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Valve CEO Gabe Newell’s Neuralink competitor is expecting its first brain chip this year
(www.theverge.com)
They should make a big facility to test the implants
this post was submitted on 25 May 2025
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"has long toyed with the idea that your brain should be more connected to your PC"
seems like billionaires' wet dream to be honest
But imagine how easy it would be to ~~track you~~ serve you more personalised ads.
Props to him for trying it himself instead of having someone else do it and take all the risk
"Alright, the implantation surgery was a success, now all we have to do is fire up the remote activation. Throwing the switch in three... two...
Finally the logo makes sense
TIL Valve is into brain chips.
The Valve Deckard was a little more ambitious than had been originally anticipated.
How the hell is this not the Onion?
isn't the verge the same as the onion?
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Is this what were getting instead of half life 3?
Half life: Alyx required VR.
Half life 3 requires neural integration.
I can see and feel the headcrab like it's actually there.
yikes
HL3 brain dance confirmed.
I like that vision of future (implants are cool, neural interfaces can be useful), but I'd also like our world to stop and think a bit at every stage.
Solve the global network (note how I'm not saying "global computer network", because I don't think so, ideally we'd still have global analog commutated channel network as the base level), web of hypertext documents, universal applications and personal computing problems sufficiently well first. Then go to brain implants.
It's like combat drones, using them with optical cables for communication is better than with radio, turns out. That's the current way.
Would be good if for computing we'd figure out ways better than war to remove delusions.
So this is how we're gonna get half life 3 huh
Will we also get a control valve back on our heads?
Yes, but it belongs to Gaben. Don't touch it.
If it solves my tinnitus, I'm all for it.
Look into Lenire. First FDA-approved treatment
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