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jabjoe ,
@jabjoe@feddit.uk avatar

Enshittification of stuff wired into your brain is a bit terrifying.

invisiblegorilla ,

You need to login to view more than the first couple of paragraphs. Another site that can fuck off

toynbee ,

For the first half of the first sentence of your post, I thought you were taking about Neuralink.

smileyhead ,

How to anger someone yhay happen to have Neuralink:

How many years of software updates do your mindchip has?

Petter1 ,

Imagine neurolink dropping support for your device and now you have eWaste in your brain, just like the company, which made Eyes for disabled people and then went bankrupt leaving customers with eWaste in their eye holes

HaveYouPaidYourDues ,

I don't know what components exist on the neuralink boards, but i do know that capacitors are pretty common and tend to leak after a couple decades...

Petter1 ,

Yes, capacitors have a lifetime which decreases if they experience heat.

realharo , (edited )

There are many different types of capacitors, most of which don't contain any liquid at all (including the most common type - ceramic capacitors).

But in general, you would use specially rated components and materials if you need them to last decades - not the cheapest most basic parts you can find.

Other types of implanted devices have dealt with the same things decades ago.

MonkeMischief ,

But in general, you would use specially rated components and materials if you need them to last decades - not the cheapest most basic parts you can find.

Keep in mind this is modern tech and an Elon-helmed corpo we're talking about lol. Do decades-lasting components bump stock shares THIS quarter? I point to all the bits falling off of Teslas lately.

lol God help us all...

realharo ,

Pretty sure these things need to be certified and there are laws about what parts you are and are not allowed to use.

Not saying highly regulated industries don't ever have problems (look at Boeing), but it's not like they can just arbitrarily decide to cut costs wherever.

jabjoe ,
@jabjoe@feddit.uk avatar

Yep. This stuff must be open source. The owner should be the actual owner, with full administration rights, and source and schematic.

partial_accumen ,

After reading the article it makes me think how much of human advancement has been in the service of vice. Home video recorders took off when home video porn became available. Both high speed NASCAR auto racing and high performance jet boats owe their existence to illegal liquor and cigarette smuggling. The internet is another beneficiary of ubiquitous porn.

While fraught with ethical questions, there's a vice based path for Neuralink link BCI technology: Replacement for narcotics.

Instead of the difficult task of replacing sight, motor function, or other complicated bi-directional systems, how hard would it be to simply electrically stimulate dopamine release in the brain? At its extreme, you press a button and you feel like you've taken a huge dose of cocaine or heroin except without all of the nasty cardiac or digestive system impacts. Also, the effects stop in the matter of minutes, and at the command of the user. No more driving while intoxicated. You just turn off the electrical current simulating the intoxicant and you have your full facilities available to you.

Should these companies be developing their technology as drug and alcohol addiction recovery systems?

This path would be without problems of its own. This technology itself would be crazy crazy additive! This is explore in fiction including by Sci-Fi author Larry Niven. He calls his a droud, and describes some of the downsides of a society that could choose to feel good whenever they want with no monetary cost or limits

huginn ,

The vcr porn thing is a myth fwiw

Siegfried ,

Porn and the military are sadly the driving force of progress... also, the only places still kept clean from adds.

Kolanaki ,
@Kolanaki@yiffit.net avatar

Ah sweet! Braindances from Cyberpunk 2077!

RatBin ,

What you readily described has, as a matter of fact, applications in medicine in thr field of epylexia ande depression treatements, currently in the form of complex electrical apparatus linked to specific areas of the brain. It is however quite an impactful surgical operation, and it requires a diagnosis for a hard to treat series of symptoms that cannot be dealt with otherwise. It is not exactly that kind of stimulation, more like a "turn on - off" certain neural pathways via electrostimulation, but it is a thing.

would neuarlink do that?

I don't think so as it is mostly a general purpose interface that has its main purpose in human - implant (machine) interaction. But there is a way to stimulate a specific nerve in such a way that you can turn into the personification of horniness itself, I haven't heard of that in a while tho.

systemglitch ,

Simulated acid high? SIGN ME UP.

MyNamesNotRobert ,

[Thread, post or comment was deleted by the author]

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    AutistoMephisto ,
    @AutistoMephisto@lemmy.world avatar

    Or they use the addictive qualities to make workers behave. "Work a 30-hour shift, then the pain stops."

    MonkeMischief ,

    That's the 1984 version, perhaps.

