4 ms·
Elon Musk says improving the speed of communication is the killer app. Typing with "meat sticks" is inefficient compared to the speed of thought. Eventually us
by nwah1 6y ago
Elon Musk says improving the speed of communication is the killer app. Typing with "meat sticks" is inefficient compared to the speed of thought.
Eventually using it to backup and data mine memories will likely happen, as in Black Mirror.
Using it to filter, annotate, and block parts of reality is also likely. Again, Black Mirror touches on this.
Some have posited the idea of gamifying reality, for all sorts of purposes.
I've often thought realtime logic-checking would be useful. Fact-checking would be more subject to biases in the software and data, but could also be useful.
Eventually the idea is probably that neural prosthetics will be developed that act as entire new brain subsystems.
- caddemon 6y agoI'm not sure what timescale Elon thinks this company is on, but even that first point is probably much further away than any new product team at Google could survive for (and no this is not a "Google is ADHD" joke, although that is also kinda true). Additionally, an implant is pretty damn invasive. So some cute demos or niche consumer applications are not going to cut it. IMO the two possible paths here are either this will be an R&D money sink for our entire lifetimes (maybe funded by Elon for fun, maybe some government grants, etc.) or they will primarily operate as a medical device company. The implants they are developing are definitely a tech improvement, so they could realistically improve existing DBS treatments. The company could also work on their own novel DBS paradigms for treatment of specific diseases. A lot of DBS (especially for psychiatric diseases like OCD) is currently rudimentary AND we have a poor understanding of why it even sort of works. But it does clearly work for at least some subset of patients, so there are real avenues for continued development.
- nwah1 6y agoIf certain lucrative professions, like daytrading, could see an edge from this sort of thing, even of a modest amount, then it would happen no matter how invasive.
- toomuchtodo 6y agoAdult content and recreation is likely a very compelling market for a brain interface. It becomes less necessary to go through the usual ceremony (and the complexities that go along) of intimate relationships when you can get the same neurons firing with wetware and whatever payments look like at that time.
- dwighttk 6y agoGoogle glass had a similar (though less impressive, though more believable) list of killer apps and didn’t do anything.