Neuralink Has Successfully Implanted a Second Brain Chip, Musk Says (reuters.com) 91
Late Friday Elon Musk appeared on Lex Fridman's podcast for a special eight-hour episode about Neuralink.
It's already been viewed 1,702,036 times on YouTube — and resulted in this report from Reuters: Neuralink has successfully implanted in a second patient its device designed to give paralyzed patients the ability to use digital devices by thinking alone, according to the startup's owner Elon Musk... [Musk] gave few details about the second participant beyond saying the person had a spinal cord injury similar to the first patient, who was paralyzed in a diving accident.
Musk said 400 of the implant's electrodes on the second patient's brain are working. Neuralink on its website states that its implant uses 1,024 electrodes... Musk said he expects Neuralink to provide the implants to eight more patients this year as part of its clinical trials.
Neuralink's device "has allowed the first patient to play video games, browse the internet, post on social media and move a cursor on his laptop," according to the article: The first patient, Noland Arbaugh, was also interviewed on the podcast, along with three Neuralink executives, who gave details about how the implant and the robot-led surgery work. Before Arbaugh received his implant in January, he used a computer by employing a stick in his mouth to tap the screen of a tablet device. Arbaugh said with the implant he now can merely think about what he wants to happen on the computer screen, and the device makes it happen... Arbaugh has improved on his previous world record for the speed at which he can control a cursor with thoughts alone "with only roughly 10, 15% of the electrodes working," Musk said on the podcast.
Fridman said his interview with Musk was "the longest podcast I've ever done," calling their conversation "fascinating, super technical, and wide-ranging... I loved every minute of it."
It's already been viewed 1,702,036 times on YouTube — and resulted in this report from Reuters: Neuralink has successfully implanted in a second patient its device designed to give paralyzed patients the ability to use digital devices by thinking alone, according to the startup's owner Elon Musk... [Musk] gave few details about the second participant beyond saying the person had a spinal cord injury similar to the first patient, who was paralyzed in a diving accident.
Musk said 400 of the implant's electrodes on the second patient's brain are working. Neuralink on its website states that its implant uses 1,024 electrodes... Musk said he expects Neuralink to provide the implants to eight more patients this year as part of its clinical trials.
Neuralink's device "has allowed the first patient to play video games, browse the internet, post on social media and move a cursor on his laptop," according to the article: The first patient, Noland Arbaugh, was also interviewed on the podcast, along with three Neuralink executives, who gave details about how the implant and the robot-led surgery work. Before Arbaugh received his implant in January, he used a computer by employing a stick in his mouth to tap the screen of a tablet device. Arbaugh said with the implant he now can merely think about what he wants to happen on the computer screen, and the device makes it happen... Arbaugh has improved on his previous world record for the speed at which he can control a cursor with thoughts alone "with only roughly 10, 15% of the electrodes working," Musk said on the podcast.
Fridman said his interview with Musk was "the longest podcast I've ever done," calling their conversation "fascinating, super technical, and wide-ranging... I loved every minute of it."
Stop pushing things to extremes (Score:1, Insightful)
We are to ignore the fact that Elon Musk is a demonstrated sociopath and pathological liar?
There is no reason to believe anything Elon Musk says about Neuralink or anything else. Good thing some podcaster is profiting off of providing a platform though.
Get real.
Musk has not been "demonstrated" as a sociopath, that would take a professional psychologist who is actually treating him, and if the diagnosis got out it would be the end of that professional's career and be a black eye on the entire profession.
And Musk does not show any symptoms of sociopathy: violence or aggression towards others, for example. He's happily married and has close friends, in the "sleep on the couch for a couple of days" definition of friends, which argues against an undiagnosed le
Re:Stop pushing things to extremes (Score:5, Insightful)
Musk does not show any symptoms of sociopathy: violence or aggression towards others
Violence and aggression are not the only signs of sociopathy, nor are they the most common. Here's a list of the more common signs.
