9 ms·

That was difficult to watch. While the technology is impressive, it is sickening to watch. The part where they can pair the phone via bluetooth made me want to

• mlindner 6y ago
  I'm confused why you'd even feel that way? Neuralink goes into a LOT of effort for animals to feel good. Animal studies happen all the time for medical testing, and from what I hear Neuralink is much better than the average. As they said in the video, the animal is doing the activity of it of it's own free will. They don't harm the animal if it refuses to participate. Are you familiar with the term "luddite"?
  • gopiandcode 6y ago
    I initially thought GP was being overly hyperbolic, but after watching the video I can't say I fully disagree. It's not so much the animal studies aspect, but rather the fact that they used bluetooth via a mobile phone to connect to the monkey. That aspect of connecting via bluetooth from a phone is most conventionally used to interact with replaceable commodities such as wireless speakers/headphones, but here it's being used to interact with a _live_ monkey. This framing somewhat gives the impression that this living being has been reduced to the status of a replaceable commodity, a mere peripheral that one might connect to via bluetooth. I agree that given how much modern society relies on animal testing that it's not really a rational response - maybe this reaction could have been mitigated somewhat if they had connected to the monkey via a computer or more involved process rather than simply just the conventional bluetooth pairing flow on a phone.
    • deleted 6y ago
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    • kbenson 6y ago
      > That aspect of connecting via bluetooth from a phone is most conventionally used to interact with replaceable commodities such as wireless speakers/headphones, but here it's being used to interact with a _live_ monkey. I understand that, but I think to some degree, you're letting somewhat unrelated things influence your opinion of this. You know what else it interacted with and controlled wirelessly? Pacemakers. Nobody thinks of those people are replaceable commodities. Also, what about those that don't live a life of luxury and have access to lots of commoditized devices that wirelessly pair through a cellphone? People in less affluent countries might be less jaded about controlling something wirelessly and still view that as an amazing new technology associated with things they can rarely afford. So, to what degree are those associations useful and accurate, and to what degree are they you bringing unrelated prior biases to bear?
    • jm4 6y ago
      I think you articulated it well. It trivializes life. Countless animals die horrifically for science, but much of it is ultimately in the pursuit of valuing human life. This is something different. This animal has been reduced to a device accessory.
      • jka 6y ago
        After watching macro trends in U.S. politics and tech for a while, I've held (but not articulated much) a sense that power is shifting from federal government to private interests. Previously that would have meant corporate boards, but I think increasingly it's a small number of individuals (due to realpolitik). The good thing about messy, human models of transactions and interaction is that it can take a long time and many different voices can be heard, allowing disuptes to occur and be resolved. Many of these successful tech corporates work to eliminate the human discussion element, and replace it with digitized (and frequently proprietary, or at least gatekept) rules. I think I've dealt with a few difficult dominant personality types in the past, and it would not surprise me at all to see them consider humans-as-pets as a desirable future. Match that with digitized 'asset ownership' and other non-repudiable mechanisms and there could be a very dystopian and authoritarian future in the mind of some of these people. Now I'll make sure to sound like a complete nutter (as if I hadn't already) and mention that some of these individuals and companies are now so essential to the U.S., both domestically and internationally, that they are becoming untouchable. Meanwhile our own tech industry is busy debating and trying to determine what the future of libre software will look like. It's a pivotal moment and I'm optimistic we'll figure it out to everyone's benefit, but there is a lot at stake.
    • aeternum 6y ago
      Bluetooth is just a short-range wireless technology. People use bluetooth to control their pacemakers, is there an issue with that too?
    • manmal 6y ago
      I‘m working for a company which makes apps connecting to insulin pens and pumps via Bluetooth. Once you get into the mindset of connecting medical devices to your phone, this feeling of cheap commodity entirely disappears. Bluetooth and phones can be awesome tools, and if implemented with enough verification and validation, are sufficiently safe.
  • impish19 6y ago
    For me, I find it unsettling because it's a reminder of how ultimately we're all just compositions of atoms with electric signals in our body. While I find this immensely exciting, it unnervingly reminds me of my mortality. It's akin to what I imagine Neo would've felt when he learnt about the Matrix. I'd like to think I'd have without a doubt taken the red pill too (like I want this kind of research to be more successful) but anything that makes the Matrix more real is unsettling.
  • dayre 6y ago
    Nothing says feel'n good and free will like banana smoothies and forced brain implants.
