enabled something new and useful people would have worn it regardless of how different it looked, and because people found use in wearing it we would get used to it. Headphones are an example of this. Headphones would probably look goofy if you weren't used to seeing them. People wear headphones anyway because headphones deliver something useful to the wearer - private audio. If I had to wear a silly hat, but in exchange could carry around a meaningful brain-computer interface, I absolutely would, and, assuming "meaningful" in a broad sense, I'm certain huge numbers of people would as well. Right now people are struggling to make the tech work at all. Worrying about the form factor with which it will be delivered is premature - it can't really do anything yet. Once it's useful it will need a good form factor, but the use will drive adoption, not the other way around.
- pharke 6y ago
  Exactly, glasses are an even better example. They give you superior vision compared to what you would have naturally so almost everyone who needs them puts up with wearing them and they have even become a fashion trend in themselves by being so omnipresent. If I could have a pair of glasses for my brain that correct for any natural deficiencies then I'd wear the heck out of them, appearances be damned.
  - dwighttk 6y ago
    The nice thing about glasses is they never run out of batteries
    - pharke 6y ago
      I don't have to refuel a bicycle but I still prefer driving.
      - deleted 6y ago
devindotcom 6y ago
Take Musk's talk about BCIs the way you take his talk about Mars colonies. But my guess is we'll have the latter before the former is common. There will be some interesting BCI tech in the next few years but as the author notes, it's going to be very specific and limited, and probably quite expensive.
savant_penguin 6y ago
Who cares, I've seen the pig movement prediction and found it really cool >> Would I invest my money in it? Hell no >> Would I have neurosurgery for no good reason? Hell no*10 To me this is clearly a longshot product, but I'm very happy that some private citizen is willing to invest his own money into this. If someone stumbles on how to transform thoughts into movement signals or how to encode digital images into optic nerve signals I'm all for it
lukeinator42 6y ago
Even though "neuroscience is far from understanding how the mind works" companies like muse have already brought EEG headsets to market for use cases such as meditation. If neurotech focuses in on use cases where we can already decode useful information from the brain that can't be accessed by other methods, I think there is a huge potential market waiting to be tapped. Being skeptical about the accuracy of these technologies/feasibility of surgery is valid, but this article reads as pretty cynical rather than just skeptical, haha.
marc__1 6y ago
"It takes 20 years to become an overnight success." - Eddie Cantor SpaceX took nearly fifteen years to become the beast it is and Tesla took eight to increase deliveries from 2,600 to 500,000. Don't underestimate what these companies achieve in the long-term and we are always terrible to predict exponential growth (from pandemics, to EV, to space flights) [1] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/science/spacex-falcon-launch.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/science/spacex-falc... [2]https://www.statista.com/chart/8547/teslas-vehicle-deliveries-since-2012/ https://www.statista.com/chart/8547/teslas-vehicle-deliverie...
- dumbfoundded 6y ago
  I think the difference is tackling a pre-existing market. Both cars and space had large existing markets to which Elon could speed up the rate of progress. There isn't really a market for BCI except for cases of disability. In this case, he has to create the customer demand for a technology that doesn't exist. That's a really tough sell when even if it did work (which is very much in doubt), would require a literal brain surgery. This isn't like scaling up a factory or using modern compute to get a rocket to land itself. It's fundamental research with uncertainties on perhaps every angle.
  - aeternum 6y ago
    I would seriously consider getting it depending on the bandwidth. Direct access to web search and an indexed storage system would be having a super power. Plenty of people get Lasik just to avoid the annoyance of contacts/glasses and eyes are technically part of the brain. Why wouldn't there be a market for BCI when the potential benefit is much greater?
    - platz 6y ago
      Do you really randomly poking some electrodes into your brain tissue is going to give you enough fidelity to query google. That's all it is, you know. Some wires, randomly placed in tissue. The cells around those wires don't know the TCP/IP protocol or anything
phcordner 6y ago
Even discounting everything about the ethics, feasibility, state of our conceptual knowledge of brain function, has anyone demonstrated how a six-figure hardware suite like this https://plexon.com/plexon-systems/ https://plexon.com/plexon-systems/ is going to be miniaturized into a smartphone sized device mass produced for consumer purchase in the timetable laid out by Neuralink?
- swordsmith 6y ago
  See (https://www.brown.edu/news/2021-03-31/braingate-wireless https://www.brown.edu/news/2021-03-31/braingate-wireless), wireless BCI, in humans nevertheless. It's not mass produced, but mostly because there isn't the need to.
  - mattkrause 6y ago
    It almost is, actually. The hardware in that system is from Blackrock Microsystems. You can call them up and buy it right now (if you’ve got the cash...It’s not cheap!) It’s currently intended for research, so you’ll need ethics approval and the decoder isn’t included (but that’s the fun part anyway). Ripple Neuro sells similar gear (better, even, maybe) and Neuralynx and some smaller companies also have competing products. It’s not in every corner store, but you could have a similar setup this month if you really wanted to.
georgewfraser 6y ago
I did my PhD in this field, I love that Neuralink is doing what they’re doing, but I also agree with this article. Your hands on a keyboard is a fantastic brain computer interface and represent a high bar that an implanted BCI must clear to add value for non-paralyzed people.
- QuantumG 6y ago
  I'm typing this to you on an on-screen keyboard with my thumbs. It should be trivial to do better than that with an implant.
  - ashtonkem 6y ago
    It’s clearly not trivial, otherwise it would already be done. Sometimes “obviously” inferior solutions are actually local maximums, and finding the global maximum is extremely difficult.
    - QuantumG 6y ago
