13 ms·

BCI is out there until it's not. Interestingly, I interviewed at one of the many startups who wants to implant thousands of sensors directly into the brain. Th

BCI is out there until it's not. Interestingly, I interviewed at one of the many startups who wants to implant thousands of sensors directly into the brain. The only issue is they had the same problem that MIT Lincoln Labs has: they're snobs about hiring only PhD EEs, creating an ideological monoculture.

ganafagol 5y ago
Maybe when putting things into peoples brains, competence is a highly necessary requirement. It's not enough to have "liked coding since high school" and "read a bunch of blogs" and "taught myself javascript" which may suffice for the average web shop, but when opening skulls, a broad and deep education definitely helps. Those crying about gatekeeping tend to be firmly on one side of the gate without putting in the necessary sweat.
- dannyw 5y ago
  I think a team with a diverse set of expertise, skills, and training, will be safer and outperform a team with an ideological monoculture. Everyone having the same background opens you up to blind spots, that are arguably worse IMO when you're trying to put things in human brains. Also, PhD EEs != competence.
  - hansel_der 5y ago
    a PHD is a monkey trained to reason about a unknown. totally agree that heterogeneous teams are vastly superior in avoiding blind spots.
    - ganafagol 5y ago
      The comment was not about heterogeneous or not. It was about Ph.D. or not. Everything else equal, I'd prefer a heterogeneous bunch of Ph.D.s to have designed and built the thing that's put inside my brain over a similarly heterogeneous bunch of "I've taught this myself in 1 year using youtube". Snobs or not. Ph.D.s are trained in two things. "Reasoning about an unknown" is one of them. But the particular niche knowledge they acquired while training this is the other. That niche can save my life if the niche matches the thing to be implanted into my brain. No matter how many youtube-educated wannabe-experts take issue with formal education. (I have many issues with the academic system, but this kind of critisism is ridiculous.)
      - dannyw 5y ago
        Would you rather have a team of 10 PhDs and 3 "self taught hackers" or 13 PhDs? It might just be me, but I actually feel more comfortable with the former. If you ONLY hire people from specific backgrounds, you get blind spots. That's dangerous. Excluding anyone without a PhD should not be expected to improve safety.
        ganafagol 5y ago
        That makes it sound like Ph.D. graduates are a homogenuous bunch. That's nonsense. Somebody with a Ph.D. degree is just that -- a person with a certain degree certifying a certain competence. Apart from that, it does not say anything. Not what background the person has, how they think, what they like. It's part of a Ph.D. degree to aquire knowledge and skills alone. "Self-taught" if you will. The distinction you make does not exist in that sense. The only actual difference is that the "extra" 3 Ph.D. graduates have had a certification for a somewhat structured education in some research field, while the youtoube fans don't. So, everything else equal, that group has an advantage.
- failwhaleshark 5y ago
  The parent comment of this comes across as making a lot of negative assumptions. The role was for coding, software-based testing, and test equipment. I have a BS EECS from a top 50 university (passed on Ivy/Pac12 because none of them appealed to me) but didn't do a PhD because of the economic disincentives. There's no benefit to it other than being elitist. I have a trinocular microscope w/ polarized light source, hacked Siglent scope, Fluke 289, random HP/Agilent/Keysight gear, a JBC clone station that works close-enough to the real thing, and have deep EE experience since I was very little. I know a bit about HBED (static) and proper mitigation in assembly/manufacturing, rework, and testing. Father owned an electrical automotive shop, I did some HeathKit projects, and spent hours learning on those spring wire electronics kits. I could solder by the age of 11. These days, I mess around with IoT projects for things around the house. I'll make my own plated via'ed PCBs at home if I want a really compact solution, and 3D print a case. My SRE (DevOps + SWE) resume makes recruiters horny. I wrote a Java to MIPS compiler, ported a nuclear reactor simulator to Windows, fixed crappy intern code for the embedded firmware of a GPS product line, designed/specified/acquired hardware/software solutions to run university research projects, cloudified an HPC setup for a university, lead sysadmin (de-facto CTO) for a $150m budget / 400 staff Ivy/Pac12 business division, and a number of things I can't remember right now. Oh, I've done the CTO role in several startups and client-facing Fortune 200 enterprise generalist technology consulting previously, including AWS consulting. Currently, I'm a senior SRE also known as a PE in one of the FAANG.
not1l 5y ago
Interesting - out of curiosity a few years ago, I glanced at neuralink's hiring site and was surprised to see the same. I'm sure these folks are very qualified at what they do, but if we're hoping to put these devices in humans, at some point all of the models and "hard" data will have to be matched up to something messier - disease characteristics, quality of life, etc. How many PhD EE's does it take to come up with an operational definition of things like "Depression" or "Multiple Sclerosis symptoms" so you can just "turn this activity down"? Good luck...
swordsmith 5y ago
Unless you have years of experience at IC design companies, where would you even get the experience for IC design and implantation without a PhD?

