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The unfortunate part is that your first thought went to return on investment rather than the humanitarian angle, which I think is the common perspective; optics
by rc5150 1y ago
The unfortunate part is that your first thought went to return on investment rather than the humanitarian angle, which I think is the common perspective; optics and money.
Then there's the pessimists, like me, wondering how long it'll take to Neuralink to turn their army of computer connected paraplegics into some Mechanical Turk-esque Grok clean up.
- wordofx 1y agoThings are only created or expanded if there is a return. Its that simple.
- Almondsetat 1y agoIf something cannot stand on its own two legs, then it can be the most awesome stuff in the world but it will die nonetheless. Being self-sustainable (i.e. profitable) greatly helps with keeping the show going. The alternative is either becoming publicly owned (i.e. paid with your taxes whether you want it or not) or to fail miserably and have all your technology and talent scattered.
- butterandguns 1y agoUnfortunate phrasing about inability to stand on its own two legs or it dies here.
- DoesntMatter22 1y agoTo me that's the greatest part. Probably everyone working on this is interested in the humanitarian angle, and they know this can benefit potentially millions. But ROI is partly what's required to make it sustainable long term. And that's a great thing to me. It motivates business people to put money into it.
- SV_BubbleTime 1y ago[flagged]
- bluefirebrand 1y agoThings have costs so we should be ok with a society where the wealthy exploit poor and desperate people?
- distortionfield 1y agoExploiting? I’m lefty, but this dude volunteered for the procedure and was fully reimbursed. I’m having a really hard time seeing “exploited” on this one.
- thinkingemote 1y agoAccording to the left exploitation can occur when people choose and are paid for it. For example demeaning work. Also much of slavery, indentured servitude in the past was chosen and fully reimbursed. Most classic lefties would say all work is exploitation under capitalism. It's the idea of individualism mostly seen on the right wing and the modern/American democratic left that says that people make free and rational choices in an amoral economic model. When money sets the rules there is no exploitation. I think the reality isn't so black and white and people can make good and bad decisions. So while I agree he probably wasn't exploited it doesn't mean that others in the same place doing the same things will not be.
- distortionfield 1y agoI’m familiar with those applications of exploitation, too, but they also wouldn’t apply here. This wasn’t demeaning work and wasn’t predicated on necessity, past their disability. And of course, all work is exploitation under capitalism (from a true lefty point of view) but I didn’t perceive the original comment as referring to that level of exploitation. Just saying that this isn’t the hill to die on if one wants a case for capitalist exploitation. I do understand the dangers of others being exploited down the line but again, that wasn’t what OP was saying either. Really, if this is exploitative it’s only an indictment of profit incentives in healthcare, which are abhorrent.
- 1y ago
- notarobot123 1y agoIt does kinda feel like there's an accidental attempt to LARP the plot of Kurt Vonnegut's The Sirens of Titan (if you squint hard enough) - richest man in the world, brain control, Mars colony, attempted coup on Earth... all the plot points are there!
- herculity275 1y agoOnce Elon gets a robotic arm, steel teeth and prosthetic eyes that's when we know we're in real trouble.
- JumpCrisscross 1y ago> unfortunate part is that your first thought went to return on investment rather than the humanitarian angle It’s just a pragmatic take on sustainability of innovation. If nobody—no person or government or non-profit—would find value in the future of the work, it merits questioning why do it versus something else.
- regularfry 1y agoThere's a spectrum here, though. There's a difference between "nobody would find value in the work" and "nobody can figure out how to get VC-level returns from the work on VC timescales."
- JumpCrisscross 1y ago> a difference between "nobody would find value in the work" and "nobody can figure out how to get VC-level returns from the work on VC timescales” In theory, yes. But other than maybe rare-disease research, I’m struggling to think of an example in medical research.
- h0h0h0h0111 1y agoI don't think it's unfortunate - in principle, return on investment today can achieve greater humanitarian impact tomorrow vs humanitarian impact today. Of course, this creates a perverse situation where choosing humanitarian impact today over investment is always irrational, but this is the fundamental tension in charity vs investment, and aside from relying on governments and guilt, I'm not sure we have discovered a great model to solve it
- moomin 1y agoProblem is, when people start to analyse things like this, even apart from falling into utilitarian traps, they don’t apply regular business reasoning. There’s a bunch of effects to consider 1) improving lives right now may well improve subsequent generations lives directly 2) your future project may have a higher failure rate than your current one 3) the problems you are trying to solve may no longer be relevant in the future 4) you could be very wrong about future population growth. All of this boils down to: you should be risk-discounting future benefits just the same way as you do future cash flows.
- autoexec 1y agoIt's the people thinking about the bottom line who will push for the gradual enshittification of the product until it's beaming ads into people's brain, preventing them from saying anything bad about elon, forcing them to sing his praises against their will, or charging them a monthly fee for "continued autonomous breathing as a service". Taking a good thing and fucking people over with it in every way possible is "regular business reasoning" At a certain point it's smart to say "We have the technology to do something good, let's be extremely cautious about concerns over what's profitable and focus on doing what's right with it"
- est31 1y agoI really loved the "Common People" episode from Black Mirror. IMO it's the best episode of the whole series. It shows the enshittification cycle of technology really well applied to technology connected to your brain.
- herculity275 1y ago> how long it'll take to Neuralink to turn their army of computer connected paraplegics into some Mechanical Turk-esque Grok clean up It's really hard for me to imagine that making more logistic sense than the current state of affairs - which is hiring armies of poor able-bodied people in developing countries.
- probably_wrong 1y agoIt's not that difficult, really. "By using this implant I agree to the collection and sharing of analysis data with Neuralink and its trusted third parties". [ ] Agree [ ] Ask me later
- notnullorvoid 1y agoThe point is the scale of poor people vastly outweighs the scale of Neuralink users. It's not worth both the setup cost, nor the backlash to convert the relatively small number of Neuralink users into forced labour. Especially since they would still need the poor workforce as well. Agreeing to data collection and sharing of your brain activity while concerning for it's own reasons, is not the same as forcing them to complete Mechanical Turk like tasks.