      Sure, or maybe the window for innovation is too small because of gatekeeping. Accessibility software is notoriously horrible because of this reason, why wouldn't hardware be?
      - ashtonkem 6y ago
        It seems like you're jumping straight to a conspiracy as the explanation, which does not seem supported by any evidence whatsoever. Why in the world would these supposed Gatekeepers gatekeep away a technology that would provide a massive competitive advantage? Wouldn't they instead do exactly what they've been doing for decades and just buy up this hypothetical new technology? That sure seems to be what Apple is doing; there's an entire wiki page dedicated to Apple acquisitions and what Apple products were derived from it. Why would they suddenly flip into suppressing something better rather than just repeating their standard practice? Perhaps the more plausible answer is that nobody has come up with an interface that beats the smart phone for the general population?
type0 6y ago
> "Should we be worried that companies like Facebook, Neuralink, Kernel, and others — helmed by individuals who have previously launched paradigm-shifting technology — are working on capturing data from our brains?" Who would be dumb enough to implant something from facebook into their brain?!
- cblconfederate 6y ago
  billions of people use the facebook's current BCI interface projecting from their phones to their retinas
  - qayxc 6y ago
    The difference between moving your eyes and fingers and open brain surgery in terms of both cost and risk render this argument somewhat pointless. Costly high-risk surgery that might kill or lobotomise you is not very appealing compared to glaring at a screen and moving your fingers for the purpose of sharing meaningless drivel with the world.
cblconfederate 6y ago
Misleading. Neuralink has not shown something impressive , however it's not comparable with consumer supposedly-EEG devices, but with this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BrainGate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BrainGate . Those things are still in the basic research stage, and it's been really hard to make them work properly. Neuralink is not even leading in research here, but i don't think they expect to make consumer grade anytime soon either. OTOH, all sorts of multiunnit recordings and optogenetics stimulation is possible today - if you're a mouse. I wonder why consumer-grade doesnt pursue the more feasible goal of reading from a motor nerve. I wish i could train myself typing by thinking of finger movements.
- tamcap 6y ago
  Facebook is doing that... Look up CTRL-Labs.
polypodiopsidae 6y ago
I think that these aspirations for an electrosilico (pardon my neologisms) interface with the biological brain are a rather outdated nostalgia of the 20th century ninetys.(Vaporwave comes to mind). Intersecting just 90 sensors with the insane mass of neurons... it seems rather clumsy primitive tech tbh. If I was about to bet on the future I assume, that aspirations of hybridisation/creolisation/amalgamation of human&machine will happen on the biological register; that this development will go the other way round: from semiconductors to biotechnology. E.g. the brain is a fabulous architecture; damn effective and very low energy consumption at the same time. Wich makes me think: A substantially useful AI that can immerse with neurological coginition (and not just be a fancier interface that safes you from carrying a calculator around), will probably need A LOT of computational power. Damn these things can't even steer a hand through useful movements while im typing a way in language (which is its own insane technology [1]) with quite some musicality. What I mean is: Let's assume you could really supply the population with these interfaces and they really work. Who is going to be supplied with her/his own infrastructure of supercomputers running that AI that will merge with her/his cognition? I don't think that it would be possible to supply even a marginal amount of the population with access to these entitys. So this amounts to some dream of the (misunderstood version) of the Übermensch, as a caressing of the narcissitic hurt that the being of tekhne inflicts to some. [1] It has been argued that language speaks. Not only do subjects speak language, but language also speaks subjects. (that's spoken through Heidegger). Thus there is something like a life of lanugage (it makes sense to think about if it is alife). Think of language as an AI.
pedalpete 6y ago
Consumer neurotech doesn't need to start with Neuralink. Products like Halo (https://www.haloneuro.com/ https://www.haloneuro.com/) are stimulating your brain to improve muscle memory, Muse (https://choosemuse.com https://choosemuse.com) is using neurofeedback to improve meditation (and they're getting into sleep tracking). At SoundMind (https://SoundMind.co https://SoundMind.co), we're building a headband which monitors your sleep state and uses sound (auditory stimulation) to improve your sleep. Commercial tCDS is a real thing for treatment of depression. There are multiple consumer tCDS devices on the market as well, I won't link to them, because I haven't seen any that I don't believe are snake oil. But the commercial scale devices will get shrunk down to consumer usable size eventually. This is just the beginning. Consumer neurotech shouldn't mean implanted, just as sight correction doesn't mean lasik (just wear glasses). I think this skeptic is perhaps too focused on the technology, rather than the use case. I'm not sure if we'll ever willingly get an neural implant, but let's not throw all of neurotech to mean that small segment of the market.
- mattkrause 6y ago
  tDCS has a very similar problem. There is so much hype (“it does everything: makes you stronger, faster, happier, smarter, and better at video games and jazz”) and anti-hype (“it does nothing and it’s all placebo or peripheral stimulation”)[0]. I know about as much about it as anyone and I think that it a) has tons of promise and b) should not be anywhere near anyone but an research participant for the foreseeable future.
  - pedalpete 6y ago
    Even the commercial versions shouldn't be used outside the lab? A friend is on the board of a commercial tDCS medical company. They don't make the hardware, they just do the stim on patients. I haven't seen the machines, but he says they look like an old school hair helmet from a salon in the 60s.
    - mattkrause 6y ago