* Lack of empathy for others (like abusing and alienating a trans daughter)
* Impulsive behavior (like the whole buying Twitter debacle)
* Attempting to control others with threats or aggression (remember the cave rescue team that he decided to hurl gay slurs at when they didn't wait for him to make a gadget)
* Using intelligence, charm, or charisma to manipulate others (every goddamn thing he says)
* Not learning from mistakes or punishment (the constant doubling down on the things that have devalued Twitter and turned it into a cesspool)
* Lying for personal gain (all the times he was pumping up cryptocurrency he happens to own)
* Generally superficial relationships (he goes through partners faster than Taylor Swift)
Go ahead. Refute all those.
He's happily married
Musk isn't married. He and Grimes have children, but they aren't married. In fact, they keep breaking up and getting back together. That's not a sign of a happy relationship.
And "pathological" liar is a compulsion to lie regardless of the situation. I don't think that term is properly used for people who miss deadlines or make sales predictions and have late delivery.
You're leaving out all the right wing conspiracy theory bullshit that he keeps repeating. Look through his Twitter feed and fact check the things he says and retweets. It's filled with lies.
You're the one who has gone to extremes to defend Musk.
Re:Stop pushing things to extremes (Score:5, Funny)
Don’t forget to mention all the gender affirming care he’s gone through. A hair transplant because he was half bald in 1999. Surgery to give him a more masculine jaw line and he’s likely using testosterone shots to appear more manly.
He has 10 children with numerous women and the government had to tell Mr. Edgelord he can’t name his child using the extended ascii character set.
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As I already pointed out above, Narcissistic Personality Disorder is a better fit with what we know publicly.
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it's unethical to make a diagnosis of mental illness like that
It's unethical for a medical professional to do that. For anyone else, it's understood that it's speculation because they are already known to not be experts.
Re:Stop pushing things to extremes (Score:4, Informative)
Musk has been going on about living in a simulation for a while. This construct is helpful to someone who lacks empathy and exhibits many of the traits of a person suffering sociopathy.
Re: Stop pushing things to extremes (Score:2)
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To quote Matthew McDougall, the chief neurosurgeon at Neuralink, "now that there's a human with literal skin in the game, there's a participant who's well being rides on this, you have to be a really bad person to be rooting for this to go wrong".
He continues: "Hopefully people will look in the mirror and realize that at some point".
Unfortunately Musk haters are people with some of the least self awareness that there are. So it's unlikely you'll understand what he said, much less do it.
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Please indicate the part where I said anything that would indicate that I hoped the Neuralink project goes wrong.
You're attempting to use a strawman argument and, frankly, it's a pathetic.
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You're not just hoping. You're actively acting to make it fail. In your previous post.
Your attempt at evading responsibility for a much worse act by pretending you're not guilty for something far less bad marks you as exactly what you're accusing Musk of. A sociopath.
Stop projecting your problems upon your betters and seek help.
Re: Stop pushing things to extremes (Score:3)
What are you talking about? Badmouthing Musk on slashdot is not the same thing as trying to make Neuralink fail. Even if Musk were an angel, itâ(TM)s just a whole different thing.
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This is another minimization of the sociopathic act. He wasn't just "badmouthing Musk". He was calling him a sociopath in context of building systems that plug into human brains to form a direct man to machine interface. Being a sociopath is strictly exclusionary from being allowed to push for such an action done to any human being.
Because as a method of torture that sociopath would revel in, that would be a perfect tool. But sociopath projecting his mental illness on Musk above isn't referencing that at al
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I'm not entirely sure what it means for all the people who would like to see that fight.
Who the h*ll cares?! (Score:2, Interesting)
This is a story as old as time. Someone with a whole lot of money and a lot of wild dreams decides to start throwing money towards achieving them. Turns out they have a few mental issues and maybe they're not so nice or polite to people and feelings get hurt? Still, great things get accomplished.
I said a long time ago, Musk doesn't seem that different to me than people like Thomas Edison. Vilified for all sorts of things; some unfairly and some accurately. Accused of stealing other people's ideas and taking
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Someone with a whole lot of money and a lot of wild dreams decides to start throwing money towards achieving them... Still, great things get accomplished.
