It’s a con. There is no chip. None that works. This is Holmes 2.0. Except he may never be caught. The project will get into more “problem” and he’ll string investors along to secure himself a net positive position before letting it languish into oblivion. It’s probably one of the things that’s actually making him money.
Break down the whole thing. What am I supposed to go to McChip to get some kid with 6 weeks training to install these? If not some doctors with a 8y waiting list? How do you scale that part of the process? Doctors aren’t bountiful. And expensive.
And the elephant in the room: you can’t shove some electrodes into your midbrain and do things. The video of the guy moving the cursor around can be done now in macOS Sonoma with accessibility features. It would have been a different story if he was actually thinking about opening a photo from 3 years ago and it did that. But he was just moving a cursor around.
All he’s actually accomplished outside of lining his coffers is kill a bunch of innocent apes.
You have seen what he has done to twitter/X. For all his talks about freedom, free speech and survival of mankind, he is fundamentally a conservative billionaire oligarch who has no qualms about exploiting others to death to add to his wealth.
Now just imagine if a brain implant goes the same way. Forget his delusions about backing up the human brain and telepathic nonsense. Even simple implants meant to help paraplegics are going to be dangerous under the control of people like him. Just the way the brain moves our limbs can be used against us.
This is why it’s important to report on matters like this. So that people understand the danger and avoid it, instead of falling for the propaganda that he is some sort of tech messiah.
I mean, I’d like to be surprised that a technology driven by a techbro with the “move fast and break things” mentality has broken because of moving too quickly into human trials, but…
I guess we should just count ourselves lucky that the poor human test subject patient wasn’t permanently harmed by Musk’s raging arrogance.
I’m shocked that the human trail was authorized at all, considering the fate of the monkeys that were subject to the same. I’m not confident that this man or any future subjects will be truly safe. We won’t know even if something goes wrong.
Buckaroo Banzai was working on similar tech all the way back in 1984!
RAWHIDE:Dr. Banzai is using a laser to vaporize a pineal tumor without damaging the parthogenital plate. A subcutaneous microphone will allow the patient to transmit verbal instructions to his own brain.
STAR SURGEON: What, like “raise my left arm”?
RAWHIDE: Or “throw the harpoon,” . People are gonna come from all over. This boy’s an Eskimo.
Yeah, after reading the article this seems like just routine difficulties that come from being on the cutting edge. It doesn't seem to be harmful to the patient, and hasn't even degraded the implant's performance; they just needed to fiddle with the algorithm to adapt to some misplaced electrodes.
But it's got the big blaring "Elon Musk!" Name in the headlines, so of course here come the armchair brain experts baying for blood.
I would have hoped that before putting this implant in the guy’s brain that they had a plan for what to do in this situation. Like coming up with a method to potentially reseat the retreated “threads” it without invasive surgery. Especially if this it’s a recurring issue.
Well yeah fuck that guy and this program and it’s implications, but this particular issue doesn’t sound too unexpected considering the scope of the procedure.
I’m all for the science, but you know this is going to be some directly streamed ads hellspace we’ll never escape from if it comes to fruition.
Here’s a good rule for this sort of thing to move forward: No implants before right to privacy and freedom from advertising.
I’m the kind of person who reads the source code of software I’m using at least some of the time (and modifies it on occasion), but I’m no genius and not qualified to notice a well-hidden backdoor or potentially fatal software bug - let alone issues with the design, construction or implantation of the hardware. I would never ever trust a brain implant or any device that interfaces directly with my brain.
I’d prefer no implants ever if I can help it. I’d only be fine with one if it saved my life. Otherwise, there are just too many things that can go wrong with it in ways our current technology can’t. You can go off-grid now if you get sick of tech, but that becomes infinitely harder if you have a chip in your brain
I'm all for the science, but you know this is going to be some directly streamed ads hellspace we'll never escape from if it comes to fruition.
Well, I guess based on that vague assumption we'd better shut it all down. Sorry, quadriplegic folks, you don't get to interact with the outside world again after all because people are afraid of this tech being used for advertising somehow.
Honestly I agree. I don't think Elon Musk has demonstrated the good judgement that means a company he's in charge of should be in there fuckin with people's brains, but reading the article it sounds pretty frickin cool what they're doing. I hope it works out and good things come out of it.
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