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Valve CEO Gabe Newell’s Neuralink competitor is expecting its first brain chip this year
(www.theverge.com)
this post was submitted on 25 May 2025
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Might be a bit of an unpopular opinion, but I don't really see a problem with brain implants. I wouldn't put anything my brain in a thousand years, but if someone's willing to accept the risks, why not? They have the potential to significantly improve quality of life for many people.
It could become the standard in time, like smartphones. I can easily see it becoming the norm, making it more expensive and difficult to use a normal smartphone instead of some brain implant, much like how "dumbphones" are coming back as overpriced and gimmicky. Maybe they pullsomething similar to the "green bubble" like apple did, alienating people without implants.
This is a very important concern. Tech companies already exert entirely too much power over society through smart phones and their accompanying apps. The damage they would do with direct access to your neurons is incalculable.
The only thing that comforts me is that I firmly expect that society as we know it will entirely collapse before this technology can really be capitalized. It's not a very comforting expectation, but it somehow bothers me less than the idea of techno-fascist corporate feudal states taking control of everyone's thoughts.
It's exactly like AI. Could the technology be useful were it to be used in service of goals that would serve humanity? Absolutely. Will it be used by billionaires in a way that will be harmful to most people in order to further entrench their power? Most definitely.
At least some of the people developing this stuff think they're going to be able to partner AI and neural links. I think the desire is they think about the solution to a problem and then they don't have to do the work of creating it. It will just exist magically because the AI will do it.
It's egotistical bollocks that comes from believing your ideas are always right, and that a back of the napkin idea is the same as a fully engineered solution.
"Someone might abuse it" is a reasonable concern. "Therefore nobody should be allowed to use it" is not a reasonable answer to that concern, IMO. We'd never have anything with that approach.
There's a lot to be said for the scale of damage that can be done with something, especially relative to the effort needed to do that damage.
These days tech companies are doing enormous damage to people's brains (saturating our dopamine receptors to the point that many people have depression and executive dysfunction) to turn us all into consumption machines that can only find happiness by consuming content and buying commercial products and services.
Imagine how much more harm they'll do when they have direct access to our neurons, without even LED pixels as a buffer in between.
So regulate the uses of the technology. Don't ban it outright.
Those companies are doing their manipulation currently by using the Internet and social media, should the Internet and social media be banned outright? We're using social media to discuss this right now, that discussion should be suppressed?
Another problem is abandonment. When the company goes under or the device becomes outdated and they no longer want to support it the device can't be easily removed. If the device was fixing a disability, the person's disability will be reinstated.
I suspect we will end up in a situation where you have a "mount" that is connected to your brain. The mount is able to be serviced by any company in the field, because it is standard. From there, you have the actual chips which are going to be relatively easy to install and remove, eventually you might even be able to do so at your house. This allows competition while allowing being consumer friendly.
As for the disability side of things, it just means that when your chip is no longer serviced you easily swap it for another companies whose are.
My piercings are against God but technoligarchs think they will convince those people brain chips you can swap out on the fly are okay. lol
Anyways I’ll take one brain chip here in like 5 years.
I'm not trying to convince anyone. I well aware of where the tech will be in 30 years and I am getting one. If anyone else has a problem with it, they can wait until then to do their surprise pikachu face when the tech ends up being awesome, exactly how AI is going. LLMs are basically useless, but outside of those AI even in it's modern incarnation is wildly inpressive, and will only get moreso.
10 years ago no one believed me when i told them about the LLMs we currently have. It was around that time I realised that the public makes sweeping generalizations about tech when 99% of them don't understand the tech, the math, or even that something being present in nature means its replicable, because nature can replicate it(and therefore so can humans). That last one seems to be a huge disconnect in peoples cognitive abilites.
Edit: also anyone who tells you anything about your piercings in a disrespectful light can go suck an egg, they don't live in your body. I realize im autistic but the fact that people try that shit and then other people are susceptable to that sort of societal pressure is wild to me. I do what I want, when I want, however I want. People call me weird and I openly ridicule them for thinking their opinion holds any sway over me. You try to shame me, and I will shame you for your massively inflated ego that you think you has power over me.
If I lived in, say, Iain Banks's post-scarcity anarcho-communist utopia The Culture, I'd get a neural lace in a heartbeat. But living in this capitalist dystopia that most of us does, I don't trust corporations to not use this sort of technology for domination over the populace.
For perspectives on how it might go (general vibes, not the same technology) I recommend HYPER-REALITY (6 mins short film) or David Brin's Existence novel.
Continuum is a tidy lil show addressing this, too. Actually, not so tidy, a bit of a mess. But still entertaining and intriguing at times.
thanks, I'll check it out!
At some point in humanity's future, I assume that it will be a thing and be widespread. Just too many potential benefits to having high-bandwidth links to the brain not to eventually do it.
But it's a path with a lot of hurdles along the way, and risks.
Beyond expanding the brain’s functions it can fix things like some forms of blindness
If I can read your thoughts, it can change them. I guess it depends on the level of sophistication but it opens up the ONE place in the entire world that is completely yours.
The one place i cant leave, id love to not have my shit fucked up anymore.
If it prevents or mitigates Alzheimer's, or other degenerative brain diseases, it's a good development.
Imagine the guy at BMW who invented subscriptions for heated seats teaming up with the guy at nvidia who does drivers and youll understand why I wouldnt