"We managed to not kill the first subject, but we're hopeful to succeed in the future"...
this post was submitted on 25 May 2024
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I guess they figure anyone who volunteers is already braindead so what's the harm. ๐คท๐ปโโ๏ธ
I'd imagine they're mostly physically disabled people trying to get control of their limbs or access to the freedom this type of tech is promising. As abhorrent as all of the testing behind this tech is, if I were a quadrapalegic or something similar, I would volunteer because wtf else have I got going for me?
That is very true. It doesn't mean it is ethical. It is quite common for people who are disabled, have a disease, or what not to be overly optimistic about success. Which caused them to be more willing to make poorly informed decisions.
Experiments like these are not inherently bad, but it is very easy to receive informed consent from the participant when they are not fully informed. That is why studies like this in academia require an ethics panel to review them.
To give an Elon musk's track record with his various companies. I think it is completely reasonable to question the ethics of this study.
It's not the tech itself that worries me. It's who in this case is supplying it along with the fact the previous patient had 85% of the functionality just stop and they haven't done a damn thing to address that before they want to try it on another patient.
There are other companies working on the same or similar tech that are far less fucked up.
Arbaugh says that updates to the chipโs software have allowed him to regain many of the abilities that he previously had and that he is still very supportive of Neuralink and what itโs done for him.
They did try to fix the problem the best they could. Its also a very intense procedure so I doubt it's smart to go back after so little time. It's probably better to wait until they fix all the kinks anyways. The man did enough, he doesn't need to be a debug guinea pig with his head open every month imo.
I'd actually be mad if they used the same guy tbh.
I also think it's important to seperate the tech from the persona. There's a lot of smart people behind this and I think it's sci-fi as fuck.
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You would have a life and people who care about you, regardless of use of your legs.
I'm pretty sure not everyone has a life and people who cares about them.
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I mean...I'm more or less normally functioning. I'd give it a whirl then start building a drone army.
Fuck. We could have a real Rat King even!
It's shocking, but not at all surprising, that one of the top comments here is calling desperate sick suffering people "brain dead" for taking a risk to try and get better, or help advance a technology to help people similarly suffering in the future.
I guess our hatred of musk exceeds our compassion for the sick.
Even you think something must be wrong with them if they're agreeing to this. Just because you lean more toward an ailment that would make someone desperate rather than someone being deficient in congestive function doesn't mean you're any better. Like. I get it. It's hard to imagine a regular person just thinking one day it's a good idea to sign up to let a company run by Elon Musk implant anything into their body (especially their brain). But this is a bit of a high horse riding comment, isn't it?
The first implant was in a paraplegic man. The FDA is not approving this experimental procedure for otherwise healthy people.
It's not hard for me to believe some healthy person would be a dope and want to experiment with this, but it's not what is being considered.
The top level comment is shitty on severely ill people for being willing to take a risk to improve their life and the lives of others.
It's either pure trash, or the poster is so blinded by their hatred for musk that they aren't thinking rationally. I suspect the latter.
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The FDA is only approving this for clinical use, so yes, there is something wrong with them. Healthy people won't be installing chips into their brain. Probably not in our lifetimes at least as the tech is not safe enough
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I look forward to the day when they try to mass market this and find out it has a unique problem when put in the heads of humans who aren't complete morons. And they never caught it during testing because all of their test subjects were volunteers.
We call that selection bias.
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Maybe this indicates that the FDA's investigations have shown that Neuralink isn't quite as awful at this as random internet commentators believe.
Still a questionable decision. Brain interface tech isn't even that new or novel, but the real bottleneck is that flesh is temporary, eventually the attachment place will die and be replaced. That's exactly what we saw with their first brain chip and other attempts going back at least 50 years.
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Is that Elon, he looks 20 years older.
You can find out how different news outlets feel about a person by the type of pictures they use of them. Once you see it, it can't be ignored.
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Unless itโs Elmo, it should be shut down.
Wake the fuck up
Elon is still deterioting
He's not withering away fast enough.
Luckily the value of SpaceX is not determined by their success, but more by what bullshit Musk can come up with. So if Musk can bullshit his way around this too, there is no harm to the stock.
Edit:
Ups sorry posted this the wrong place.
What does this have to do with SpaceX?
Nothing, I posted in the wrong place. The 2 stories were together, and after reading it, I must have clicked the wrong one, and posted it here, instead of the story about the SpaceX engine blowing up.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Neuralink, the Elon Musk-funded neuroscience startup, has received approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to implant its next patient with its experimental brain chip.
Neuralink previously implanted its experimental brain-computer interface chip in a paraplegic man, Noland Arbaugh, in an operation that was publicly announced this past January.
Arbaughโs identity was revealed during a livestream interview in March, during which the patient demonstrated some of the abilities the chip had given him, including the chance to play computer chess with his mind.
However, Arbaugh says that updates to the chipโs software have allowed him to regain many of the abilities that he previously had and that he is still very supportive of Neuralink and what itโs done for him.
This hardware then rests in the portion of the patientโs skull that was removed, right below the scalp, while its tiny wires carry data back and forth between the brain and the startupโs servers.
A large number of the companyโs animal test subjects had to be euthanized and some died quite horribly, according to a lawsuit from a physicians group.
The original article contains 419 words, the summary contains 181 words. Saved 57%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
Can we just ..... not keep going down the brain rot rabbit hole we are going down as a society? 24 hours in a day doesn't allow enough screen time? We need to just... funnel this shit straight in somehow?
I used to be excited for this kind of stuff, then I saw what we've done with the technology we have. People are "auto" driving their cars while they wear their apple vision pros, that's what we do with it.... Pretty soon tiktoc titties will be streamed straight to our frontal cortex.
Maybe I am just old, or maybe it would just be better if it was a different company doing it. But maybe a giant meteor should take us out ASAP.
In my 20's I was all for it. I understand where the techbros are coming from. Now with over a decade more experience, I see clearly we need to spend so much more of our energy healing from traumas on the societal level: To dispel imperial-colonialist mindsets. Im thinkin of Bo Burningham speaking about how the empires exhausted all physical territory, and then discovered Data, going on to colonize every waking moment of our attention.
We need to shed the subconcious conquistador, with all it's machismo, all it's tribalism (most agregiously white supremacist nationalism) and covetous paranoia. It is a poison which will prevent us from making the societal leap from which all tides would rise.
Until we do that, all we'll get for this tech will be:
- dystopic labor camp colonies on Mars
- advertisements when we are trying to dream
- Military tech developed under the guise of "medical ๐ disabilities ๐ quality ๐ of ๐ life ๐ improvement ๐ research" [1]
And we collectively deserve better
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So I go get a brain chip, and now Iโve got a second person in my head??
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