      The hardware itself is very simple: it's just a constant current source with some safety features bolted on. Research-oriented devices look wild, but it's mostly because cable management isn't a huge priority: better to be flexible than look nice!. It's certainly possible to make a good-looking one: Neuroelectrics's looks like a swim cap and Halo sells a baseball-style hat with a brim. However, the simplicity of the device makes people think its effects will be equally simple. This isn't true. We don't fully understand what the electric fields do to the brain, and the simple story of "turning the brain up/down" almost certainly doesn't hold up. In most cases, we also don't understand the problem to be solved (e.g., what in the brain is causing your depression--or your bad golf game). Taken together, it's a nightmare: poking at an unknown cause with an unknown effect. My colleagues and I have been looking at this in monkeys, which we can measure everything from behavioral effects down to the activity of single neurons. It's very exciting and has, I think, a lot of potential, but it blows my mind that people are already selling products. The crazy thing is that the field has been through this hype cycle before in the 1960s-1970s....
Animats 6y ago
I rather liked Neuroware's Nekomimi ears.[1] They were a set of wearable cat ears controlled by an EEG sensor. They could detect at rest, attentive, and surprised states. Popular with cosplayers around 2013. They worked, more or less. Watching someone play a video game, the ears would show "attentive" while they played a level, and dropped back to rest when they finished. At an anime convention, I saw a group of girls all wearing them. Someone called out the name of one, and her ears popped up. Only hers, not the others. They were a bit too bulky (4 AAA batteries), the ears were too big, and the forehead sensor wouldn't stay in place. Someone should try that again in a more compact form. More fun than the quack medical applications. [1] https://youtu.be/DK41eqO3wW0 https://youtu.be/DK41eqO3wW0
- goldenkey 6y ago
  Most of those supposed EEG sensors are just sending the forehead or facial muscles which are quite thick and noisy, electromagnetically. When you focus, you tend to tense your muscles, so these devices work to a limited extent. But they are not EEG, especially without a conductive lubricant to get through the skin.
rossdavidh 6y ago
Why would they need to convince people to get a brain implant, when they can already convince them to just stare at a small screen, which they take with them everywhere, already? It just seems like extra cost and also harder to sell yearly upgrades. Now, for people with spinal injuries, etc. then this totally seems like a good thing to be investigating.
- sneak 6y ago
  In short, because i/o via eyeballs and thumbs (or eyeballs and speech) is pretty low bandwidth and slow.
  - swordsmith 6y ago
    This whole "our existing i/o bandwidth is too limited" story started by Musk and co is not very well thought out. Most people cannot think faster than they type or speak, at least coherently. The rapid information transfer with a computer via "thoughts" ignores the fact that a concept of a "car", for example, exists as different neural activity patterns, distributed over different parts of the brain for different people and changes with time. So that would imply the BCI would need to catalog how different all possible concepts are cataloged within an individual, to achieve such "direct thought communication", which would require whole-brain scale recording, something definitely NOT achievable with ephys (as a thought experiment, you'd have to introduce wires whose total volume become significant compare to brain volume). Further, the act of speaking and typing is also a way to articulate and organize your (abstract) thoughts. If one skips that stage, would the output be meaningful at all? The limiting communication bandwidth idea is a very fancy marketing message easy for people to hype up on, in typical Elon fashion.
    - s5300 6y ago
      >>Most people cannot think faster than they type or speak, at least coherently. Likely going to sound quite pretentious - but I definitely can and have been able to do so for as long as I can remember. It's honestly quite annoying as I grow older. I like to think it may directly correlate with the fact I was able to type 160+ WPM on a shitty membrane keyboard at school in the 5th grade quite easily. But yes, as you said and what I've come to believe... is that most can't.
moocow01 6y ago
I see Neuralink as just a next-gen version of deep brain stimulation where we could have a lot more stimulation nodes than 1 or 2. Just that could be quite exciting as it is already known that targeted electric stimulation in the brain can do a lot of positive things for those who can benefit.
teslaberry 6y ago
if two people wearing a nueral link can communicate wirelessly somehow----one simple concept YES or NO. and that is all the neuralink can do----you have TELEPATHY. that's how it starts. heres the thing. why is this so much better than some wifi haptic device not implanted in the brain. ITS NOT.
mlindner 6y ago
Weird timing with this article given that Neuralink just released a video of a Monkey playing Pong (and other games) wit his mind. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rsCul1sp4hQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rsCul1sp4hQ
m463 6y ago
I disagree with the opinion this article. It appears to be "neuralink and others are promising full mind reading and this whole thing is going to fail" It is similar to the "self-driving argument". People complain and complain about Elon Musk's full-self-driving, yet telsa owners are out on crowded freeways, their cars happily driving them down the center of the lane and judiciously following the car in front. Yes, it probably can't get drive through at mcdonalds, but big whoop. (also this person has no concept of what "the public" will do - honestly they would probably pay $5k to have alexa beep in their mind when someone's at the door) Personally I would love a ctrl-labs keyboard, but now with facebook owning them, you know there will be a login requirement.
- Grustaf 6y ago
  Keeping the car in the lane doesn't add very much utility at all. You still need to sit there, more or less attentive. Only full self driving would really change things. Driver free cabs, efficient carpools, no need for cite centre parking etc.
  - m463 6y ago
    I don't see how reducing 99% of the workload should be faulted for the final 1%
    - Grustaf 6y ago
      Workload? Surely self driving is not about reducing the workload. What exactly do you gain if you still have to sit in the driver’s seat and can’t look away for more than a moment? I’d say that’s only a 1% improvement. Not having to look at all, you could read or work. That’s another 10%. Not having to even be present opens up a whole world of innovation and societal benefits.

