A Closer Look At Elon Musk's Neuralink Surgical Robot (techcrunch.com) 44
Earlier today, Elon Musk demonstrated his startup Neuralink's brain link device working in a pig named Gertrude. While the science and the device itself were front-and-center at the presentation, the surgical robot the company debuted is equally as important because it's designed to handle the full surgical installation process. "That includes opening up the scalp, removing a portion of the skull, inserting the hundreds of 'thread' electrodes 6mm deep along with the accompanying chip, then closing the incision," reports CNET. TechCrunch takes a closer look at the robot: The rounded polycarbonate sci-fi design of the brain surgeon bot looks like something out of the Portal franchise, but it's actually the creation of Vancouver-based industrial design firm Woke Studio. To be clear, Musk's engineers and scientists have created the underlying technology, but Woke built the robot's look and user experience, as well as the behind-the-ear communication end piece that Neuralink has shown in prior presentations. Neuralink's bot features clean white (required for ensuring sterility, per Woke), arcing lines and smooth surfaces for a look that at once flags its advanced technical capabilities, but also contains some soothing and more approachable elements, which is wise considering what the machine is intended to do.
Woke says the Neuralink surgical robot can be separated into three main parts: The head, the body and base. The head of the robot is that helmet-like piece, which actually holds the head of the patient. It also includes a guide for the surgical needle, as well as embedded cameras and sensors to map the patent's brain. The intent of the design of this piece, which includes a mint-colored interior, is to give the robot "an anthroprmorphic characteristic" that helps distract from the invasive nature of the procedure. There are also single-use disposable bags that line the interior of the helmet for sterile operation. The Neuralink robot also has a "body," that humped rear assembly, which includes all the parts responsible for the motion of the robot as it sets up from the procedure. The third element is the base, which basically keeps the whole thing from tipping over, and apparently also contains the computing brains of the brain-bot itself.
Woke says the Neuralink surgical robot can be separated into three main parts: The head, the body and base. The head of the robot is that helmet-like piece, which actually holds the head of the patient. It also includes a guide for the surgical needle, as well as embedded cameras and sensors to map the patent's brain. The intent of the design of this piece, which includes a mint-colored interior, is to give the robot "an anthroprmorphic characteristic" that helps distract from the invasive nature of the procedure. There are also single-use disposable bags that line the interior of the helmet for sterile operation. The Neuralink robot also has a "body," that humped rear assembly, which includes all the parts responsible for the motion of the robot as it sets up from the procedure. The third element is the base, which basically keeps the whole thing from tipping over, and apparently also contains the computing brains of the brain-bot itself.
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Well the Qanon people are the ones who are all waiting for "The great awakening", which is just a way of saying get woke, but their version of woke is a whole lot of crazy.
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Well, if Tesla wants to program something how about instead of programming us, they program a common cold virus. The cell walls of cancer cells are different to normal cell walls and as such a virus can be programmed to specifcally attach to cancerous cell walls only and then do what viruses do, penetrate the cell, get to the DNA and rebuild it into more of the virus. The more cancer you have the quicker it gets sicker.
Now imagine the common cold bioengineered and reprogrammed to attach to cancer cells onl
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"once the anti-cancer common cold was out in the wild"
Moronic on every level.
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I'll point out, viruses already do this. It's a viable treatment.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/r... [sciencedaily.com]
> Physicians and scientists have found that injecting tumors with influenza vaccines, including some FDA-approved seasonal flu shots, turns cold tumors to hot, a discovery that could lead to an immunotherapy to treat cancer.
But the idea that you can or should engineer a cold virus to infect everyone on purpose instead of using targeted treatments is dangerous and stupid, almost certainly wouldn't work, and e
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A corona virus to treat cancer, unleashed into the population and then getting out of control? I can feel a new conspiracy theory coming up...
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> but their version of woke is a whole lot of crazy.
As in crazier than the current version of woke? I'd say any version of woke is craziness, no exceptions.
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Qanons believe Hillary Clinton literally eats children and leads a satanic cannibalistic "cabal" who have secret underground children farms in tunnels under Central Park, and that's not even the craziest belief. The "great awakening" in their belief is the point at which Trump is basically revealed to be the actual messiah and creates heaven on Earth and Hillary and all her Democrat colleagues get arrested and set to Guantanamo Bay. It's well beyond normal kooky politics.
https://abcnews.go.com/US/wire... [go.com]
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I mean the only way to really describe QAnon as it now exists is as a revival of the 1980s satanic panic / day care hysteria but somehow combined with a Millennialist end times prophecy that Trump is the second coming of Christ. Unhinged apocalyptic religious nutters who love guns. It's not going to be a good mix if Trump loses, these people literally believe they're fighting the forces of Satan and that Trump is the chosen one.
Re: Woke Studio? (Score:2)
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Alt right? Nice strawman. (Score:2)
You misspelled /sane/ there. /not-batshit-insane-hateful-SJW-bullies-and-terrorists/.
Or, alt...ernatively
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Triggered much?
Alt-righters are the true snowflakes. They're fragile, and mostly white.
There is a difference between them and snowflakes, though: they're all the same
What could possibly go wrong? (Score:1)
Re: What could possibly go wrong? (Score:2)
I'd rather say in-flamm-ation of the brain!
Not that it was working in the first place, if you let *them* do such a thing to you.