ganafagol 5y ago

Maybe when putting things into peoples brains, competence is a highly necessary requirement. It's not enough to have "liked coding since high school" and "read a bunch of blogs" and "taught myself javascript" which may suffice for the average web shop, but when opening skulls, a broad and deep education definitely helps. Those crying about gatekeeping tend to be firmly on one side of the gate without putting in the necessary sweat.

dannyw 5y ago
I think a team with a diverse set of expertise, skills, and training, will be safer and outperform a team with an ideological monoculture. Everyone having the same background opens you up to blind spots, that are arguably worse IMO when you're trying to put things in human brains. Also, PhD EEs != competence.
- hansel_der 5y ago
  a PHD is a monkey trained to reason about a unknown. totally agree that heterogeneous teams are vastly superior in avoiding blind spots.
  - ganafagol 5y ago
    The comment was not about heterogeneous or not. It was about Ph.D. or not. Everything else equal, I'd prefer a heterogeneous bunch of Ph.D.s to have designed and built the thing that's put inside my brain over a similarly heterogeneous bunch of "I've taught this myself in 1 year using youtube". Snobs or not. Ph.D.s are trained in two things. "Reasoning about an unknown" is one of them. But the particular niche knowledge they acquired while training this is the other. That niche can save my life if the niche matches the thing to be implanted into my brain. No matter how many youtube-educated wannabe-experts take issue with formal education. (I have many issues with the academic system, but this kind of critisism is ridiculous.)
    - dannyw 5y ago
      Would you rather have a team of 10 PhDs and 3 "self taught hackers" or 13 PhDs? It might just be me, but I actually feel more comfortable with the former. If you ONLY hire people from specific backgrounds, you get blind spots. That's dangerous. Excluding anyone without a PhD should not be expected to improve safety.
      - ganafagol 5y ago
        That makes it sound like Ph.D. graduates are a homogenuous bunch. That's nonsense. Somebody with a Ph.D. degree is just that -- a person with a certain degree certifying a certain competence. Apart from that, it does not say anything. Not what background the person has, how they think, what they like. It's part of a Ph.D. degree to aquire knowledge and skills alone. "Self-taught" if you will. The distinction you make does not exist in that sense. The only actual difference is that the "extra" 3 Ph.D. graduates have had a certification for a somewhat structured education in some research field, while the youtoube fans don't. So, everything else equal, that group has an advantage.
failwhaleshark 5y ago
The parent comment of this comes across as making a lot of negative assumptions. The role was for coding, software-based testing, and test equipment. I have a BS EECS from a top 50 university (passed on Ivy/Pac12 because none of them appealed to me) but didn't do a PhD because of the economic disincentives. There's no benefit to it other than being elitist. I have a trinocular microscope w/ polarized light source, hacked Siglent scope, Fluke 289, random HP/Agilent/Keysight gear, a JBC clone station that works close-enough to the real thing, and have deep EE experience since I was very little. I know a bit about HBED (static) and proper mitigation in assembly/manufacturing, rework, and testing. Father owned an electrical automotive shop, I did some HeathKit projects, and spent hours learning on those spring wire electronics kits. I could solder by the age of 11. These days, I mess around with IoT projects for things around the house. I'll make my own plated via'ed PCBs at home if I want a really compact solution, and 3D print a case. My SRE (DevOps + SWE) resume makes recruiters horny. I wrote a Java to MIPS compiler, ported a nuclear reactor simulator to Windows, fixed crappy intern code for the embedded firmware of a GPS product line, designed/specified/acquired hardware/software solutions to run university research projects, cloudified an HPC setup for a university, lead sysadmin (de-facto CTO) for a $150m budget / 400 staff Ivy/Pac12 business division, and a number of things I can't remember right now. Oh, I've done the CTO role in several startups and client-facing Fortune 200 enterprise generalist technology consulting previously, including AWS consulting. Currently, I'm a senior SRE also known as a PE in one of the FAANG.

not1l 5y ago

Interesting - out of curiosity a few years ago, I glanced at neuralink's hiring site and was surprised to see the same. I'm sure these folks are very qualified at what they do, but if we're hoping to put these devices in humans, at some point all of the models and "hard" data will have to be matched up to something messier - disease characteristics, quality of life, etc. How many PhD EE's does it take to come up with an operational definition of things like "Depression" or "Multiple Sclerosis symptoms" so you can just "turn this activity down"? Good luck...

swordsmith 5y ago

Unless you have years of experience at IC design companies, where would you even get the experience for IC design and implantation without a PhD?