109 points by hhs 6y ago

Overwrought criticism. Yes, we’re at that wildly imaginative stage where a small & hard step down a long road of undeveloped technology gives rise to hopes of what the end of that decades-hence goal will achieve. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try, and doesn’t mean we’ll give up tablets for brain implants next year. Yes those leading the way give impassioned speeches about what might come of their work - that’s ok, really.

kelnos 6y ago
The article doesn't at all suggest we shouldn't try, and explicitly points out that there will likely be a lot of benefits to science and neurosurgery due to this influx in funding. The point is to remind us that all of the hype around this is just that: hype.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
Taylor_OD 6y ago
Kinda sounds like the same type of criticism someone would have given when musk talked about spaceX...

sschueller 6y ago

What Musk is pedaling is pure science function. [1] Eventually all of this will catch up with him and he will fall very hard. [1] https://youtu.be/BvmA_gQ-95c https://youtu.be/BvmA_gQ-95c

chrisweekly 6y ago
"science function" - maybe a freudian slip, vs "science fiction"? (and it's "peddling" as in "selling", not "pedaling" like riding a bike)
- devindotcom 6y ago
  "science function" is actually pretty great.
  - chrisweekly 6y ago
    agreed! I enjoyed the comment on a couple levels :)
JoshCole 6y ago
Notice, for the first few minutes of that video, it shows a mounting degree of credibility on the part of Nueralink as PhDs with expertise on relevant topics are noted, but then quite abruptly the tone shifts and it plays a comedy sketch [1]. Why? Apply common sense and skepticism to that question and you will be enlightened. I'll give you a hint: common sense does not indicate, like the YouTube channel implies, that the richest person in the world gets there by providing absolutely no value to the rooms he enters. In order to have that implication a resort to a different rhetorical technique than that of reason is necessary. The creator of the video understood this and employed such a technique. The video tries to argue that Elon Musk is trying to steal credit for founding the company [2]. He doesn't actually quote Elon Musk when he accuses him of stealing credit. Why does he circle text on Wikipedia rather than quote Elon Musk? If you go to the Wikipedia article and check the citations for that claim you will discover Elon Musk does not state the thing which the liar in the video states that he claims. Why does he lie about what Elon Musk actually said? Apply common sense and skepticism to that question and you will be enlightened. I'll give you a hint: he is working backward from a narrative, not forward from the facts. Alternatively, want to do a long bet for $10k that in 10 years Musk will still be a millionaire despite the contents of the video you linked? Void of bet in the event that some other cause leads to misfortune. [1]: https://youtu.be/BvmA_gQ-95c?t=155 https://youtu.be/BvmA_gQ-95c?t=155 [2]: https://youtu.be/BvmA_gQ-95c?t=185 https://youtu.be/BvmA_gQ-95c?t=185
- sschueller 6y ago
  The video may be a bit off but doesn't change who Musk [1] is. Arrogantly dictating his way around like a child will eventually result in push back. Maybe not in the US or China but the Germans don't play the same game. [2] [1] https://elonmusk.today/ https://elonmusk.today/ [2] https://www.spiegel.de/wirtschaft/elon-musk-tesla-gruenheide-das-heuchlerische-gerede-des-tesla-chefs-a-4d9d9b7e-81c6-424c-9311-b9a6b6ecd294?sara_ecid=soci_upd_wbMbjhOSvViISjc8RPU89NcCvtlFcJ https://www.spiegel.de/wirtschaft/elon-musk-tesla-gruenheide...
  - JoshCole 6y ago
    That new link is pretty pathetic as a justification for derision. I'll take one and only example because if I did as many as I could do I would come across as an apologist when really your sources are just absolute garbage. They are full of straw men and fallacies. Don't get me wrong - you can point to one that is reasonable. It's just that as a wall of argument that is full of garbage is a gish gallop. It's a technique of rhetoric not reason. So I'm not going to treat your sources as something I should be reasonable with, since they are unworthy of the effort. > 2,291 days since Elon Musk tweeted tat Tesla was developing a charger that automatically connects to cars. (12/31/2014) > "We are actually working on a charger that automatically moves out from the wall & connects like a solid metal snake. For realz." > https://elonmusk.today/#snake-charger https://elonmusk.today/#snake-charger Here is the metal snake charger it claims doesn't exist: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sWXIZMtxB6Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sWXIZMtxB6Q

modeless 6y ago

> I doubt we will have accurate, mind-reading consumer devices in the near future I'm not sure Neuralink would disagree. Their first applications are medical, not consumer mind-reading. They're open about their bigger vision being farther away. > Neuroscience is far from understanding how the mind works — much less having the ability to decode it. We don't necessarily have to understand everything about the brain to communicate with it. And we'll learn a lot in the process. > a neurotech device would have to add significant value for a consumer to get one implanted in her skull. Again, I don't think Neuralink would disagree. I guess the disagreement is in whether an implant could provide that significant value. And nobody really knows yet, of course. A lot depends on how well the brain can adapt to a new form of I/O. > Consumer brain-recording devices have been on the market for roughly 15 years Yeah but the technology is totally different and quite lame honestly. Existing devices have fundamental limitations that are not shared by an actual brain implant. Not a strong argument IMO. > Helmets and other headgear face an uphill battle to adoption The external hardware for an implant can get pretty small. Much less obtrusive than the given example of Google Glass. > It may be more taxing to control a device with a BCI than without it Pure speculation at this point. Honestly it is wise to be skeptical. But mostly I am skeptical of the timeline, not the eventual usefulness of the product. Neuralink is likely too early, but one day useful consumer brain implants will be possible.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
dumbfoundded 6y ago
It's so far out in the future that numerous other advances may make the entirety of the approach useless. For example, maybe computers get so smart our need to interact with them diminishes and we interact with them rather passively. Maybe the opposite happens and we need even tighter coupling leading to a genetic engineering solution or a nanobot pill solution that crosses the blood brain barrier. The problem is everything is pure speculation at this point. I do hope they accomplish some of their goals but any business potential seems a total guess.
- andbberger 6y ago