    • deleted 6y ago
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  • jm4 6y ago
    I'm not buying the idea that the animals somehow benefit from this. I'm not necessarily against animal testing either. But it's one thing to test on animals to develop lifesaving cures and another thing entirely sure to experiment with brain implants with the potential to take away a living creature's free will. Or the ability to intrude on thought. The whole thing is pretty gross. It's great that this tech could help paralyzed people and amputees, but is it worth the cost?
    • toomuchtodo 6y ago
      To the paralyzed and the amputees, absolutely. The faster the advancement happens, the sooner animals models can be deprecated. Nobody wants to use animal models, they are a necessary evil. Edit: This is a moot point if it turns out we can repair the damage from paralysis and amputation using bioengineering.
    • syspec 6y ago
      Absolutely worth it. It's not ideal, but how else could we advance such technology that could help the paralyzed?
  • neolog 6y ago
    > As they said in the video, the animal is doing the activity of it of it's own free will. Why don't they do it on humans then?
    • natosaichek 6y ago
      It's legally prohibited until a certain amount of animal testing has been performed. They're aiming to do the first human implants within a year.
      • neolog 6y ago
        > It's legally prohibited until a certain amount of animal testing has been performed. Link?
        • natosaichek 6y ago
          You have to conduct testing to show that the device is safe and effective before you can begin marketing it. https://www.fda.gov/medical-devices/premarket-approval-pma/pma-clinical-studies https://www.fda.gov/medical-devices/premarket-approval-pma/p... If you've never gone through the process of bringing a medical device to market, well, I'm not sure there's an easy FAQ that will answer your scepticism. But the basic idea is that you have to do a bunch of testing in the lab, then probably a bunch in animals, then finally a bunch in human clinical trials, then you can actually market the device to the public. Neuralink is in the 'animal testing' phase, and it sounds like they're likely to start human testing soon. Note that once they've gotten a device approved for humans, that doesn't mean they will stop testing on animals. There will likely be improvements to the device, new protocols, etc. that will necessitate continued testing as new features are brought to market.
          • neolog 6y ago
            Nice link, thanks. Relevant section: > Among the types of evidence that may be required, when appropriate, to determine that there is reasonable assurance that a device is safe are investigations using laboratory animals, investigations involving human subjects, and nonclinical investigations including in vitro studies.
  • dang 6y ago
    Please omit snark and name-calling from your comments to HN. Your comment would be fine without the swipe at the end. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
    • mlindner 6y ago
      Well I can't edit it to remove it.
• visarga 6y ago
  > The part where they can pair the phone via bluetooth made me want to vomit. I had the same reaction. I just recently had a lot of trouble pairing Airpods to Macbook (both no more than 2 years old). If Apple can't make it work between their own devices, it's doomed. A piece of shit technology, a black stain on the whole stack. The demo is impressive otherwise, and I don't think it's weird to control a device with your mind. Or, if weird, it's the interesting kind of weird. I'd like to see a multi-modal GPT successor that learns not just text, image and video but also neural brain signals. It's one modality we haven't touched on yet. Maybe it will be able to extract speech directly from the brain, which is orders of magnitude harder than controlling a joystick.
  • swordsmith 6y ago
    > Maybe it will be able to extract speech directly from the brain, which is orders of magnitude harder than controlling a joystick. Check out https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-019-1119-1 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-019-1119-1 And yes it is definitely orders of magnitude harder than controlling a joystick
    • aparsons 6y ago
      Imagine the wonders it would do for interrogation /s
      • crystalmeph 6y ago
        I assume your /s was meta-sarcastic. With a few decades (years?) of refinement, this technology absolutely has the potential to capture private thoughts. Sure, it may require an implant, but just like we all carry tracking beacons that have become indispensable to daily life today, in 20 years it may be “the done thing” to have an implant to control your home automation, etc. Or maybe the tech will improve to where it just needs a hat. And at that point, certain authorities will have no qualms about using it in interrogations, with or without “due process.”
        • 6y ago
• deleted 6y ago
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• tyingq 6y ago
  Yeah, it's not that hard to imagine the next bit where there's a captive warehouse of monkeys solving CAPTCHAS for food or something. It's a depressing video to be sure.
  • DocTomoe 6y ago
    Right now, this is being done with people from India, so ... I'm not sure if your dystopia vision is a step up or down on the civilisation ladder.
    • deleted 6y ago
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    • tyingq 6y ago
      By "captive", I meant they didn't choose to do so, and didn't get to go home after their shift, and weren't compensated outside of food.
• TedDoesntTalk 6y ago
  Where is the Bluetooth pairing? I don’t see it. I’m watching the video at the top of the page... is it one of the other videos?
