On the internet nobody knows if someone made up a story. They might have as well made up the whole story. This post may be a work of fiction. Maybe it never happened. But it is entertaining.
Embellished, maybe, but parts of it ring true. I know from bitter experience that confronting a neighbour about noise rarely works. They can often be drunk or aggressive.
Again... not saying it’s not possible. Human beings have already played a game COLLABORATIVELY, with only mind to mind communication... this is a philosophical comment on what neuroscience should do, not what it is able to do.
For example, as of this writing, you could have an experimental procedure that results in light sensitive neurons, that when excited by a laser, stop your breathing and remove the sensation of asphyxiation to let you die a painless, playful death.
(Optogenetics, table stakes)
So I think it’s massively important to discuss what should and shouldn’t be done with Neurotech, otherwise with the rate the “throughput” argument is going... aka all of these joystick developments... your life value will be pegged to how many blockchains your mind can mine... enjoy the matrix!
No--but no one is saying that! Instead, we could dial back on the hype, put our heads down, and get to work.
I work in this field and I have such strong, mixed feelings about companies like these. On the one hand, more interest in the brain and neurotech is great. These are tough problems, and we need new ideas, new tools, and new approaches. The standard academic approach of throwing a few trainees at a problem for a few years each (mostly in isolation), might not be the best way to tackle a problem that ranges from biophysics to psychology (and everything in between: materials science, signal processing, etc).
On the other hand, I worry that excessive hype is going to blow the field up before it gets started. If Elon Musk says he can implant 3000 electrodes that will let you control your iPhone--by next year--why would anyone fund me to do the slower, slogging work that I think will be required to eventually make something like that possible? This isn't just a critique of industry; the same brand of hucksterism shows up in parts of academia too. Throwing cold water on people's hopes and dreams isn't fun, but I think it's important for the long-term health of neuroscience as a field.
Shorter term, companies should also think about who they're attracting with this hype. I'm on the job market (in a very low-key way), and one of my principle requirements is that I want to work somewhere that is serious about the science: I want to build something that will actually work, instead of burning a pile of VC cash chasing hype or, God forbid, Theranos. Many of my colleagues feel the same way.
I just don't get this attitude. It's such a sour grapes type of attitude. Either help out, or get out.
It’s called “skepticism”. You read enough history, you realize the charlatans greatly outnumber the geniuses, and you do your due-diligence before you invest, or form some weird cult.
Some skeptics remain skeptics up until the point that they've been proven blatantly and obviously wrong and people stop accepting their arguments, so for some "skeptics" at least it's more of a stubborn mindset backed by confirmation bias or other issues disconnected from the actual subject matter, rather than sound reasoning.
In this case, however, scepticism is more than warranted.
Just comparing the mission statement of NeuraLink (from their homepage) with the wild claims of their most prominent founder (Musk) should make you stop and think for a second.
The actual goals are quite humble and achievable in the near term. What Musk says on Joe Rogen's podcasts and other public forums, however, is more fiction than science.
Unfortunately most publications focus on the latter and ignore the former and way too many people fall for this and seriously believe that highly invasive and risky brain surgery will become routine in just a couple of years.
We're talking about the same guy who said there could be "1 million full self-driving robo taxis on the road by 2020" during the April 2019 Tesla investor day [0]. The same guy, mind you, who's company two years later, in 2021 told regulatory bodies that their technology is only SAE level-2... [1]
The technical press back then was very sceptical about the claim as well (and it turns out they were right to do so). Autonomous cars are on a whole different level than BCI, though, and there's no breakthrough science required to achieve autonomous cars.
So in light of this I feel that scepticism has its place w.r.t. BCI and outrageous claims (e.g. streaming music directly into the brain or curing neurological diseases) about the near-term abilities and development stage of the technology.
Funny you mention that. First of all, that's nothing new - years ago a simple external EEG was enough for users to move a mouse. Now available as off-the-shelf hardware and with OSS projects to boot [1]
Secondly, nothing that was shown (apart from being far from new, exciting or ground-breaking in any way) was independently verified so we just have to take their word for it...
If you read enough history, you realize that people who fail are forgotten, but the people who mock the people who end up succeeding are remembered and humiliated forever.
She's not a skeptic on the value of the technology however , in fact she dismisses any ethical issues it poses. She 's skeptical of the timeline, which is more of a business statement.
Leaving aside that this person was probably in this field before Neuralink and the others, in matters such as these, offering an expert opinion on a market filled with snake oil certainly is helping out. Otherwise we rely on people whose first priority is not truth but profit.
>So what? Stop trying? Give up?
Her suggestion is to exercise skepticism and be realistic about what the actual applications and markets are.
"Leaving aside that this person was probably in this field before Neuralink and the others"
Neuralink founding members:
Max Hodak previously worked on the development of brain-computer interfaces at Duke University.
Matthew MacDougall, Head of Neurosurgery at Neuralink and neurosurgeon at California Pacific Medical Center. He was previously working at Stanford where he worked in labs that implemented and designed brain-computer interfaces.
Vanessa Tolosa, Director of Neural Interfaces. She previously led a neurotechnology team at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory that worked with a wide variety of technology on technology prostheses that were used in clinical and academic settings.
There is an insane amount of hype, and the expectations are hyper inflated relative to what is realistic and feasible. Uncontrolled hype results in real harm. For example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI_winter
There is nothing wrong with grounding a company's claims/goals against reality. Particularly relevant for any company lead by Elon Musk. His timelines are always wrong. He's been promising FSD is just a year away for the better part of the last decade.
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