    I'd posit the Brave New World version is

    "It keeps buzzing your brain into doing your stupid task until the 30 hour shift is up, but don't worry, you get sweet dopamine hits and painkillers the whole time and aren't sure why this is so enjoyable! The pleasure-task curve is perfectly computed. You're not even sure how long it's been. There's a momentary sadness when you witness a fellow worker just convulse and drop like a sack of rocks. This work feels so important though! You can understand their dedication."

    General_Effort ,

    Instead of the difficult task of replacing sight, motor function, or other complicated bi-directional systems, how hard would it be to simply electrically stimulate dopamine release in the brain? At its extreme, you press a button and you feel like you’ve taken a huge dose of cocaine or heroin

    Easy. Been done lots of times with rats and I imagine that must be hard with those tiny brains. Brain surgery on humans must be much easier, but they are not allowed to press their own buttons. You know, ethics.

    Rats will perform lever-pressing at rates of several thousand responses per hour for days in exchange for direct electrical stimulation of the lateral hypothalamus. Multiple studies have demonstrated that rats will perform reinforced behaviors at the exclusion of all other behaviors. Experiments have shown rats will forgo food to the point of starvation in exchange for brain stimulation or intravenous cocaine when both food and stimulation are offered concurrently for a limited time each day. Rats will also cross electrified grids to press a lever, and they are willing to withstand higher levels of shock to obtain electrical stimulation than to obtain food.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain_stimulation_reward

    The lesson here is that only the pursuit of porn drives ethical, sustainable progress.

    WallEx ,

    I think you have it backwards, human brains are bigger and thus more complicated, so I think much more complicated to do the same things as in mice. Thats why we "practice" on mice

    General_Effort ,

    Elephants have much bigger brains than humans. That doesn't necessarily mean they are more complicated. Maybe they are, but elephants are obviously not able to do, intellectually, nearly as much as humans. Generally, brain size scales with body size. Humans are unusual in that we have brains that are much too big for our bodies.

    Structurally, our brains are like those of other mammals. What makes them too big for our bodies is the cerebral cortex. Now, I don't want to mislead anyone by appearing too confident. So let me say that this was pretty much the extent of my knowledge on comparative brain anatomy. I believe that the structures one is aiming for here, are simply larger in larger animals. Besides, when operating on a human, you can always ask them how they feel when you apply a current to a part of their brain to make sure you got the right bit. Standard practice, actually.

    tigerjerusalem ,

    Are there even evidence that neuralink is real? All I saw was statements from Musk and its company.

    lucas ,
    @lucas@fitt.au avatar

    @tigerjerusalem @boem the same level of integration they're showing off on youtube can be achieved with off-the-shelf eye trackers, soo.... maybe not?

    dustyData ,

    Find an archived version or just don't post paywalled articles. It's true that most people don't read the article before commenting and just go by the headline. But we can't have discussion the argument of the article if we can't read it.

    ArtificialLink ,

    12ft.io/https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2024/04/neuralink-bci-implant/677996/

    xnx ,
    @xnx@slrpnk.net avatar

    I think you meant to post https://12ft.io/theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2024/04/neuralink-bci-implant/677996/

    That doesnt seem to work either tho

    ArtificialLink ,

    Its all fucked lol. Got to the 12ft website and it works

    Sanctus ,
    @Sanctus@lemmy.world avatar

    Firefox's reader gets around this one, it doesn't always work though.

    RatBin ,

    Go with 12ft dot io. Works with this one alright. I don't think it worked with the Nyt tho.

    jeffw ,

    Isn't that still against Lemmy.world policy?

    dustyData ,

    Not at all as far as I'm aware. There's no mention of paywalled content, or archive links, anywhere in the TOS or in any other guideline or policy. I'd guess that it would be against rules to post an article or content that must be explicitly purchased, with a subscription, for example. As it would count as linking to piracy. But in this specific case, where the article is walled by making an account, it's fine in my opinion. It's a gray area in the worst case. This is why most communities encourage posters to post a freely available article when posting news. And if it's something inaccessible without paying for it, just don't post it at all, or make a text post or post an article about the thing. I mean, piped links are encouraged, and that's a similar thing.

    jeffw ,

    It was an announcement a few months back, iirc. They also told people to stop posting entire articles in the comments and post itself (which I used to do)

    dustyData ,

    An announcement where, by whom?