Both Edison and Jobs embody this. They take credit for being the inventor, but they were really just the heads of a sweatshop for ideas. I won't downplay the accomplishments and the money that was input, but I might certainly downplay crediting them as actually accomplishing it. At most, they did have a visionary ability to filter only the best ideas that bubbled up. The people with the most talent have not been recognized.
Just look at Apple after Steve Jobs (the second time).
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No... people give them credit for being the inventor. They don't take credit- but they allow it to be assigned.
Anyone in the IT industry knows that Wozniak was the inventor at Apple. But Wozniak would finish building the "world's greatest computer", stick in in the corner, move onto another project while ordering a pizza never to touch the "world's greatest computer" again.
Jobs was the visionary and gatekeeper. He kept feeding Wozniak pizza... but Wozniak was kept on task and we got the Apple I, II, Lisa, a
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If I'm going to armchair diagnose him, I'd go with relatively high-functioning Narcissistic Personality Disorder. It also goes along with most of your whole list.
* Lack of empathy for others (just #1 for NPD, a lack of understanding what others need)
* Impulsive behavior (tendency to think he is better than everyone at everything)
* Attempting to control others with threats or aggression (manipulative/controlling behavior is NPD, they are the classic template of a domestic abuser)
* Using intelligence, charm,
Civil War comment (Score:2)
Add to this, Musk's latest "Civil war is inevitable" on the right-wing riots in the UK.
The riots that were a result of misinformation on X that the alleged perpetrator was a) Muslim, b) an immigrant and c) came to the UK illegally, crossing the English Channel in a small boat.
In actuality, the alleged perpetrator was born in Wales and is not a Muslim.
Re:Stop pushing things to extremes (Score:5, Interesting)
And Musk does not show any symptoms of sociopathy: violence or aggression towards others, for example.
What? Have you already forgotten the incident with the kids trappen in a cave?
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It was really the media that started that be asking the other guy, quite unrelated, what he thought about Musk, which he then replied to in pretty unkind terms.
Musk does have a history of not taking well to unkind behaviour. But aggressive behaviour is when you start the fight, not when you fight back.
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But aggressive behaviour is when you start the fight, not when you fight back.
Untrue. Almost any aggression is triggered by a perceived slight. Whether you call it a fight yet or not is a matter of perspective.
Re: Stop pushing things to extremes (Score:2)
Quite wrong. Escaltion is aggressive bahavior.
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Musk has not been "demonstrated" as a sociopath
And Musk does not show any symptoms of sociopathy
If you really believe that, you haven't been paying attention. Or, you work for Musk.
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Isn't Musk divorced? Grimes left him and is currently in a custody battle over the kids. Speaking of kids, Musk attacked one of his publicly a couple of weeks ago. She is trans and quite happy having disassociated with him, but he decided to rant about her in some interview anyway. Normal fathers with healthy mental states are usually happy if their children are happy.
As for violence, he challenged Zuckerberg to a fight but then chickened out. He's constantly predicting civil war (most recently in the UK!)
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He's constantly predicting civil war (most recently in the UK!) and encouraging others to prepare to violence.
This isn't his goal, I'm sure, but as a business owner with a lot of financial liabilities but also a lot of assets he and his companies would do well under the high inflation associated with war.
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And Musk does not show any symptoms of sociopathy: violence or aggression towards others, for example
He's demonstrated plenty of aggression towards his trans child, and publicly too.
You don't like his politics, just say that *you* don't like his politics and let that be the end of it.
You're willfully ignoring his actions in order to support your arguments. I don't like bullshit, so I don't like *you*.
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I'd argue otherwise. While I certainly don't agree with him on every issue, the guy knows what he's doing, and he does it well.
Right. He runs a company that makes electric cars and then spends all day pandering to right-wing nutjobs who hate electric cars. Yes, that is someone who really knows what he is doing.
Re: Have we forgotten? (Score:1)
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Anything with an X in the name is definitely him. Because he's still obsessed with his attempted rename of Paypal to X.
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Why does slashdot post so much about Elon's brain implant company, while ignoring the brain implant companies which are have more successful trials and more advanced technologies?
What sort of reality distortion field crap is this?