anonymouse008 6y ago

Man, I've spent too much time in this space... I can only sum it up like this - The mind is not a joystick. Throughput is not the measurement of a good BCI. BCI as a term should be abolished. Someone is going to make something so seemingly simple, but unbelievably meaningful, to rule this space.

offtop5 6y ago
Hypothetically, if I can hire a PhD candidate and give him a million bucks to tweak the sensors for my brain specifically. Could he or she then make this like a joystick. Is the issue that there's so much variation between people.
- anonymouse008 6y ago
  That's more of a profession of faith in what a 'good' BCI will be, than a critique of the science -- There are many ways to get high fidelity 'joystick' level control out of a brain, especially if given one-on-one training. The problems for Neuralink will be the same with any implant - immune responses and infections - and in a sensitive area no less.
  - offtop5 6y ago
    No way in hell I'm letting anyone stick something in my brain, I thought there was a wireless way to do this. In a very dystopian way I could imagine shopping centers scanning the brain waves potential customers and taloring ads to them
    - mattkrause 6y ago
      Neurosurgeons live in a very weird bubble around elective surgery. I was at a conference where people were debating the merits of non-invasive vs. invasive neural interfaces. A surgeon argued that people would obviously never accept non-invasive ones...ON COSMETIC GROUNDS: EEG caps (and similar) look dorky. Many people do go to great pains to hide disabilities, but I was (and still am) really skeptical that this totally trumps fears around highly-invasive neurosurgery!

dadrock 6y ago

>I doubt we will have accurate, mind-reading consumer devices in the near future So what? Stop trying? Give up? What's the point of this statement? Why is the timeline you personally find realistic relevant to anyone else but you? I just don't get this attitude. It's such a sour grapes type of attitude. Either help out, or get out.

perardi 6y ago
I just don't get this attitude. It's such a sour grapes type of attitude. Either help out, or get out. It’s called “skepticism”. You read enough history, you realize the charlatans greatly outnumber the geniuses, and you do your due-diligence before you invest, or form some weird cult.
- bpodgursky 6y ago
  If you read enough history, you realize that people who fail are forgotten, but the people who mock the people who end up succeeding are remembered and humiliated forever.
- tokipin 6y ago
  Some skeptics remain skeptics up until the point that they've been proven blatantly and obviously wrong and people stop accepting their arguments, so for some "skeptics" at least it's more of a stubborn mindset backed by confirmation bias or other issues disconnected from the actual subject matter, rather than sound reasoning.
  - qayxc 6y ago
    In this case, however, scepticism is more than warranted. Just comparing the mission statement of NeuraLink (from their homepage) with the wild claims of their most prominent founder (Musk) should make you stop and think for a second. The actual goals are quite humble and achievable in the near term. What Musk says on Joe Rogen's podcasts and other public forums, however, is more fiction than science. Unfortunately most publications focus on the latter and ignore the former and way too many people fall for this and seriously believe that highly invasive and risky brain surgery will become routine in just a couple of years. We're talking about the same guy who said there could be "1 million full self-driving robo taxis on the road by 2020" during the April 2019 Tesla investor day [0]. The same guy, mind you, who's company two years later, in 2021 told regulatory bodies that their technology is only SAE level-2... [1] The technical press back then was very sceptical about the claim as well (and it turns out they were right to do so). Autonomous cars are on a whole different level than BCI, though, and there's no breakthrough science required to achieve autonomous cars. So in light of this I feel that scepticism has its place w.r.t. BCI and outrageous claims (e.g. streaming music directly into the brain or curing neurological diseases) about the near-term abilities and development stage of the technology. [0] https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/290029-tesla-well-have-full-self-driving-by-2020-robo-taxis-too https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/290029-tesla-well-have-f... [1] https://www.thedrive.com/tech/39647/tesla-admits-current-full-self-driving-beta-will-always-be-a-level-2-system-emails https://www.thedrive.com/tech/39647/tesla-admits-current-ful...

nabla9 6y ago

The biggest issue with Neuralink (for consumers) is the basic problem with artificial implants and their side effects. Teeth implants, knee implants they generate additional risk of low level inflammation in the body over time. Even generally unproblematic silicon breast implants that just hang there have scar tissue and can cause immune system reactions. Brain surgery is many times riskier. If Neuralink could create way to circumvent all these problems it would be huge breakthrough even without the BCI.