    Just scrolled all the way the whole last years of the lemmyworld announcements community and there's nothing on it.

    Are you sure you're not confusing a specific community policy with the instance policy? I can see how posting an entire article in the post body or comment could be problematic, as it could be misconstrued as copyright infringement. But removing ads and circumventing user data mining is an entirely different ethics discussion.

    JimboDHimbo ,

    Just chiming in to say that I remember seeing a .world mod telling us not to post full articles in the post or comments. The thing is, that mod had his account banned for COVID misinformation. Which, if I'm correct, is why you can't find any mention of the rule change?

    the rule might not matter anymore tbh

    dustyData ,

    A mod is not an Admin. I'm a mod of a community. That doesn't mean that what I say applies instance wide. My positions are categorically and exclusively my own, and not the position of lemmy.world's owners and administrators. This is why rules are usually written in third places, not in mod comments. If it's not on an official document, it's not official policy.

    JimboDHimbo ,

    Ah, so then I think it was on a worldnews or news community. Which makes my previous comment stupid, lol. Thank you for the explanation.

    guycls ,

    https://12ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theatlantic.com%2Ftechnology%2Farchive%2F2024%2F04%2Fneuralink-bci-implant%2F677996%2F

    Novice_Idiot ,

    Could you post the full text? The article seems to be paywalled

    teft ,
    @teft@lemmy.world avatar

    Until recently, in all of human history, the number of true cyborgs stood at about 70. Ian Burkhart has kept a count because he was one of them—a person whose brain has been connected directly to a computer.

    Burkhart had become quadriplegic in a swimming accident after a wave ran him into a sandbar and injured his spine. He was later able to receive an implant from a research study, which allowed him to temporarily regain some movement in one hand. For seven and a half years, he lived with this device—an electrode array nestled into his motor cortex that transmitted signals to a computer, which then activated electrodes wrapped around his arm. Burkhart now heads the BCI Pioneers Coalition, an organization for the small cohort of other disabled people who have volunteered their brain to push the boundaries of brain-computer-interface technology, or BCI.

    Last month, Burkhart, along with perhaps millions of other people, watched the debut of the newest cyborg. In a video posted on X, the first human subject for Elon Musk’s BCI company, Neuralink, appeared to control a laptop via brain implant. Neuralink has not published its research and did not respond to a request for comment, but the device presumably works this way: The subject, a paralyzed 29-year-old named Noland Arbaugh, generates a pattern of neural activity by thinking about something specific, like moving the cursor on his computer screen or moving his hand. The implant then transmits that pattern of neural signals to the computer, where an AI algorithm interprets it as a command that moves the cursor. Because the implant purportedly allows a user to control a computer with their thoughts, more or less, Musk named the device Telepathy.

    Read: Demon mode activated

    Burkhart watched Arbaugh play hands-free computer chess with a mix of approval and frustration at how clearly the demo was created for investors and Musk fans, not for disabled people like him. It’s no secret that Musk’s real goal is to create a BCI device for general consumers, and not just so we can move a cursor around; he envisions a future in which humans can access knowledge directly from computers to “achieve a symbiosis with artificial intelligence.” That dream is ethically fraught—privacy, for instance, is tricky when your thoughts are augmented by proprietary algorithms—but it is also a long way from being realized. Researchers have sort of managed two-way information transfer with rats, but no one is sure how the rats felt about it, or whether it’s an experience they’d be willing to pay for at a mall kiosk.

    Yet a more modest vision for a safe, workable neuro-prosthesis that would allow disabled people to use a computer with ease is realizable. The question is whether our social structures are ready to keep pace with our advanced science.

    It’s taken decades for BCI tech to get to this point—decades of scientists building prototypes by hand and of volunteers who could neither move nor speak struggling to control them. The most basic challenge in mating a brain and a computer is an incompatibility of materials. Though computers are made of silicon and copper, brains are not. They have a consistency not unlike tapioca pudding; they wobble. The brain also constantly changes as it learns, and it tends to build scar tissue around intrusions. You can’t just stick a wire into it.

    Different developers have tried different solutions to this problem. Neuralink is working on flexible filaments that thread inconspicuously—they hope—through the brain tissue. Precision Neuroscience, founded in part by former Neuralink scientists, is trying out a kind of electrode-covered Saran Wrap that clings to the surface of the brain or slips into its folds. Then there’s the Utah Array, a widely used model that looks a little like a hairbrush with its bristly pad of silicone spikes. That’s what Burkhart had in his head until 2021, when the study he was part of lost funding and he decided to have the implant taken out. He was worried surgeons might have to “remove some chunks of brain” along with it. Luckily, he told me, it came out “without too much of a fight.”