  • jm4 6y ago
    24 seconds in
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• syspec 6y ago
  The ends justify the means. You're benefiting from ages of actually cruel animal experiments, they got us to where we are today. Nobody loves them, but they're important in this case to help parralyzed humans maybe with ALS or some other disease communicate with loved ones
  • bufferout 6y ago
    The assumption being that human lives are far more valuable than non-human lives. Where it gets funky though is trying to quantify that to an extent: how many monkey disfigurements is worth fixing one human disfigurement? Ten? A thousand? How many chimps would you blind in order to prevent humans being blinded by the latest lash extension cosmetic?
    • markdown 6y ago
      > The assumption being that human lives are far more valuable than non-human lives Is it even controversial that yes, of course they are? I mean, Boeing and the FAA kept 737 MAX's in the air after brown people died in the first crash when we all know they'd have grounded them if it was a crash in Kansas. We value human lives differently let alone animals. > How many chimps would you blind in order to prevent humans being blinded by the latest lash extension cosmetic? None. But I'd blind as many as are needed to trial human eye transplants, for example. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slippery_slope https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slippery_slope
• challengly 6y ago
  On the flip side, what if this comes to pass? First @Neuralink product will enable someone with paralysis to use a smartphone with their mind faster than someone using thumbs Later versions will be able to shunt signals from Neuralinks in brain to Neuralinks in body motor/sensory neuron clusters, thus enabling, for example, paraplegics to walk again https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1380315654524301315 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1380315654524301315
• anonytrary 6y ago
  This is nothing compared to what we were doing in lab several years ago. Neuralink is the least invasive of the invasive ways to conduct this research. I had to put animals down, because they would be defunct after trying to remove those bulkier devices. Neuralink is relatively humane, speaking as someone who has seen this technology in its infancy.
  • gibolt 6y ago
    You're right. This monkey gets to earn banana smoothies all day. I'm sure it is quite happy. Much less happy are the animals we eat, those confined in zoos, and many of the pets people lock in tiny spaces.
    • deleted 6y ago
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    • ipnon 6y ago
      Won't someone think of the monkeys!
    • the_dripper 6y ago
      The monkey probably won't be sad. I think it is entertained all day by the researchers. Playing its games, and drinking its delicious banana smoothie. As you say; Ignorance is bliss.
      • anonytrary 6y ago
        Perhaps it is blissfully ignorant of us to think of ourselves as free on this rock. Does the monkey have a better life now than before? I don't know. The monkey will not mate and likely does not have peers. I wouldn't be surprised if those things are required for happiness. Social and sexual needs are programmed in us. I think it's a pretty tough topic in ethics but when I was younger, I didn't think much about it because we were doing science. I remember seeing my first rat die. I didn't feel bad at the time because we did it "humanely" with gas (and it's normalized and I was only 20) and they just sort of drifted off and defecated. It's an interesting and perhaps sad use of a life.
• lookACamel 6y ago
  It's not hard to imagine them implanting Neuralink-type devices in humans to make Minority Report a reality. And that's just read-mode. With write-mode, I bet they could easily figure out a way to make wrong thoughts physically impossible to think. It's only a matter of time before certain governments start alpha-testing this type of technology in places like Xinjiang or Myanmar.
  • scohesc 6y ago
    If they haven't been already for 10-15 years.
• benevol 6y ago
  The question is: Who wouldn't want to ultimately be assimilated by the Borg?
• numlock86 6y ago
  Yes, it's weird in its special way. Especially the part you mentioned in which they are pairing a phone. Rest assured, this is the most humane invasive lab work on an animal I have ever seen. If you want nightmares check out how they test cochlear implants for example ... No, really, don't do that. For me the strangest part of watching this is not the lab work or the animal, but the implications of this technology and where it might lead to in the future once applied to humans. I really like the idea and premise presented, but let's be honest: There are also way too many evil use cases ...
• bitcharmer 6y ago
  This is how progress is made. Similarly, people in DaVinci's times were sickened by his autopsies but that doesn't mean there was something wrong about them.
  • bufferout 6y ago
    To counter with an extreme example: plenty of medical progress was made via Nazi and Japanese experiments on live subjects during the second world war. So no, categorically the ends does not always justify the means.
    • layoutIfNeeded 6y ago
      >plenty of medical progress was made via Nazi and Japanese experiments on live subjects during the second world war [citation needed]
      • bufferout 6y ago
        https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_cover-up_of_Japanese_war_crimes https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_cover-up_of_Japanes... http://www.bu.edu/articles/2019/learn-from-nazi-medical-research/ http://www.bu.edu/articles/2019/learn-from-nazi-medical-rese...
        • wizzwizz4 6y ago
          Plenty of unethical experiments. What was learnt? What progress was made?