ALittleLight 6y ago

"Consumers have shown time and again that they are reluctant to adopt products that look funny (ahem, Google Glass)." I think this is misreading Google Glass. People didn't like or want to use Google Glass because there was no "killer app" for them. There was no useful app for Glass at all so far as I am aware. Had Google Glass enabled something new and useful people would have worn it regardless of how different it looked, and because people found use in wearing it we would get used to it. Headphones are an example of this. Headphones would probably look goofy if you weren't used to seeing them. People wear headphones anyway because headphones deliver something useful to the wearer - private audio. If I had to wear a silly hat, but in exchange could carry around a meaningful brain-computer interface, I absolutely would, and, assuming "meaningful" in a broad sense, I'm certain huge numbers of people would as well. Right now people are struggling to make the tech work at all. Worrying about the form factor with which it will be delivered is premature - it can't really do anything yet. Once it's useful it will need a good form factor, but the use will drive adoption, not the other way around.

pharke 6y ago
Exactly, glasses are an even better example. They give you superior vision compared to what you would have naturally so almost everyone who needs them puts up with wearing them and they have even become a fashion trend in themselves by being so omnipresent. If I could have a pair of glasses for my brain that correct for any natural deficiencies then I'd wear the heck out of them, appearances be damned.
- dwighttk 6y ago
  The nice thing about glasses is they never run out of batteries
  - pharke 6y ago
    I don't have to refuel a bicycle but I still prefer driving.
    - deleted 6y ago

devindotcom 6y ago

Take Musk's talk about BCIs the way you take his talk about Mars colonies. But my guess is we'll have the latter before the former is common. There will be some interesting BCI tech in the next few years but as the author notes, it's going to be very specific and limited, and probably quite expensive.

savant_penguin 6y ago

Who cares, I've seen the pig movement prediction and found it really cool >> Would I invest my money in it? Hell no >> Would I have neurosurgery for no good reason? Hell no*10 To me this is clearly a longshot product, but I'm very happy that some private citizen is willing to invest his own money into this. If someone stumbles on how to transform thoughts into movement signals or how to encode digital images into optic nerve signals I'm all for it

lukeinator42 6y ago

Even though "neuroscience is far from understanding how the mind works" companies like muse have already brought EEG headsets to market for use cases such as meditation. If neurotech focuses in on use cases where we can already decode useful information from the brain that can't be accessed by other methods, I think there is a huge potential market waiting to be tapped. Being skeptical about the accuracy of these technologies/feasibility of surgery is valid, but this article reads as pretty cynical rather than just skeptical, haha.

marc__1 6y ago

"It takes 20 years to become an overnight success." - Eddie Cantor SpaceX took nearly fifteen years to become the beast it is and Tesla took eight to increase deliveries from 2,600 to 500,000. Don't underestimate what these companies achieve in the long-term and we are always terrible to predict exponential growth (from pandemics, to EV, to space flights) [1] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/science/spacex-falcon-launch.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/science/spacex-falc... [2]https://www.statista.com/chart/8547/teslas-vehicle-deliveries-since-2012/ https://www.statista.com/chart/8547/teslas-vehicle-deliverie...

dumbfoundded 6y ago
I think the difference is tackling a pre-existing market. Both cars and space had large existing markets to which Elon could speed up the rate of progress. There isn't really a market for BCI except for cases of disability. In this case, he has to create the customer demand for a technology that doesn't exist. That's a really tough sell when even if it did work (which is very much in doubt), would require a literal brain surgery. This isn't like scaling up a factory or using modern compute to get a rocket to land itself. It's fundamental research with uncertainties on perhaps every angle.
- aeternum 6y ago
  I would seriously consider getting it depending on the bandwidth. Direct access to web search and an indexed storage system would be having a super power. Plenty of people get Lasik just to avoid the annoyance of contacts/glasses and eyes are technically part of the brain. Why wouldn't there be a market for BCI when the potential benefit is much greater?
  - platz 6y ago
    Do you really randomly poking some electrodes into your brain tissue is going to give you enough fidelity to query google. That's all it is, you know. Some wires, randomly placed in tissue. The cells around those wires don't know the TCP/IP protocol or anything

phcordner 6y ago

Even discounting everything about the ethics, feasibility, state of our conceptual knowledge of brain function, has anyone demonstrated how a six-figure hardware suite like this https://plexon.com/plexon-systems/ https://plexon.com/plexon-systems/ is going to be miniaturized into a smartphone sized device mass produced for consumer purchase in the timetable laid out by Neuralink?

swordsmith 6y ago
See (https://www.brown.edu/news/2021-03-31/braingate-wireless https://www.brown.edu/news/2021-03-31/braingate-wireless), wireless BCI, in humans nevertheless. It's not mass produced, but mostly because there isn't the need to.
- mattkrause 6y ago
  It almost is, actually. The hardware in that system is from Blackrock Microsystems. You can call them up and buy it right now (if you’ve got the cash...It’s not cheap!) It’s currently intended for research, so you’ll need ethics approval and the decoder isn’t included (but that’s the fun part anyway). Ripple Neuro sells similar gear (better, even, maybe) and Neuralynx and some smaller companies also have competing products. It’s not in every corner store, but you could have a similar setup this month if you really wanted to.

georgewfraser 6y ago

I did my PhD in this field, I love that Neuralink is doing what they’re doing, but I also agree with this article. Your hands on a keyboard is a fantastic brain computer interface and represent a high bar that an implanted BCI must clear to add value for non-paralyzed people.