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Who is their competition? I've seen other companies doing brain implants, but each of them have different objectives. For example this is intended to function as an input device for a computer, whereas another company does implants meant to help with vision, and yet another one does implants meant to assist with movement.
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From https://reports.mountsinai.org... [mountsinai.org]
The electrodes record all electrical activity from the brain. The surgeon plugs the wire into a pacemaker-like device that is implanted just below the skin in the person’s upper chest. An external device is then placed over the chest, which receives the brain activity from the internal device and uses Bluetooth to record the electrical activity coming from the electrode. “It’s a very well-designed technology that overcomes a lot of the limitations of the previous BCI technologies that have been trialed in the past."
Over time, the system learns to map signals from the patient’s brain to specific computer commands, allowing for cognitive control of a digital device to perform tasks such as computerized speech, environmental control (e.g., turning lights on and off), personal banking, digitally signing documents, or engaging in social media.
As far as I can tell that project is years ahead of Neuralink, and by design less invasive to implant.
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The first one that comes to mind is the Stentrode. Which is one of many brain-computer interfaces out there.
As far as I can tell that project is years ahead of Neuralink, and by design less invasive to implant.
Not so sure on the 'years ahead' other than from a literal calendar view. I think they did their first two test implants in Australia back in 2019 with reports of their results commonly showing up with 2020 dates.
It very much is less invasive to implant -- that is the entire point of their operation is to see what can be done without surgery. (slide a sensor in the form of a stent up a blood vessel into a vessel in the brain) Downside is they get much less points of reception and thus results much less i
Re:Have we forgotten? (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes. Irrelevant.
Terminal Man... (Score:2)
Hmm. Time for a re-read on this one.
It's NeuraMusk... (Score:2)
Wow ! He's eating his own dog food. Good on you, Elmo.
Ad? (Score:4, Funny)
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Is this essentially just an ad for the podcast?
Magic 8-Ball says: Signs Point To Yes.
"success" for Neuralink is a rather low bar (Score:4, Informative)
That means the guy they put the chip into **hasn't died yet**.
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God. Score: 4, Informative
Should be Score: 4, Hate Musk
Is it possible to actually do something crazy with a company that Musk owns like, say, judge the company for what they are doing and the results they are delivering? The derangement on anything with his name attached has grown far whackier than the cult of fan boys who fall on his every word. Which I didn't think was possible.
Oh, ... (Score:1)
Neuralink Has Successfully Implanted a Second Brain Chip, Musk Says (reuters.com)
...and how many more chips do they anticipate having to implant before they've finally fixed whatever is wrong with Elon?
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256 should be enough for anybody!
Not to belabor a point... (Score:2)
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One of the issues was the loss of fluid during the surgery allowed a bubble inside the skull that caused the brain to pull away from the implant when the bubble passed between them.
From what I have seen in a youtube video(where Elon is sitting with his top neurolink people taking about their plans for the second implant), they have a newer approach for the implant surgery that will prevent the problematic bubble from forming.
Another point was the first implant wires were mostly placed along the sides of br
Pretty meaningless (Score:2)
These implants are not durable.
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There are two aspects to Neuralink.
A computer model that needs to be generated that allows for the translation of signals captured to be mapped to "actions". This is the learning portion that all recipients would have to go through.
The second is the implants. This is actually the hard part. Because you are absolutely correct. They aren't durable. The human body will ultimately reject them and defend against them. Thus over time the sensitivity of the probes will drop off. Falling to zero eventually.
L
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yes. Also remember that there is already a few decades of research on implantable electrodes. For the brain, all failures so far. Hence it is impossible to say whether these will become durable enough to justify the risk in 10, 100, or 1000 years. Working on the other part is entirely premature. But it is Musk. The guy with the gigantic ego and the rather small actual skills that always seeks to present himself as the best thing since sliced bread.
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Working on the other part is entirely premature. But it is Musk. The guy with the gigantic ego and the rather small actual skills that always seeks to present himself as the best thing since sliced bread.