Re:What could possibly go wrong? (Score:5, Insightful)
First of all, there was only few accidents out of billions of miles driven and over a million cars on the road. If you are so stupid to think a few accidents means something is unsafe you probably should go in ANY car. AS for these implants, I am pretty sure the people who would get this implants in the beginning are quadriplegics looking to gain some abilities they lost. They of course would be aware of the risks and taking a calculated chance because this technology could help a LOT of people. Sad people like you would have banned automobiles, airplanes, and rockets with your cynicism and pessimistic outlook.
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Musk always does this when he has nothing to really show. The numerous "full self driving" demos were just the same.
So was the battery swap demo, but most people seem to have fallen for that one big time.
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That's been my policy for years. If you ask me it's stunningly obvious. I mean, you must've heard this one: "driving is the most dangerous thing most people do". Given that, it's pretty obvious you should try to do less of it, right?
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Musk channeling 1920s J.D. Bernal? (Score:2)
https://www.marxists.org/archi... [marxists.org]
"Take, as a starting point, the perfect man such as the doctors, the eugenists and the public health officers between them hope to make of humanity: a man living perhaps an average of a hundred and twenty years but still mortal, and increasingly feeling the burden of this mortality. Already Shaw in his mystical fashion cries out for life to give us hundreds of years to experience, learn and understand; but without the vitalist's faith in the efficacy of human will we shall h
TAHITI (Score:5, Funny)
OK.. Impressive (Score:3)
So they've built a device that can currently connect 1024 neurons in a human brain. With the device they've currently proved able to connect to neurons, and predict their state, how do you do the same with 86 billion neurons? And once you've done that, how do you export that much data [and the error correction overhead] externally before it's stale? Not to mention, interpretation is just as significant a challenge.
But I do believe the motivation behind the presentation, recruitment. The possibility of communicating thought without analogue conversion to an analogue recipient without error correction [aside from ''what's that?] or standardized, static rules of interpretation is quite the dream.. isn't it?
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Well we don't have to probe all of the neurons, only ones that are important for the task.
The idea is to start recording all the neurons while performing actions so that we can look at the patterns and start building models of how the brain neurons work (Alot of this is already known in neuroscience).
But as you said, how do you get the wires to all neurons. I will think if it another way. What if 1 person does 10 neurons. and you have implants in 100 million people (or pigs), looking at different parts, the
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Well we don't have to probe all of the neurons, only ones that are important for the task.
Buying Teslas?
Re: OK.. Impressive (Score:2)
You don't need to!
Our senses and muscles aren't connected directly to all neurons either. It's enough to connect to some, and with training it, the brain will reconfigure to use that new periphery. The brain's amazing that way. It doesn't take long until a robotic arm attached via only very few electrodes, uses normally, to feed yourself.
A neurally connected car would soon feel like a normal part of your body.
(Of course I don't trust anyone to connect their machinery to my brain. Let alone a for-profit busi
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Good point for autonomic systems. It's obviously the first application or benefit that humans will find from this technology.
It makes one think. The apex of this technology would be the ability to transfer or communicate creative thought, error free, to another recipient in a timely manner. Currently the digital to analogue [written words, physical expressions, language] to the recipient who also must parse or interpret an observation and then process it digitally with a unique OS has been the bane
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I doubt that the apex you speak of is achievable: there are areas of the brain known to be involved in producing speech (Broca's area) and understanding it (Wernike's area) but there is no specific area devoted to "creative thought". We'd have to record from a huge number of neurons and still now know which ones were actually responsible for the thoughts.
But you could get a person to silently say their thoughts and then record from just Broca's area and transmit that. If someone else is standing nearby with
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However, there has been some success in reading images from the visual cortex - including, if I recall correctly, _imagined_ images (technically, remembered I think).
Imagine the potential for creative communication if you could transmit such raw imagined images between brains - like having telepathic whiteboards that operate as fast as you can clearly imagine - that would be orders of magnitude faster for communicating complex and detailed concepts. It could also have some very interesting knock-on effects
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I'd bet against him, because it's too early. This is a really early model. If we're comparing with cars, it's one of the models several models before the model T.
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''I'd bet against him, because it's too early''
Well, you have more balls than I. I also believe that the value of research in this field in it's infancy has value not yet realized or applied, and that there will be subsequent marketable and useful discoveries made while attempting to solve an incredible goal that we currently believe is unobtainable.
I mean it's not like he's thinking about how populate mars or anything crazy like that... right?[this is satire.. laugh].
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The alternative to routing the acquisition of the data through existing channels would be to
Warhammer 40K (Score:3)
Initially I was excited, but after reading the description, I'm more reminded by the technology used to create Servitors in the Warhammer 40K universe. I'm unsettled.
direct to pleasure centre (Score:3)
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Wireheads would in many ways I think be a very different kind of problem than we've ever seen before - the first "drug" with zero incremental cost. That would likely accelerate the final decline of hopeless addicts, those who have given up on trying to maintain a normal life in favor of sitting perpetually blissed out and forgetting to eat.
On the other hand - no cost means no need to sacrifice other aspects of your life (or turn to theft) to fund your addiction. It would likely also be free of inherent sho
I look for the good man. (Score:1)
Snakeoil (Score:2)
Hawaiian Cruises - What Should You Expect? (Score:1)