Neuralink’s human trials volunteers ‘should have serious concerns,’ say medical experts::A medical ethics committee responded to Elon Musk’s brain-interface startup issuing an open call for patients yesterday.
Anyone doing anything with Elon Musk should have serious concerns.
Yeah, I mean we’ve been working on brain implants of various stripes for a couple decades now, and they’re not the first to attempt motor cortex implants for paralyzed patients as a method to begin human trials, but the current state of the art for brain implants is honestly pretty… primitive. There’s no good way to avoid damaging neurons, so it’s mainly a focus on not causing too much damage while fine mapping and targeting has to be done on an individual basis.
Implants are hugely useful, and arguably the current state of the art treatment for several conditions (epilepsy and parkinsons), but we’re so far out from computer brain interfaces being useful for anything outside of dire medical needs that it’s kinda surprising they’re pushing ahead when they had so much trouble with their experimental subjects.
I worked in a brain imaging lab in college, and we had a couple of chimpanzees with brain implants that did daily research protocols. Bastards were better than me at the testing regimen, and other than some minor discomfort (water intake is restricted prior to the tests so that the gatorade reward was more attractive), they were large children that could tear your face off if they got angry. Once they got older, they would have surgery to remove the implants and retire to a primate ranch where they just got to live out the rest of their life. All of the grad students there had been working with the same chimps for years, so it’s a little alarming Neuralink had so many issues.
It doesn’t exactly engender confidence.
What’s really sad is hearing how they treated them. Considering how intelligent they are, I find it disgusting that they treated them so bad they all died. It’s not worth a bunch of sentient creatures lives to do experiments like this and then just throw them away.
At least your lab was treating them with dignity.
Yeah, in academia getting approval for primate research projects is a huge process where you need to clarify every aspect of the protocol, housing, care, and experimental operations to submit before the project can start. I’m less sure if it’s voluntary or required, but we had funding allocated for their retirement from the start. They’re smart enough and strong enough that I’d be terrified to work with unhappy and unwell primates.
Not that all research projects are have happy endings, but I don’t think corporate research has the same restrictions and oversight that academic research does, given that this even happened. I’m pretty accepting of the necessity of primate research models, but we should be doing everything we can to treat them as best we can. Withdrawing a subject from the experimental protocol should be preferred over letting an infection fester just because the implant is in the way. Just seems really poorly done on their part.
If it makes you feel any better, they’d treat humans the same way if they could.
Not really. I know people have done some crazy despicable experiments during wartime, so not surprising people are willing to do it if allowed.
Didn’t Neuralink fail animal testing? Something about most of their monkeys dying from the trials? How did this get to human testing?
Kinda like how Elon promised a mars colony by 3 years ago, and his big rocket exploded on its first flight a few months ago.
Or how full self driving has been ready “next year” for the passed 5 years.
Hyperloop was going to revolutionize transportation, by having a train in a vacuum tunnel, and is currently an abandoned tube in the desert.
The boring company was going to create high speed car tunnels under cities, and it’s test track is a 30mph traffic jam, but now underground.
Solar city was going to put solar tiles in place of your shingles and offset your power usage, but the demo musk showed was an actual fraud, and there were no solar panels.
Last but not least, spaceX promised “rapidly reusable rockets” with a 10x decrease in cost to low earth orbit. The fastest turn around they’ve ever had was a month or so, about as long as the space shuttles’ fastest turn around. The falcon 9 still costs between 50 to 60 million per launch, even if it’s a reused booster or not, and the space shuttle was capable of taking crew and cargo/payload at the same time, while the falcon can only take one or the other.
Musk companies have a long history of promising the moon and delivering playground sand. Don’t buy any of his products and don’t fall for his “saving humanity” bullshit. He’s just a conman who’s defrauding investors for billions.
Musk has since come out and all but stated Hyperloop was specifically funded and hyped ONLY to kill mass transit initiatives in the area. It was a total vaporware project, they never intended to solve anything.
To be fair, SpaceX cost of 50-60 million per launch is almost a 10x drop in price, ULA is around 400-500 million per rocket. And since they have next to no competition on price, they have no incentive to lower it. It’s just business.
And don’t bring the broken vehicle the shuttle turned out to be into this. A great vehicle on paper, but with to many cooks. The shuttle era gave us the ISS, but is cost us almost all activity outside of LEO.
Yeah, I agree with all of their points except for SpaceX, which has been an unequivocal success that doesn’t deserve to be painted with the same brush Elon is. They revolutionized space flight, broke into the national security launch industry that was entirely captured by the United Launch alliance, and stand to obsolete the (93 billion dollar!) Space Launch System the moment the Starship is approved for commercial launches.
Dozens of Falcon 9’s exploded while testing them and especially while attempting to land and reuse boosters, so the Starship failure was all but expected. I hate Elon Musk too, but SpaceX is arguably the most successful aerospace company at the moment. Were NASA allowed full control of their money, I think it’d be better, but as it is the viability of many of their future projects hinges on SpaceX.
There an article in Wired just this week I think about how horrid the experiments on the animal were.
Musk, of course, lied again saying the monkeys were old and going to be euthanized anyway. They were young, and the experiments were terrible for them — where they were clawing at their heads trying to remove the devices. Some had literal screws coming loose.
I imagine advertisements being streamed into the user’s dreams, turning them into remote controlled zombies and causing mental breakdowns.
That’s a good Futurama episode! Oh wait
Or maybe they become little Elon copies
“Your subscription is about to expire. Serotonin and dopamine will be blocked until you renew it. Please, select automatic renewal to avoid unwanted depression or suicide. Thanks for choosing our services. Fuck you.”
Elon’s going to try putting your memories behind a paywall.
Memories if you’re lucky. He’d try to put all autonomic functions behind a paywall.
Your free trial has expired. Click here to buy the ATP cycle pack for 84.99/mo!
This is a publicity stunt to get more funding. They are going to get some volunteers, but they won’t ever get the implants. Neuralink will just keep delaying the procedure by a year and then cancel it once the public stops paying attention.
I think any person signing up for this Black-Mirror storyline is by definition a vulnerable person.
Should but if musk fans want to put their brains in the hands of right-wing moron that’s running his companies into the ground, week who am I to argue with their logic.
An aside, it’s so fucking easy to become a right wing idol. You literally just say the talking points and now you’re part of the gang! It literally is that easy.
Natural selection at work
Want to use your senses? Pay a small fee…
Motor functions only $299 for the first three months**
Otherwise known as Neuralink Blue.
I think Elon should go first
Musk is a transhumanist who is trying to figure out how to transfer his consciousness into one of his brood, or into a machine.
Darn, a Musk article got through my anti Twitter, anti Musk Sync for Lemmy filter. Time to ass Neuralink to it.
Ifs been glorious weeks since I saw Musk on Lemmy.
gotta tighten up those filters homie. musk talk is brain-rotting
Lol they aren’t the type have ‘concerns’ . They would get in the bus to Mars TOMORROW.
I wanna posit an extension to Dunning Kruger - something that describes the phenomena whereby rational, moderately educated individuals don’t really understand the full potential of Maximum Stupid
Where the fuck is John Connor when de need him.