Umm...more people than Elon are involved in this, and any one of them saying no would have already put a stop to it. If the FDA felt it was premature, they would have stopped it. If the surgeons felt it was premature, they would have stopped it. Note the FDA does a LOT more scrutinizing of these than basically anybody else in the world, even to the point of making it so that the US is often the first at developing medical technology but often the last to be allowed to use it, entirely because of the FDA.
Thi
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I have a feeling that Musk has once again vastly over-estimated the ability of AI to solve this problem. Just like he did with Full Self Driving and his bipedal robot. He thinks that AI will allow Nuralink to do all this amazing stuff, but it's not nearly that capable.
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Based on the available information it seems that the implants themselves are durable enough, but that the human body doesn't tolerate them well and they don't stay in place; they're mechanically pressed out of the brain, or at least out of position such that they no longer are useful.
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Seems it calls for is making the materials more biocompatible.
Musk says... (Score:1)
Re: Brandon? (Score:2)
The real news: podcaster does full day of work (Score:2)
why the hype (Score:2)
Just because Elon Musk did something?
There are dozens of other researchers in this field doing amazing things. They've been working on this technology for, literally, decades and decades.
There's one implanted subject who can feel the clasp when you shake his robot's hand. How cool is *that*? I met him recently, although without the robot, unfortunately. He's one of the most amazing people I've had the pleasure of knowing. The research team he works with is world-class.
But, despite doing incredibly good
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That was (is?) run by John Hopkins and was funded and driven by DARPA. I don't believe they had to beg for anything. Also more than one patient involved. Wouldn't be at all surprised if there's been any collaboration between them as there are very few people working on this. That was also nearly a decade ago, curious why there hasn't been any follow-up reporting.
Though I'm a bit awestruck by a lot of the comments I'm seeing on slashdot. I think this guy said it best:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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While there was work at Johns Hopkins, the research I'm referring to is ongoing at U. Chicago and Northwestern.
And, yes, even with DARPA, you have to beg for money. They don't (usually) come to you and say, "here's $100M, go do this great thing." Moreover, with DARPA, you're getting in bed with the devil, as they are entirely results and milestone driven, and have an excessive need for handholding. That doesn't mesh well with open-ended research where you are doing something that no-one has done before,
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Somehow I doubt DARPA is in this to help rehabilitate soldiers post-injury and more to build robot armor for super soldiers.
Re: why the hype (Score:2)
That or the injured soldiers can continue the fight as an augmented cyborg.
And Musk went burp one day... (Score:1)
I wonder if this will be like processors/ram (Score:2)
they got 400 or 1024 successfully "implanted" to the right place (I assume?)
If this tech ever works out will we be constantly upgrading our implant count - 1024 to 2048 to 4096, etc? Will his sewing machine simply be adding more implants to new regions or would you have to pull out the old ones first? Or will old people just be useless because they have the old tech?
Musk is the New Hillary (Score:2, Insightful)
The word "pathological" is being thrown around in this list of posts so far pertaining to Musk, but I think the real pathological behavior is how some subset of the internet behaves every time something about him is posted.
You don't have to be a fan of Musk to realize that with the most vitriolic posts about him the poster seems to be really upset about not what Musk said or did, but what they imagine he said or did. And there is no convincing them otherwise. Facts take a hike. No amount of debunking
Come on in, Mr. Musk, & make yourself comforta (Score:1)
I have absolutely zero worries about letting a mogul troll hotwire my brain.
Truck full of salt (Score:2)
Yes, Musk has accomplished a lot. But, he does frequently make wild claims that are disconnected from reality. He promised full auto-pilot for Tesla and charged more than $10K for it more than 5 years ago. No full auto-pilot to this day. And yes, I did pay for it 5 years ago.
He also spouted a whole bunch of things about Tesla being used as robo-taxies. And that was several years ago as well.
Over time his claims have become wilder and wilder and in my eyes he has become less believable. I see some para
"Successfully" (Score:2)
"Successfully" is a tricky word and I'm not convinced Musk and I are using it in the same way.
The patient died, BUT I successfully removed the tumor. Yay for me!
Surgically Altered to Better Accept Disinformation (Score:2)