QuantumG 6y ago
I'm typing this to you on an on-screen keyboard with my thumbs. It should be trivial to do better than that with an implant.
- ashtonkem 6y ago
  It’s clearly not trivial, otherwise it would already be done. Sometimes “obviously” inferior solutions are actually local maximums, and finding the global maximum is extremely difficult.
  - QuantumG 6y ago
    Sure, or maybe the window for innovation is too small because of gatekeeping. Accessibility software is notoriously horrible because of this reason, why wouldn't hardware be?
    - ashtonkem 6y ago
      It seems like you're jumping straight to a conspiracy as the explanation, which does not seem supported by any evidence whatsoever. Why in the world would these supposed Gatekeepers gatekeep away a technology that would provide a massive competitive advantage? Wouldn't they instead do exactly what they've been doing for decades and just buy up this hypothetical new technology? That sure seems to be what Apple is doing; there's an entire wiki page dedicated to Apple acquisitions and what Apple products were derived from it. Why would they suddenly flip into suppressing something better rather than just repeating their standard practice? Perhaps the more plausible answer is that nobody has come up with an interface that beats the smart phone for the general population?

type0 6y ago

> "Should we be worried that companies like Facebook, Neuralink, Kernel, and others — helmed by individuals who have previously launched paradigm-shifting technology — are working on capturing data from our brains?" Who would be dumb enough to implant something from facebook into their brain?!

cblconfederate 6y ago
billions of people use the facebook's current BCI interface projecting from their phones to their retinas
- qayxc 6y ago
  The difference between moving your eyes and fingers and open brain surgery in terms of both cost and risk render this argument somewhat pointless. Costly high-risk surgery that might kill or lobotomise you is not very appealing compared to glaring at a screen and moving your fingers for the purpose of sharing meaningless drivel with the world.

cblconfederate 6y ago

Misleading. Neuralink has not shown something impressive , however it's not comparable with consumer supposedly-EEG devices, but with this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BrainGate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BrainGate . Those things are still in the basic research stage, and it's been really hard to make them work properly. Neuralink is not even leading in research here, but i don't think they expect to make consumer grade anytime soon either. OTOH, all sorts of multiunnit recordings and optogenetics stimulation is possible today - if you're a mouse. I wonder why consumer-grade doesnt pursue the more feasible goal of reading from a motor nerve. I wish i could train myself typing by thinking of finger movements.

tamcap 6y ago
Facebook is doing that... Look up CTRL-Labs.

polypodiopsidae 6y ago

I think that these aspirations for an electrosilico (pardon my neologisms) interface with the biological brain are a rather outdated nostalgia of the 20th century ninetys.(Vaporwave comes to mind). Intersecting just 90 sensors with the insane mass of neurons... it seems rather clumsy primitive tech tbh. If I was about to bet on the future I assume, that aspirations of hybridisation/creolisation/amalgamation of human&machine will happen on the biological register; that this development will go the other way round: from semiconductors to biotechnology. E.g. the brain is a fabulous architecture; damn effective and very low energy consumption at the same time. Wich makes me think: A substantially useful AI that can immerse with neurological coginition (and not just be a fancier interface that safes you from carrying a calculator around), will probably need A LOT of computational power. Damn these things can't even steer a hand through useful movements while im typing a way in language (which is its own insane technology [1]) with quite some musicality. What I mean is: Let's assume you could really supply the population with these interfaces and they really work. Who is going to be supplied with her/his own infrastructure of supercomputers running that AI that will merge with her/his cognition? I don't think that it would be possible to supply even a marginal amount of the population with access to these entitys. So this amounts to some dream of the (misunderstood version) of the Übermensch, as a caressing of the narcissitic hurt that the being of tekhne inflicts to some. [1] It has been argued that language speaks. Not only do subjects speak language, but language also speaks subjects. (that's spoken through Heidegger). Thus there is something like a life of lanugage (it makes sense to think about if it is alife). Think of language as an AI.

pedalpete 6y ago

Consumer neurotech doesn't need to start with Neuralink. Products like Halo (https://www.haloneuro.com/ https://www.haloneuro.com/) are stimulating your brain to improve muscle memory, Muse (https://choosemuse.com https://choosemuse.com) is using neurofeedback to improve meditation (and they're getting into sleep tracking). At SoundMind (https://SoundMind.co https://SoundMind.co), we're building a headband which monitors your sleep state and uses sound (auditory stimulation) to improve your sleep. Commercial tCDS is a real thing for treatment of depression. There are multiple consumer tCDS devices on the market as well, I won't link to them, because I haven't seen any that I don't believe are snake oil. But the commercial scale devices will get shrunk down to consumer usable size eventually. This is just the beginning. Consumer neurotech shouldn't mean implanted, just as sight correction doesn't mean lasik (just wear glasses). I think this skeptic is perhaps too focused on the technology, rather than the use case. I'm not sure if we'll ever willingly get an neural implant, but let's not throw all of neurotech to mean that small segment of the market.

mattkrause 6y ago
tDCS has a very similar problem. There is so much hype (“it does everything: makes you stronger, faster, happier, smarter, and better at video games and jazz”) and anti-hype (“it does nothing and it’s all placebo or peripheral stimulation”)[0]. I know about as much about it as anyone and I think that it a) has tons of promise and b) should not be anywhere near anyone but an research participant for the foreseeable future.
- pedalpete 6y ago
  Even the commercial versions shouldn't be used outside the lab? A friend is on the board of a commercial tDCS medical company. They don't make the hardware, they just do the stim on patients. I haven't seen the machines, but he says they look like an old school hair helmet from a salon in the 60s.
  - mattkrause 6y ago
    The hardware itself is very simple: it's just a constant current source with some safety features bolted on. Research-oriented devices look wild, but it's mostly because cable management isn't a huge priority: better to be flexible than look nice!. It's certainly possible to make a good-looking one: Neuroelectrics's looks like a swim cap and Halo sells a baseball-style hat with a brim. However, the simplicity of the device makes people think its effects will be equally simple. This isn't true. We don't fully understand what the electric fields do to the brain, and the simple story of "turning the brain up/down" almost certainly doesn't hold up. In most cases, we also don't understand the problem to be solved (e.g., what in the brain is causing your depression--or your bad golf game). Taken together, it's a nightmare: poking at an unknown cause with an unknown effect. My colleagues and I have been looking at this in monkeys, which we can measure everything from behavioral effects down to the activity of single neurons. It's very exciting and has, I think, a lot of potential, but it blows my mind that people are already selling products. The crazy thing is that the field has been through this hype cycle before in the 1960s-1970s....

