The devices need FDA approval and some safeguards. A neurosurgeon needs to assess the risk vs benefit for the patient and they need to come to an agreement on whether it’s the right treatment. Problems with these devices are strokes, bleeds, infection, swelling in the brain, etc. which while fairly rare aren’t insignificant.
Aside from that general statement on risks of brain implants and brain surgery, the other big issue is whether or not they will be supported in 10-15 years or will Elon Musk flush that company down the drain as well? There was a company making implants that helped patients see that just shuttered it’s doors and said “whelp, sorry folks, no one can help you with your implant now”.
Yes, medical technology needs an umbrella insurance plan to cover cases where a company is not fiscally viable but still has to remain responsible for the lifetime service of the device. Like a bond or something.
It’ll never happen. As long as there is any kind of economy there will be some greedy fuck running nike ads in your brain every time you think about shoes.
If it is advertised well, it will be the same as with smartphones nowadays. Companies won’t plant chips into human brains, people will pay to have chips planted into their brains and pay even more for yearly upgrades.
What? Why WOULDN’T everybody let the guy whose latest genius idea in a stunning sequence of brilliant business decisions was squeezing every twitter user for money in a service they previously got for free implant hardware into their brain? It’ll be just like a tesla: automated driving available next year since like 2010 or so (assuming it doesn’t fall apart, run over the elderly or burst into flames) in a hyperloop near you!
Every post on this topic I see I like to remind people how easy it would be to remotely generate excruciating pain and how that could be used to control people in ways slavers of the past could only dream.
There is a long list of legit and or cook reasons to have a microchip in a brain. Controlling or assisting damaged brain structures, you can mitigate the symptoms.of Parkinsons, give vision to a blind person… but I also think the cool parts van be nice and probably are inevitable. Being able to communicate in your head, that sort of thing. I see it as something that will happen and people WILL do it.
Also, who do you think will make these chips? A fairy? Of course companies will (and already do) make them.
I think instead of screaming NONONO we should start thinking about what rules your any such companies to follow. Maybe have the design schematics be open source. A hard “off” button, somehow. A ban on ads and tracking (in combination with the hard off)
Yeah there are very start things possible, doesn’t mean it has to be like that
Yeah, what is this meme? Like I get Elon is a douche. But I mean where do people think deep brain simulation and things that help tons of people already come from? We even have implantable devices that can record seizures directly from the brain surface and generate electric impulses to disrupt them. Not to mention pacemakers, spinal cord stimulators, etc. All these things have quite a lot of regulatory hurdles before reaching market. Obviously want to make sure that framework stays strong so no dystopian nonsense down the line happens. Once we get to the level of consumer grade brainchips, then I’ll start to worry.
Alright, we’ll just rip the implants keeping patients seizure free out of their heads and tell everyone with Parkinson’s sorry, brain implants have to be removed now, go back to being frozen. Saying we can’t use a technology because someone might do something bad with it someday could apply to literally any technology.
Or are you proposing getting rid of legal frameworks and regulation of medications would improve them somehow? Just let big pharma go realky wild? Strengthen our regulatory frameworks by all means, stop regulatory capture and all that, but an unbridled free for all with big pharma allowed to do, sell, and say whatever it wants about its products sounds horrific. I think you’re right to think the fda may have gotten a little too lenient with some approvals lately, but that’s an argument for stengthening the regulations not getting rid of them.
But yeah Elon isn’t allowed to sell this shit yet, and people have to elect to be involved in any trials. It’s their choice. If he ever tries to sell it, he’ll have to prove efficacy and safety. Without that regulatory framework he wouldn’t need to do even that, could just immediately launch it and lie about the capabilities a la tesla auto pilot, duping and killing a bunch of people likely.
Even with consumer grade brain chips, the risk isn’t a bit thing until there is a direct interface and even then it’s a question of what it can interface with. And even then it’s a matter of good design. Some hardware off switch would be a basic requirement, but also software firewalling would be a very basic requirement.
Interfaces, if done right, should not have to be a dystopian future, we won’t become the Borg just bectof some implant somewhere
Nobody fearmongering in this thread seems to have any idea how it works.
