this post was submitted on 20 May 2024
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[–] MajorHavoc@programming.dev 132 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (15 children)

"asked if Neuralink would perform another surgery to fix or replace the implant, but the company declined"

Evidence whether the company saw them as a person, or felt any ethical obligation...

It's an interesting era when an organization can have a single user, and choose to leave that single user with 85% of the promised functionality no longer functional. But is happily pursuing it's second user.

[–] golli@lemm.ee 41 points 6 months ago (6 children)

with 85% of the promised functionality no longer functional

To be fair 85% of threads retracting doesn't seem to translate to an equal amount of functional loss. The article mentions

Neuralink was quick to note that it was able to adjust the algorithm used for decoding those neuronal signals to compensate for the lost electrode data. The adjustments were effective enough to regain and then exceed performance on at least one metric—the bits-per-second (BPS) rate used to measure how quickly and accurately a patient with an implant can control a computer cursor.

I think it will be impossible for us to asses how much it actually impacts function in real world use case.

It seems clear that this is a case of learning by trial and error, which considering the stakes doesn't seem like the right approach.

The question that this article doesn't answer is, whether they have learned anything at all or if they are just proceeding to do the same thing again. And if they have learned something, is there something preventing it to be applied to the first patient.

[–] CosmicCleric@lemmy.world 11 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

I think it will be impossible for us to asses how much it actually impacts function in real world use case.

Does seem fair though to say that if you have 85% less data input/probes, that you're losing some to a large amount of fidelity, than an algorithm can only make up so much for.

A potentionally bad analogy, but think of it as a high bitrate versus a low bitrate, for listening to music. The quality of the music will be notably different, but you would still be able to hear both of the songs in their entirety.

At the end of the day, it's a lack of data that was originally expected for the algorithm to work with, that is now missing.

~Anti~ ~Commercial-AI~ ~license~ ~(CC~ ~BY-NC-SA~ ~4.0)~

[–] NotMyOldRedditName@lemmy.world 7 points 6 months ago

Currently they've been having him control a cursor. He can left and right click it.

He can perform as good as he could before the problem now it seems, so if that's the case that extra bit rate wasn't needed for that task.

What this probably means is he won't be able to do as much as they learn more about it.

Maybe 1 year in the 2nd patient with full fidelity is able attach it to a robotic arm and fetch themselves a drink, but Nolan while he can click as good, won't be able to do that.

Also if they fix it eventually, as they didn't say never, just not yet, they'll never know if that discrepancy occurs.

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