Animats 6y ago

I rather liked Neuroware's Nekomimi ears.[1] They were a set of wearable cat ears controlled by an EEG sensor. They could detect at rest, attentive, and surprised states. Popular with cosplayers around 2013. They worked, more or less. Watching someone play a video game, the ears would show "attentive" while they played a level, and dropped back to rest when they finished. At an anime convention, I saw a group of girls all wearing them. Someone called out the name of one, and her ears popped up. Only hers, not the others. They were a bit too bulky (4 AAA batteries), the ears were too big, and the forehead sensor wouldn't stay in place. Someone should try that again in a more compact form. More fun than the quack medical applications. [1] https://youtu.be/DK41eqO3wW0 https://youtu.be/DK41eqO3wW0

goldenkey 6y ago
Most of those supposed EEG sensors are just sending the forehead or facial muscles which are quite thick and noisy, electromagnetically. When you focus, you tend to tense your muscles, so these devices work to a limited extent. But they are not EEG, especially without a conductive lubricant to get through the skin.

rossdavidh 6y ago

Why would they need to convince people to get a brain implant, when they can already convince them to just stare at a small screen, which they take with them everywhere, already? It just seems like extra cost and also harder to sell yearly upgrades. Now, for people with spinal injuries, etc. then this totally seems like a good thing to be investigating.

sneak 6y ago
In short, because i/o via eyeballs and thumbs (or eyeballs and speech) is pretty low bandwidth and slow.
- swordsmith 6y ago
  This whole "our existing i/o bandwidth is too limited" story started by Musk and co is not very well thought out. Most people cannot think faster than they type or speak, at least coherently. The rapid information transfer with a computer via "thoughts" ignores the fact that a concept of a "car", for example, exists as different neural activity patterns, distributed over different parts of the brain for different people and changes with time. So that would imply the BCI would need to catalog how different all possible concepts are cataloged within an individual, to achieve such "direct thought communication", which would require whole-brain scale recording, something definitely NOT achievable with ephys (as a thought experiment, you'd have to introduce wires whose total volume become significant compare to brain volume). Further, the act of speaking and typing is also a way to articulate and organize your (abstract) thoughts. If one skips that stage, would the output be meaningful at all? The limiting communication bandwidth idea is a very fancy marketing message easy for people to hype up on, in typical Elon fashion.
  - s5300 6y ago
    >>Most people cannot think faster than they type or speak, at least coherently. Likely going to sound quite pretentious - but I definitely can and have been able to do so for as long as I can remember. It's honestly quite annoying as I grow older. I like to think it may directly correlate with the fact I was able to type 160+ WPM on a shitty membrane keyboard at school in the 5th grade quite easily. But yes, as you said and what I've come to believe... is that most can't.

moocow01 6y ago

I see Neuralink as just a next-gen version of deep brain stimulation where we could have a lot more stimulation nodes than 1 or 2. Just that could be quite exciting as it is already known that targeted electric stimulation in the brain can do a lot of positive things for those who can benefit.

teslaberry 6y ago

if two people wearing a nueral link can communicate wirelessly somehow----one simple concept YES or NO. and that is all the neuralink can do----you have TELEPATHY. that's how it starts. heres the thing. why is this so much better than some wifi haptic device not implanted in the brain. ITS NOT.

mlindner 6y ago

Weird timing with this article given that Neuralink just released a video of a Monkey playing Pong (and other games) wit his mind. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rsCul1sp4hQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rsCul1sp4hQ

m463 6y ago

I disagree with the opinion this article. It appears to be "neuralink and others are promising full mind reading and this whole thing is going to fail" It is similar to the "self-driving argument". People complain and complain about Elon Musk's full-self-driving, yet telsa owners are out on crowded freeways, their cars happily driving them down the center of the lane and judiciously following the car in front. Yes, it probably can't get drive through at mcdonalds, but big whoop. (also this person has no concept of what "the public" will do - honestly they would probably pay $5k to have alexa beep in their mind when someone's at the door) Personally I would love a ctrl-labs keyboard, but now with facebook owning them, you know there will be a login requirement.

Grustaf 6y ago
Keeping the car in the lane doesn't add very much utility at all. You still need to sit there, more or less attentive. Only full self driving would really change things. Driver free cabs, efficient carpools, no need for cite centre parking etc.
- m463 6y ago
  I don't see how reducing 99% of the workload should be faulted for the final 1%
  - Grustaf 6y ago
    Workload? Surely self driving is not about reducing the workload. What exactly do you gain if you still have to sit in the driver’s seat and can’t look away for more than a moment? I’d say that’s only a 1% improvement. Not having to look at all, you could read or work. That’s another 10%. Not having to even be present opens up a whole world of innovation and societal benefits.