    Once an implant is in place, the tiny signals of individual neurons—measurable in microvolts—have to be amplified, digitized, and transmitted, preferably by a unit that’s both wireless and inconspicuous. That’s problem number two. Problem three is decoding those signals. We have no real idea of how the brain talks to itself, so a machine-learning algorithm has to use a brute-force approach, finding patterns in neural activity and learning to correlate them with whatever the person with the implant is trying to make the computer do.

    None of these problems is trivial, but they’ve been substantially tackled over the past 30 years of BCI research. At least six different companies are now testing applications such as desktop interfaces (like the one that helped Arbaugh play chess), drivers for robotic limbs and exoskeletons, and even speech prostheses that give voice to thought. Proof-of-concept devices exist for all of these by now.

    But that only brings us to problem number four—which has nothing to do with engineering and might be harder to solve than all the others. This problem is what Ben Rapoport, the chief science officer at Precision, described to me as “the productization of science.” It’s where engineering successes run into political and economic obstacles. To roll out even a basic point-and-click medical BCI interface, developers would have to win approval not just from the FDA but also from “payers”: Medicare, Medicaid, and private insurance companies. This is make-or-break: Medical devices, even ingenious ones, won’t get to consumers if insurance won’t cover them. Few people can afford such expenses out of pocket, which means too small a pool of potential consumers to make production profitable.

    Read: I’m disabled. Please help me.

    Other devices have cleared this hurdle—cochlear implants, deep-brain stimulation devices, pacemakers—and it’s not unlikely that BCI implants could join that list if insurers decide they’re worth the expense. On the one hand, insurance companies might argue that BCI devices aren’t strictly medically necessary—they’re “life-enhancing,” not “life-sustaining,” as Burkhart put it—but on the other hand, insurers are likely to see them as cost-efficient if their implementation can save money on other, more expensive kinds of support.

    Even so, there’s a limit to what brain implants can do and what they can replace. The people who would benefit most from BCI devices, people with major motor impairments like Arbaugh and Burkhart, would still depend on human labor for many things, such as getting in and out of bed, bathing, dressing, and eating. That labor can easily cost as much as six figures a year and isn’t typically reimbursed by private health-insurance companies. For most people, the only insurer that covers this kind of care is Medicaid, which in most states comes with stringent restrictions on recipients’ income and assets.

    In Ohio, where Burkhart lives, Medicaid recipients can’t keep more than $2,000 in assets or make more than $943 a month without losing coverage. (A waiver program raises the monthly income cap for some to $2,829.) The salary they’d have to make to cover both expenses and in-home care out of pocket, though, is much more than most jobs pay. “A lot of people don’t have the opportunity to make such a giant leap,” Burkhart said. “The system is set up to force you to live in poverty.”

    In addition to his work with the BCI Pioneers Coalition, Burkhart also leads a nonprofit foundation that fundraises to help people with disabilities cover some of the expenses insurance won’t pay for. But these expenses would be “nowhere near the size that would pay to get a BCI or anything like that,” he told me. “We do a lot of shower chairs. Or hand controls for a vehicle.”

    Starting in the late 20th century, simple switch devices began to enable people with severe motor disabilities to access computers. As a result, many people who would previously have been institutionalized—those who can’t speak, for example, or move most of their body—are able to communicate and use the internet. BCI has the potential to be much more powerful than switch access, which is slow and janky by comparison. Yet the people who receive the first generation of medical implants may find themselves in the same position as those who use switch technology now: functionally required to stay unemployed, poor, or even single as a condition of accessing the services keeping them alive.

    Musk may be right that we’re quickly approaching a time when BCI tech is practical and even ubiquitous. But right now, we don’t have a social consensus on how to apportion resources such as health care, and many disabled people still lack the basic supports necessary to access society. Those are problems that technology alone will not—and cannot—solve.

    S.I. Rosenbaum is a journalist based in Providence, Rhode Island, who plays the musical saw and has written for The New York Times and Slate.

    toothbrush ,
    @toothbrush@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

    paywalled :/

    noodlejetski ,

    I guess it's regional or something? I had the entire article show up.

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