• deanCommie 6y ago
  I think it's 2 things: 1) The deliberately soothing British voice does not come off as soothing. It comes off as insidious, and threatening. This is in part influenced by our own cultural context with media like Black Mirror, but the effect is there nonetheless. 2) The comparison points to "pair with your iPhone" feel WILDLY misaligned with the rest of the message. The premise of Neuralink is that this is a world-changing cutting edge technology for the good of humanity. Then all of a sudden you have a situation where a living sentient being is paired to an iPhone like some sort of bluetooth speaker. It reeks of confused ethics.
  • povik 6y ago
    > Then all of a sudden you have a situation where a living sentient being is paired to an iPhone like some sort of bluetooth speaker. I think you put your finger on why that part was unsettling.
• nmca 6y ago
  I'd encourage anyone worried about the ethics of animal experiments in research like this to come up with prioritisation metrics over a number of animal welfare cause areas as an exercise. Surely a small number of well-cared for animals in high-upside experiments are lower on the list than say, pigs for pork sausages, which have worse welfare, smaller upsides and are more cost efficient to campaign against.
  • CapCad 6y ago
    Would you respond the same way to ethical concerns about the treatment of a small number of humans? If we could find larger groups of humans facing worse treatment (and surely we could), you might conclude that the smaller, less-poorly treated group is simply not worth discussing. But I'd argue in that case (as I would in this one) that the conclusion is mistaken. Also, if I may ask, do you think we have to choose between caring about these individuals and caring about those in factory farms? I personally care about both (as well as plenty of other ethical issues, naturally). And I imagine other people feel the same. So your suggestion that we measure the two causes against each other is rather confusing.
    • nmca 6y ago
      You only have a finite amount of time and resources, the way in which you choose to spend them can have enormous influence on the resulting impact. Given this, you have to prioritize. If you are not prioritizing, then somebody or something is doing it for you. I don't think these monkeys are "not worth discussing" - but I don't think they merit more than a cursory evaluation. The same is true for say, people that are killed by falling coconuts. There are, in all likelihood, cost-effective causes that you can donate to, in terms of your dollars, skills and capcity to give a damn. I'd suggest these monkeys shouldn't make the list.
      • CapCad 6y ago
        Interesting. And you think these monkeys shouldn't make anyone's list? (I'm inferring, given that you began by addressing "anyone" with ethical concerns.) I'd understand if you said they didn't make the cut for you personally, but I'm not sure why you'd be invested in ruling them out for everyone. (And this a sidebar, but I think one could quite reasonably believe that advocacy here is worthwhile in exactly the bang-per-buck utilitarian sense you're invoking. For instance, people who are galvanized on behalf on these monkeys might then change their actions towards less visible, less relatable nonhumans like pigs, chickens, and fishes.)
• A_non_e-moose 6y ago
  Bluetooth (BT) is simply a wireless standard for exchanging data between devices over short distances. It is very widespread, reliable enough and easy to develop and integrate. It's an understandable and common choice in the medical devices field. In a more developed, market society, you typically have several commoditized, replaceable products and most tend to leverage BT. The idea of replaceableness belongs to the product itself, but what we see in common for all of them is BT connectivity, so we tend to perceive BT as an identifier of replaceableness as well. Neuralink very casually and tongue-in-cheek BT "paired" to the monkey, reinforcing the idea of replaceability and commoditization of the monkey. Many people have empathy for animals and monkeys are seen as precursors to humans. It's very easy to see how treating a pre-human species like a replaceable product, leaves humans themselves creeped out and feeling like in the future they may also be treated like a replaceable product. Neuralink needs an ethicist in a high exec position or board and a better PR manager. They should have done some of these to reduce that perception mess: - allude to the use of BT in serious medical applications before "pairing" with the monkey - reduce or change the common BT terms like pairing - use a computer rather than a smartphone - don't mention BT, just say wirelessly connected - don't use a Bond-villain smooth British voice By talking about it as a PR problem, I don't mean to say that is the root cause, it is just what we can see at the surface. Do they really care about ethics? Is it execs, engineers, video directors, everyone, no one? Do they care, but are just bad at PR? Do they not care, and this video is a reflection of that? This is what matters, for all those people to genuinely care about ethics. Can they still genuinely care though, after becoming a corporation? Can bringing shareholder value align with ethics? One botched video is simply one data point in the public trying to understand Neuralink's genuine stance on ethics. Only people with close contact to Neuralink will really know. We are all hyper connected, but sadly, only superficially.
• anddddd1 6y ago
  you either test on animals, or you test on humans. simple as that.
• lolthishuman 6y ago
  It’s like social media and looking in the mirror!