this post was submitted on 09 May 2024
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About a month after surgery the implant started to perform poorly. They tweaked some software settings and now it's running better than it did before the drop-off for a longer period, based on the actual blog post the story is talking about https://neuralink.com/blog/prime-study-progress-update-user-experience.
This is obviously prototype technology with insane risk. The guy only signed up because he's paraplegic. It's not in any way remotely ready for normal humans and probably won't ever be in our lifetimes. IMO this is like self driving technology, it's easy to promise the world but hard to actually accomplish what they say.
I really feel conflicted about this. I hate Musk as much as anyone and think this experiment is a little irresponsible, but if I were going through what that guy is dealing with, I'd probably want to give it a try.
That is what makes this even more egregious. Musk doesn't care about this guy in the slightest, except for the publicity that might help Musk raise more investor money. So Musk takes advantage of this desperation without any concern for long-term consequences. We know people left the company because of their ethical concerns. Those that remain probably just don't care or aren't on a position to do anything about the lack of ethics.
That's definitely one legitimate perspective. Another would be from the guy who can potentially gain some of his automony and dignity back regardless of the asshole who is itching to profit from it.
I guess it is an old argument. How willing are we, as a society, to protect people from being taken advantage of by cons. Musk had been extremely resilient for a con man. Probably because he mainly goes after relatively poor people.
Musk's companies aren't the only ones making breakthroughs in their respective fields. The only difference between Musk companies and others is that Musk just didn't care about safety, so his companies cut corners to make people think they are ahead. Other companies who are more responsible aren't willing to cut those corners for ethical reasons.
It’s not like the technology is a con. Brain implants have been iterated upon for decades. This is just the latest incarnation - after extensive animal testing. I don’t think we have a right to tell a quadriplegic they may not meaningfully improve their lives because we feel the risk is too high. They’re locked in a living prison.
I have nothing but admiration for the guy willing to be the human experiment. He's like an astronaut paving the way for a potential future for mankind.
Even if someone else finds the right way of doing it, this is driving us towards having practical man-machine interfaces. It's really cool.
Also completely terrifying to think about being the experiment myself.
It's definitely morally complicated. Like paying life changing money for medical testing or organ harvesting.
On one hand, yeah he's making a sacrifice for human advancement. On the other hand...
Ya think so??
Not sure the logic checks out
https://www.wired.com/story/elon-musk-pcrm-neuralink-monkey-deaths/
This is only logical if Neuralink is the only company doing this, but they are not.
Even the cofounder of Neuralink split off to make his own version of the company that puts safety first, and is working on a noninvasive (meaning doesn't damage the brain by design) version of the same technology.