A brain chip would connect to a specific region of your brain. For example, in the case of a physical disability it would only need to connect to your motor neurons using read-only connectors.
If you specifically had them implant read/write connections into your visual cortex, then sure, someone could hack it and play ads in your head but that’s kind of on you at that point.
There is no such thing as a “read-only connector.” Electrical signals can go down a wire both ways. It is up to the manufacturer of the chip to decide what pins are read and write, which is up to the governing body to regulate and restrict.
Not to mention that we are 10-20 years out from that kind of tech as development has been drastically slowing down in general. The best we can do as humans so far with the funds we put into this is stimulate general areas with current pulses to essentially cover up or stimulate the area’s nervous response to relieve pain. We can’t even accurately measure brain signals yet with fine enough detail to do much more than control a direction. Though that is coming along better.
The other applications close to this are for controlling muscles for sleep apnea, limb motor skills, heart muscles, etc… and are even “easier” to control.
If the tech becomes available to effect the video and audio brain receptors directly and is owned by corporations, you can bet your sweet ass they will make everything read/write and blast that thing so full of ads and harvest every bit of data they can to make a profit.
Source: electronic engineer working in the implantable device medical field
Yes, something could be done… by the exact company who has a direct incentive to serve ads in the first place. Are you going to install a 2nd chip made to block outgoing signals in the 1st chip?
It will never ever be solved by trusting the company who designs it to do the right thing.
Sure, I’m wrong about something that wasn’t even the argument and I already clarified is possible, technically, but completely impractical for the application and does not exist.
By all means, send me the part number of a read-only connector. That would probably be very useful ti my work.
Why couldn’t you build a “read only” connector? I mean sure, wires conduct both ways obviously, but diodes and other one-way conductors are a thing right?
The other point of only putting the implant in the place it’s needed and where it can’t make you see and hear things seems valid too.
I’m not saying there wouldn’t be other risks and issues with the whole thing, but I feel like the “they’ll put ads in your brain” thing is kind of a ridiculous fear.
No, because brain signals are so low voltage compared to silicon voltage thresholds that if you put a diode in to block outgoing signal, it would just reduce all incoming signal to noise. On an IC where there is very fine silicon property control it is probably possible though.
Let’s say that it is possible, it would still have to be implemented on the PCB or more likely, the IC itself. Guess who’s literal job it is to design and make all of the decisions on what is possible would be? The exact same people who would benefit financially from enabling that functionality and serving ads. The point of all of this is that there are 1000 ways to make that functionality not be available on the design, but the decision to make it available or not is made by the people who would earn a lot of money from it and benefit directly.
Every single major technology that has the ability to display ads eventually does, without fail. Every single one. Why would an implanted chip made by the same companies be any different?
Again, I think it will be a VERY long time before we have the sort of fine control and deep understanding of the brain to effectively control sight and sound. I think 20 years might have actually be generous and it might be 30-40 unless we hit a breakthrough in biological computing or something.
Until then, there would be absolutely nothing to worry about. Musty’s “brain chip” would never have this capability and would be much more likely in causing strokes than any other danger.
The problem is that if it is unquestioned, implemented, and normalized that “everyone has a brain chip” then, just like smart phones, they will slowly change until the tech does become available and maybe they just have an ad on startup, maybe they just have an ad here or there, until the entire thing just becomes a vehicle for ads like smartphones are now.
bots still not up unfortunately since I havent had time to adapt it to the lemmy.world bot guidelines (+ had no laptop for awhile). I can try to do that tonight
this post isnt but the bot is global across the fediverse so I have to adhere to the most strict guidelines before I bring it back up so instances dont start banning it (no way to have the bot behave differently on different instances rn and if I add that it I would have to continually update which ones have more strict rules)
They usually have no security at all though for some reason, maybe for the same reason viruses spread like crazy in the early days of the internet, people didn’t consider that and assumed everyone was acting in good faith
Making a secure device isn’t reeeally that hard these days, as long as you don’t also have to consider physical access (which, if someone has access to physically probe the chip in your brain, you have bigger problems)
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